CJ Hopkins’ critical thinking musings echo my weekend science posts
Tom KirkmanIndependent Project Manager
Some critical thinking musings by satirist CJ Hopkins. But he’s not writing satire here.
I’ve commented repeatedly before that my absurdist / frequently surreal / sometimes sarcastic / satire of my “Weekend Science” posts are designed to provoke a bit of critical thinking in readers, as the lines between reality and absurdism get blurred.
And I enjoy geefully throwing sand into the gears of mindless conformity, while hopefully getting others to chuckle / facepalm at inane absurdities.
Nudging readers to write their own amusing absurdities in response can be a fun game : )
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“… We are all, by the time we realize we exist, the products of programming, ideological conditioning.
I believe it is the job of artists to undo that, or at least to marginally interfere with it.
That’s what art, and artists, did for me.
They introduced me to my mind. My programmed mind.
They forced me to think, and to see, and listen.
They taught me to question, to pay attention.
They dared me to deprogram my mind, and provided me with the tools to do it.
… I have been fighting this monster, in my art, in my mind, and out in the world for as long I remember.
You have to fight it everywhere at once. To fight it in your mind, you have to fight it out in the world.
And to fight it out in the world, you have to fight it in your mind.
… It makes me a criminal. A thought criminal. An art criminal.
Which I literally am.
The German authorities are prosecuting me for disseminating art. For tweeting art. Pictures. Words. They banned one of my books.
So maybe I’m marginally interfering with their ideological conditioning, with their programming, with their New Normal Gleichschaltung op.
If so, good, because, if I can quote another German, “art is not a mirror held up to reality, it is a hammer to shape reality with.”
And I’ll go a little further than Brecht.
Every work of art we make shapes reality one way or another, whether we intend it to or not.
It either feeds the monster or it f**ks with the monster.
The monster out there, and the monster in here, inside us, all of us … because it’s all the same monster.
Thank you, all of you who are f**king with the monster. That is all. Let’s keep it up.”