Beyond ‘Culture War’

Introducing a new cultural space and newsletter: Creative Liberty

Cultures have always been in flux – the only constant in history is change. So what distinguishes a living, vibrant culture from a state of culture war? Where does creative destruction become subversive?

Welcome to Creative Liberty. In this introductory manifesto, I’ll provide a brief overview of the cultural issues facing modern society, and explain how we intend to improve culture through original creative and analytical enterprise.

We believe that the current culture war is characterised by these three undesirable features: 

• Overbearing attempts to re-engineer society according to some ideological plan

• Campaigns to obliterate culture, revise history, and create a future culture that is dislocated from its past

• Polarisation around cultural changes that are seen as artificial and bad-faith

In previous epochs, positive cultural change was achieved not through culture war, but culture dialogue. We have to talk to our opponents, to reach them in good faith. “Fat chance,” I hear you mutter – “have you seen the other side??? I’m not having a dialogue with them, and nor would they want one!”

“So I open my door to my enemies

And I ask could we wipe the slate clean

But they tell me to please go f*** myself

You know you just can't win”

David Gilmour, Pink Floyd

‘Lost For Words’, The Division Bell, 1994

Nevertheless, the restoration of cultural dialogue must be the eventual aim of anyone wishing to improve culture. We have to either live with our enemies, or destroy them – and if there’s to be any destruction, it will likely consume the side that doesn’t hold institutional power. It may be psychologically gratifying to LARP as Pinochet or Che Guevara, but in reality the only long-term solution is dialogue.

We are a long way off the restoration of dialogue at present. However, we can still engage with each other via culture: through art, music, stories, essays, and articles, rather than the sophistry of antagonistic debates. It’s more effective, less cantankerous, and far more fun.

With that said, allow me to introduce Creative Liberty. 

In a nutshell, we aim to be an exhibition space for contrarians, not curmudgeons. We believe it is possible for one to be contrarian by disposition and yet keep an open mind, enjoying the adventure of innovations and ideas, and treating both friends and adversaries with good grace. The negativity that suffuses online discourse does not facilitate this – it encourages viewers to dig their trenches, and lob ‘truth-bombs’ at anyone not sharing the same patch of earth.

It’s somewhat hard to make friends if you’re mentally surrounded by barbed wire, and watching people getting ‘DESTROYED’ or ‘BTFO’D’ for your entertainment. This is important politically as well as socially, because we influence our friends far more than our enemies. 

We aim to reverse this negative trend, ditch the clickbait, and leave our viewers exalted by the content they engage with rather than degraded by it.

“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get muddy, and the pig enjoys it.”

George Bernard Shaw (attributed)

How does it work?

NOTE: There have been some changes to the model, as the original scheme below didn’t generate anough revenue to keep the project going steadily. For the most up-to-date version of the subscription model, please refer to this page. Thank you for reading!

• We will provide all written content for free. Everyone should be free to engage with the ideas we’re publishing.

• There are two types of subscription: free, and paid.

• We support the project by charging a small subscription fee for access to audio content, which includes voice-recordings of all articles, poetry readings, and short stories, as well as original podcast content and light musical experimentation. (To begin with, all content is provided free, as a taster and thank-you for early sign-ups.)

• Your paid subscription also supports the creation of dynamic video content over on YouTube (currently a Work-In-Progress). Updates, behind-the-scenes, subscriber polls and so on will primarily target our paid subscribers, so by subscribing, you’re contributing to shaping the direction of this creative enterprise.

• We aim to publish 3 articles per week, alongside a weekly poetry collection. We also want to publish user-submitted articles, music, artwork, and even short stories in due course, provided these meet a certain standard of quality (i.e. we like them!)

• At the time of writing, ‘we’ is one person (working full-time on the project) and a few friends (^^)

Thank you for reading, and we hope you can join us on this new endeavour; please consider sharing or subscribing to support our work. Let’s make the alternative internet a better place.