Gossip

He who never says anything cannot keep silent.

― Martin Heidegger

Facebook's outage this week—a form of compulsory digital minimalism—reminded me that the world's religions advise you to avoid gossip, "in the sight of God an awful thing."

Gossip is an awful thing, even if you're not god-fearing.

Philosopher Martin Heidegger explained why in his magnum opus, Being and Time.

Gossip tranquilizes—sparing us the job of discovering our life's purpose. Every minute spent engaged with it is one less minute spent in contemplation of our inevitable death.. And that escape from the thought of our own death Is comforting, even anesthetizing.

In Heidegger's view, gossip delivers us over to prepackaged ways of interpreting life's meaning. 

Like a cranky letter, gossip has already been "deposited" before ever reaching us, denying us the chance to decide for ourselves whether its malignant interpretation of life is really useful. 

Worse yet, gossip conforms us to the role of an average listener in a superficial conversation. Gossip dictates what's worth discussing—what's appropriate and intelligible talk—and what isn't.

By listening to gossip, "we already are listening only to what is said-in-the-talk." We already are allowing that we're unthinking, uncaring and unoriginal people. "Hearing and understanding," Heidegger says, "have attached themselves beforehand to what is said-in-the-talk."

Gossip in that sense is deafening: it doesn't communicate, but merely "passes the word along" ("shares," in Facebook-speak). "What is said-in-the-talk spreads in ever-wider circles and takes on an authoritative character." Things are so because one says so—even when what is said is groundless hearsay.

And gossip is irresponsible twaddle. 

"Gossip is the possibility of understanding everything without previously making the thing one's own," Heidegger says. Gossip is something anyone can rake up; you need not be an "influencer."

Gossip discourages fresh thinking, originality, and genuine attempts to understand the meaning of things, because it so dominates the public forum as to "prescribe one's state-of-mind."

By prescribing your state-of-mind, gossip also makes you rootless—cutting you off from reality, so that you "drift unattached" to life and the world around you.

That from a man who chose to spend most of his time in a secluded mountain hut in Bavaria warning the world of the dangers of technology.

This weekend, take a long, soulful break from Facebook. 

You'll be glad you did.

Above: The Wave by Corran Brownlee. Oil on canvas. 47 x 60 inches.

Show Animals

2022 and 2023 are going to be HUGE for in-person events.

— Joe Pulizzi

Content-marketing guru Joe Pulizzi is bullish on tradeshows, as are many who've attended one lately.

I'm not so sanguine, despite the Delta variant waning.

But a tradeshow-industry insider suggested to me this week that my bearish views aren't justified. 

He pointed to the recent shows held by Informa, the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Confectioners Association, and the Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute as examples of the industry's recovery.

I allowed I was perhaps underestimating tradeshow organizers' resiliency.

But whether you back bulls or bears, don't put your money on these two species: cows and pigs.

They're done for.

Three decades ago, I wrote an investigative article—the first of its kind—for the tradeshow-industry magazine EXPO.

It revealed two best-kept industry secrets: one, that most organizers' shows were cash cows; and two, that most organizers' net margins were piggish—well over 70%.

The article, entitled "Porcine Profits," made a few show organizers uncomfortable; but none disputed its accuracy.

Pent-up, post-pandemic demand notwithstanding, those heady yesterdays are over.

Show expenses are up; show participation, down; and no broad-scale economic rebound is going to change either of those facts.

Organizers are going to have to forget about bulls and bears and cows and pigs, and at last become rhinos.

That, or become dinosaurs.

HAT TIP: Thanks to Dan Cole for introducing me to the rhino.

Burn Rate

Desperate for cash, the organizers of Burning Man are auctioning art to stay afloat another two months, according to Billboard.

The event operator has partnered with Sotheby's to sell 100 works of art, so it doesn't go under before it can begin to sell tickets for its 2022 event. Prices for the art reach into the tens of thousands of dollars.

Burning Man, which normally attracts 70 thousand attendees and generates $43 million in registration fees, has cancelled its annual event two years in a row. CEO Marian Goodell told Billboard his company was in "dire straits."

Will other event organizers follow suit?

Talk about a fire sale!

Happiness is a Warm Brush

Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and
the thrill of creative effort.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

On Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of painting en plein air outside the studio of N.C. Wyeth in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, under the guidance of my realism teacher, Randall Graham.

Initial charcoal sketch

The afternoon was warm, the autumn sunlight lemony. 

I found that to bathe in that warmth and light and in all those Wyeth-family vibes in the air inspired me to paint freely and loosely—even though the results are highly questionable (another of my teachers found the following day innumerable faults in Pumpkin on Boulder, all clearly on display to a knowing eye like hers).

The painting aside, my memories of Saturday will last me a long, long time, because I was swept up for five hours in the wellspring of happiness, flow.

I recently asked Delaware painter Lena Moaney why she paints and her reply was immediate: "I paint to relax. When I paint, nothing else in the world matters to me. I’m using my full imagination and all my skills in the moment."

That puts it nicely.

Happiness is a warm brush. 

Above: Pumpkin on Boulder. Oil on canvas. 18 x 12 inches.

Villany vs. Stupidity

You have attributed conditions to villainy
that simply result from stupidity.

— Robert A. Heinlein

As we sail toward Columbus Day, Madrid's “Trumpista” president Isabel Díaz Ayuso took advantage of an interview in New York this week to bash Critical Race Theory.

Díaz Ayuso warned that the theory is a "revisionist, dangerous, and pernicious" ideology that will lead to "cultural regression." 

She also lambasted the Indigenous movement, calling it a "dangerous current of communism" and an "attack against Spain." 

Díaz Ayuso called New York's recent decision to rename Columbus Day (now Indigenous People's Day) "fatal."

"Why are we revising the history of Spain in America," she asked, "when all it did was bring universities, civilization, and the West to the American continent?"

Her remarks echo Steve Bannon's 2014 Vatican remarks, in which he described Europe's past exploits as the foundation of a "civilization that really is the flower of mankind"

The day after the interview, Díaz Ayuso denounced Pope Francis for apologizing for the Catholic Church's support of the conquistadors.

Why vilify Spain, she asks, when the conquistadors merely made a few mistakes?