Art and Culture 42: Art, Apologies, the Media, and Personal Mistakes
-For the Uncensored!
It’s far worse to apologize when you don’t mean the apology and still continue to make mistakes. In 2021 we are far more bull headed than any other generation. No matter if you are Gen Z, Millennial, we are now in an age where forgiveness and eccentricity do not matter anymore. If the world we live in is far more surprising, it’s a world that doesn’t allow forgiveness. But without it, we are stuck in a primal state. There’s probably no enlightenment if you can’t rethink what you thought ten years ago. While I was far more blind than I used to be, I still think I’m a work in progress.
It’s hard to forgive, but if one side is not willing to forgive, like the left, and they will go on twitter rants with there enemies all day long, and never once do something productive, that’s worse, beyond any measure. But we all judge, even when we shouldn’t. I do it every day, and people who say they don’t are lying.
But I think apologies are good. It takes a stronger person to admit if you have done something wrong, and seek help for your problems. But if people aren’t willing to accept apologies anymore, left or right, and the media will then back away from the immoral decay of pursuing there enemies, America is now in a crisis never before seen.
Information is a good thing, but if we are going to judge everyone, for the rest of their lives, for the sins they committed in the past, this is not a free thinking country. If people have no place, they can’t talk or think or live together. The world will not be able to function if we can’t accept apologies anymore. If you don’t want to debate people, that’s fine.
I’m not a perfect person, and I don’t pretend to be. All the time. (That was a joke). If the world we face today is far more censorious and willing to let go of the past, then America is headed on a downward slope. And if the right is not willing to protect freedom of speech, then why vote for Republicans or Democrats?
If the media will not desist and the Biden Administration will pursue individuals for there political beliefs, then I don’t think apologies are going to work anymore. Whether the crisis of apologizing is when two sides will not be able to talk anymore, the damning idea of millennials who are at war with an invisible threat of “white supremacy” when it doesn’t exist, is turning America against each other.
The horrible condition of finalizing one’s thoughts or opinions about one another, is frightening. It’s about remembering that people need to get along. It’s not just outlined in St. Augustines Apologetics, but the basis of apologies reminds us that we are all human and we make mistakes. The destruction of anger, and never forgiving ourselves or our enemies, is what clouds the best of judgement. And I don’t believe that artists or individuals make mistakes, or are criminals for what politics they espouse. People are complicated and true Art doesn’t have one single thought against
I am for freedom of speech and allowing not only our enemies to be wrong, but also ourselves. Humans are not made to live in “good or evil” and it can damage society if we don’t come to terms with our complex nature. Social media also makes you live in a bubble where only right and wrong exist, and people can’t be human, and no forgiveness can happen.
A creative person is someone who can’t work a factory/cubicle job without having a release. If the world we exist in only has us living in pods, then that’s not the basis of human thought nor should it be. A box is a square, and as humans, we shouldn’t confine ourselves to a box, or a script with thoughts that will never change. A Rubicon is much worse, once crossed. Only reading from a script can only make us feel like we are saying something that other people feel. If men commit suicide it’s because they aren’t allowed to say what they think. Society, a partner, or a cult can only make us feel like we should see someone else as an other, a being of ill reproach. If the horrors of what we despise in ourselves are denying us from being happy, why should we expect others to agree when we attack each other on the Internet, for being human.
I don’t want a world where we are replicants, blindly following orders, and only living in an insulated cult. Part of this is knowing everything all the time. Social media can and should be blamed for the anger spread across the world. Information, readily available, should be kept at a distance only to make us see if we really believe it or not. Apologies take time and wounds created between lovers or co-workers must heal in order to find a way through.
I think that bad behavior should be corrected. After being hurt and causing self-inflicted wounds, reshape what and who we are. Man was not meant to see everything online, and moving away from the cult of social media, can help heal the divide we need. With that being said, apologies are meant to heal the divide, not create more division.
Eccentric people, like Steve Jobs, are people you would not have wanted to work for. They are driven and his life was not pleasant. He had his way of thinking and he didn’t want any deviation. While men and women are complicated, there is a cult that wants us to think the same things over and over again.
The American Left, or the Lefties, are now waging a war that spans through the media and on social media and in movies against eccentric people. What the horrors of true Communism is that if you never experienced it, it doesn’t exist. If you have research and dug into the reality of communism, then you have no special reason to think it’s all that bad.
