David Pennington

We have become used to the ease and convenience of our digital lives, and we expect the same offline. A slick, transactional, no-strings-attached kind of life, predictable and controllable.

This is all, unfortunately, a microcosm of the problems we face. We’re up against a system that views and treats hyper short-term profits as more important than our collective future. We’re up against corporations and ways of doing business that would ignite the planet before letting their profits fall – and that’s exactly what they’re doing. We,... See more

But there is one big reason why a lot of men don’t think they should create—they think their turn to be creative has passed. It was taken by their ancestors, and they misused the privilege. Now they must, in the names of their fathers, be silent.

“You should never ask an artist about their art,” Maurizio Cattelan said, immediately on arrival. “The best art raises lots and lots of questions,” he added. “Not answers.”

Critics instead spent their time and word-counts thinking about culture with artistic intentions, which raised the profile of these artworks to define the era (despite being unpopular in terms of raw audience numbers). This resulted in culture feeling healthy as long as a few inventive artists were still doing good work.

Bring on the phone free school legislation. You wouldn’t let your kid smoke cigarettes in your class, so why are we letting them consume electronic brain cocaine? Make it state-wide, make it nation-wide.

But boredom is when life happens.