Because I lack either the ruthless business savvy or the Napoleonic charisma of a Stanley Kubrick, I’ve tried to solve this problem by keeping my own artistic endeavors low in overhead, devoid of collaborators and as free from editorial interference as possible. Autonomy and control: These are indispensable to any artist. Since I was a teenager, my primary artistic role model has been the film director Stanley Kubrick, who was rare in his artistic genius but almost unique in his ability to secure the space necessary for that genius to operate to its maximum by establishing a financial autonomy and a degree of control unheard of in the brutal ecosystem of Hollywood. Though to be honest, even this seemingly innocuous form of ambition serves an insidiously dictatorial desire: to change what other people think, and how they see.Īs with most artists, my fondest worldly goal is to be left alone: I dream of an empire the size of my apartment. My own ambition takes the comparatively benign form of artistic ambition (inevitably alloyed with various impurities - desire for recognition, for status, for enough money to get by, for women to like me). Diogenes said that if he weren’t Diogenes, he’d want to be Diogenes too.)Īmbition for the more obvious and boring forms of power - political, financial - may not always be inherently evil, but it does tend to have unfortunate side effects in the form of poverty, slave labor, pogroms and unwelcome territorial advances.
Who was ultimately more powerful: the conqueror Alexander, who ruled the known world, or the philosopher Diogenes, whom Alexander could neither offer nor threaten with anything? (Alexander reportedly said that if he weren’t Alexander, he would want to be Diogenes. So immense and pervasive is this force that it takes a considerable counterforce just to restore and maintain mere autonomy. Freedom is the defensive, or pre-emptive, form of power: the power that’s necessary to resist all the power the world attempts to exert over us from day one. Like gravity and acceleration, these are two forces that appear to be different but are in fact one. I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want freedom is the ability to do what you want. However: Doing what I want, and not being made to do things I don’t want to do, has been one of my main priorities in adulthood, the principle around which I’ve structured my life. I don’t even like being waited on by people I’d rather have a beer with I’m uncomfortable holding the meager (and mostly illusory) power of grades over my students. Why would I want to boss other people around? What would I make them do? My taxes, maybe? It just sounds awkward, and like a huge hassle. Even sexual fantasies based on power dynamics don’t particularly appeal to me. The wish to have power over others is altogether alien to me I just don’t get it, any more than I get why anyone wants to have kids or play Settlers of Catan.
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