But the left are responsible for the rioting and looting in 2020 in America, and we think, if they just apologized would that make it all better? Of course not. They should go to jail and face criminal charges.
While that is a dramatic example of punishment, if people are told to censor what they say, it comes as no surprise as to what life should be. It seems the right and the left, there factions, would want us to be antagonistic and attack each other every day. I mean, is that the world we want?
I want to make money and be able to publish and write whatever I want. But if leftists are going to attack me and expect me to apologize all the time because they won’t like me, then I should look for someone else to publish and make money with. But that’s the state of the entertainment industry. People can’t and shouldn’t live in cults of ideologies either.
I’m not really a Christian, but I’m not an atheist. And while I’m not perfect, you can also be a Christian and not hate gay people either. I know because I have met so many who don’t fit the representation of the West Borough Baptist Church. I live in a complicated existence, and having to iron out all the complicated opinions it takes time away from what I love to do. I can be pro freedom of speech and have every right to despise groups like BLM and Antifa, because real world violence is more important to me than mean words on Twitter. If people are going to make fun of me, about my looks, my writing, on social media, I have no right to expect an honest debate with that person.
I don’t expect to make friends with sock puppet accounts and boys who want to make me look bad. I don’t have to care about keeping those friendships, and I don’t want to apologize to them. Apologizing to people who won’t show there face or combat my words with a rational statement, on either side, need to stay in there cult and not protect freedom of speech.
I don’t care if people find me controversial or a pornographer. It’s hard to doubt that I don’t have appetites that people might find wrong, and I don’t apologize for it. Apologies for my art are never going to happen. If Quentin Tarantino was in the “wild movie business” as described by Joe Rogan on his June 29th podcast in 2021, I’m in “the wild book business.” (
?si=59317c209abd4e76&nd=1. Found July 19th, 2021.) I have to take my vision to the place most writers and most thinkers fear to tread.
Here’s something that hits more at home.
If two people care about each other, and they still see something that they have when they first met, and either in business or a personal relationship, strengthens the bond between them? I know I have hurt someone I truly care about. I care about her so much that even I know that an apology right now would not suffice. I can’t apologize for what I feel towards someone I love and deserves better than they are given.
I lost my innocence a long time ago. And people wonder why I’m such a brazen person. You can’t blame a tiger for being a tyger. Burning so bright, in the forest of the night, what immortal hand or eye can frame thy fearful symmetry. That was not my words, but from William Blake’s The Tyger.
Maybe because I’m an artist and using words I write is rather offensive to most people. If being free with words is offensive to both sides, and jokes are taken as threats, disinformation is taken as threats from the Biden Administration, why have freedom of speech?
If freedom of speech is only good for one side, then why apologize? Again, maybe people need to turn off their phones, put it away, and go back to nature. Not completely. While we shouldn’t disregard communication and technology, all together. But if technology is going to divide people, a break is needed.
And then maybe we can start learning to forgive.
No artists, democrat, republican, should be made to face scrutiny or should the person then be labeled as racist or misogynistic, or any other phony bullshit reason some academic in there ivory tower would label me as. Nor should people apologize for what they write or say on social media. I can disagree and find my own peace with the solace men would dare not find. I am as complicated as you may think, but if you like complication, then you probably don’t belong in a cult.
You’re a free thinker and being a free thinker is dangerous to cults andin culture.
-Louis Bruno is the author of more than 15 books, including, The Michael Project, The Michael Project: Book 2: The Lost Children of Eve, Thy Kingdom Come, The Disintegrating Bloodline, Apocalypse Soldier, Hierarchy of Dwindling Sheep. His books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Lulu. He can be found on Gab, https://gab.com/thereallouistbruno, Minds https://www.minds.com/lbruno8063/. Instagram @lbrruno8063 and @louisbrunoofficialbook. Our Freedom Book https://www.ourfreedombook.com/thereallouistbruno17. He has written for the Intellectual Conservative and Ephemere. Also, he writes on https://louisbruno.substack.com, where you can support him directly, and where he will post one article sporadically (the bulk of his work will appear on substack officially). His next series, City of Sand is out now: https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/louis-bruno/city-of-sand/hardcover/product-rke9jz.html?page=1&pageSize=4. Also, if you can’t subscribe so that you can get members only content, please be sure to share the articles, as well. Every little bit helps. Thanks for reading.