Say goodnight to the bad guy

Rollo beautifully characterizes artists in his classic book on the courage to create:

When I use the word rebel for the artist, I do not refer to revolutionary or to such things as taking over the dean’s office, that’ a different matter. Artists are persons who are concerned with their inner visions and images. But that is precisely what makes them feared by any coercive society. For they are the bearers of the human being’s age old capacity to be insurgent. They love to immerse themselves in chaos in order to put it into form. Forever unsatisfied with the mundane, the apathetic, the conventional, they always push on to newer worlds.

No wonder governments, religions, business and institutions have been censoring art for hundreds of years. If the work is offensive, immoral, harmful to society, it must be altered, silenced or erased. Otherwise their balance of power will never be restored.

This tension between standards of decency and freedom of expression is fascinating to me. The fact that one person could create something that is hailed for its transgressive, controversial and taboo characteristics, that’s motivating as hell.

You know, it’s funny, so many people out there are trying to write the next great novel. But maybe the secret to literary success is writing the worst one.

That gives me an idea for a new business.

Censiore is a combination legal advocacy and public relations firm that files a claim to get your offensive and disgusting book censored, restricted or removed from libraries and schools. That way, authors could leverage that very ban into a compelling marketing campaign that attracts rebellious readers.

Censiore, building the best laid bans.

After all, this is one of our universal human rights. Article nineteen of the universal declaration states everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression, without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Maybe it’s not as rebellious as society has made it out to be. Maybe it’s just part of being a person.

And understandably, there will always be a social cost of speaking our minds. Free speech may one day become a quaint relic of the past.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, should the quivering lip keep us from sharing our inner vision? Will we tap into humanity’s age old capacity to be insurgent?

It might be worth the investment.

Will you acquiesce to the mob’s demands, or bravely accept the role as the bad guy?