Destroying Silo Culture

How we can Connect again

Now that the outside heat has subsided a little, lets get back to business!

One of the things audiences of art and entertainment have been craving for a number of years has been an art scene that doesn't beat its audience over the head with what it's doing. Few seem to understand that this has been a problem that existed much longer than the current woes in every media-adjacent industry has. In fact, we have a blueprint for how such an industry was shaped.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s a "Christian" Industry for different forms of media arose. There was a "Christian" space for music, movies, books, and everything else you could imagine. What that ended up doing was creating a cargo cult mentality around it, creating its own language and code of conduct to separate it from the mainstream. Instead of trying to adapt to or communicate with the mainstream, it divorced from it and left everyone outside the bubble to their own devices.

This ended up being a mistake, as both the "Christian" industry and the mainstream would eventually implode into a pile of tired tropes and expected ideas, never to come to together again.

The reason this doesn't work is that Christianity is meant to face the mainstream head-on, not ignore it or talk around it. It's about the destiny of man in the face of the Perfect Man, after all. And art, as we've discussed many times, is meant to connect us and find meaning together. We're meant to have art poke and prod and point us in the right direction while showing us more we might not have considered. If you truly believe in the Savior of the Universe, then you should not hold that belief to yourself. Unfortunately, that is more or less what the "Christian" media complex evolved into being in record time. It's now just another industry with a particular image slapped on top to make it seem different while it sells pale imitations of what the already poor mainstream offers.

However, there are a lot of believers out there who don't want to be part of such an isolated island. There are plenty that want to connect and reach out to others, and find a Higher Meaning to it all.

The above video shows a list of authors who did just that. While being Christian and believers of the One True God, they never forgot their vision was also to reach people who either might not believe or might not even know what the author is talking about in the first place. They released the point of connecting means going outside yourself and doing more than preaching to the choir, and as a consequence their work is much more enduring than you'd figure it would be.

What happened in the 20th century was the siloing of ideas and interactions, backed up by corporations to give the illusion of community based on perceived tastes, at the same moment local community was falling apart around us. We're currently in the last days of such a system as both the internet works to destroy itself, and the old companies struggle to make a profit without turning something into a formulaic franchise or digging up corpses to put in modern skinsuits to attempt the same thing. The climate is changing, and it's a necessary change, but it's going to hurt when it does. It's happening right now in certain places.

What we need now are people who not only believe in a better possibility for what is to come, but also aren't afraid to reach others with their ideas. The old battle lines are faded now, slipping away with both the passage of time and new generations questioning if they were ever really there to begin with. When can we finally work together again to build a better future? It has to happen at some point. It's inevitable.

I know plenty of creators working out there to make a change, and I know many audience members doing the same. We all know it has to change. Eventually, these efforts will cause a shift and the old paradigm will be just a memory. Until then, we can't stop pushing.

In other news, I just put up a new episode of the podcast on the Patreon (Can you believe it's been a year now?) talking about what from the 1990s is worth salvaging. We usually talk the opposite so it was interesting looking it what actually worked. It's a long episode so I made the preview a bit longer to compensate, so if you want to listen you can find it here.

I'm also starting a new post series that may or may not lead into another book in the vein of The Pulp Mindset and The Last Fanatics. Join now and you'll get to see it as its written and see how it shapes up. I can only do this because of the readers, after all.

There is a lot to look forward to. Don't despair over the future because of the dilapidated state of the mainstream: that is temporary. What is to come in the future will offer a much different world, one where all of this falls away. You always gotta have hope, after all.

As the old saying goes, keep your eyes on the prize. Just don't make the mistake of the 20th century and forgetting what that even is to begin with. There's much more than we can even imagine.

Less than two weeks to go on Ken Lizzi's Cesar the Bravo kickstarter by Cirsova! A collection of 5 sword and sorcery short stories packed with a brand new novel of incredible adventure. Back today and help it hit the goal!