The Tyranny of Popularity - by Richard Sale

“Things that are easy to swallow are hardly ever nutritious.”

Nothing of worth ever begins as something popular. Something of outstanding worth usually has to make its way gradually, moving on timid steps, out into a hostile, indifferent world.  It doesn’t bolt into the spotlight like an extravagant starburst. It moves on hesitant steps, always extremely vigilant, because on all sides looms The Popular which can overwhelm it or lead it astray. A work of extraordinary merit usually it takes a great deal of time to gain its footing, and it requires a lot of exposure, analysis and comparison before a book or a painting or a play or a beautiful building are recognized as being “the real thing.”

That recognition can be as slow as a glacier’s progress.  When the Italian Dante finished his The Divine Comedy,” the critical opinion of the day damned it as “Gothic obscurantism.” It isn’t. It is measured, stately and beautiful. Today, it is extolled as one of the great narrative poems in Western Civilization. It took 150 years for the greatness of Shakespeare to emerge, thanks to the Romantics.  Even The Iliad, Homer’s masterpiece, required a long span of time before its imperishable beauty was praised. The Greeks of Homer’s time were so corrupt, they even denied that the Trojan War took place. Homer’s work was dismissed as mere fraudulence.

Great art is like a message in a bottle.  The heaving sea is populated with acres of bottles bobbing on the swells. A curious onlooker can idly fish out a bottle and take out the message. If the message has no interest for him, he lets it fall into the surf. If it appears to have brief interest, he may perhaps hand it to his neighbor who might gaze at it for a minute, then discard it. This is where endowments of intelligence and gifts of emotional depth and perceptiveness begin to play a part. Say we have a mind that consistently spends its time reading, observing, reflecting, and meditating. Over time, he or she is going to develop skills based on those activities. He or she will lead two lives, the personal and the intellectual. The skills from the latter depend on the growth of insight, vivid interests and focused observation.

So what happens when a richly endowed mind comes across the message? It will not read the message idly, but with genuine curiosity.  If it is a trifle, he throws it away, but if it isn’t, he will consider it, examine it,  create a scale of importance, rate it, and if he has friends of similar temperament and gifts, will pass it on to them.  In other words, the reaction of his friends will vary according to their brains and emotional depth, but it isn’t likely that they would want to discard it without a hearing.  Soon some preliminary agreement will be forged about the worth of the message.  Analytic comparisons take place. That is how fame is established and spread. Fame depends on convincing the skeptical.

So what establishes value?  The passage of time. Time weeds out nuisances and but keeps the worthy creations and onlookers and readers will begin to rank them in the scale of importance and excellence.  There is always a struggle taking place in a civilization between the cheap and glamorous and the quiet and truthful. The more our nature is limited, the more our brains and feelings are shallow, the more likely they will be to praise what is worthless and to exalt what is false and dubious.  Integrity grows in our character only by overcoming the inferior elements of or minds and supplanting them with something more alert and astute.  If you have a nature that risks ridicule because it halts to think before it pronounces, you have a nature that is honest.  It may be mistaken at times, and may come to repudiate its earlier judgments, but if it has integrity, it will demand repeated efforts to correct its earlier misconceptions.

The best in us wants to admire the admirable, not the shoddy and flimsy imitations of it. We do not want to substitute something that has an enduring value, something that acts to stimulate accomplishments for something flashy and worthless, and yet people do that all the time. They forget that the popular is usually the radically unsound because the popular caters to our mental or spiritual limitations. Popularity is a mirage that masks merit. The first idea to delight the mind may not be a sound or noble one. It may beguile, mislead, stupefy, and it may lead he mind completely astray. The goal of our thought should be clearer or more accurate and more deeply felt perceptions of our own common life. To obtain greater clarity of sight, we have to shun things that pretend to be insightful or durable when it fact, they betray and blind us.

Masterpieces of art enter the world like messages in a bottle. There are hordes of bottles bobbing about in the broad sea, and in each bottle, is a message that seems like all the others, until a reader or spectator, or a discerning critic takes the message out and is exalted by it.  Of course, the spread of its fame can be tantalizing slow, as you can see from the examples above.  Some natures, receptive, richly endowed with feeling and superior brain power will come across them, and they will work tirelessly to save them from oblivion. But, as I said, that takes time.

In a democracy, whose political ideology declares that all men and women are created equal is a worthy political goal. But if you move beyond politics, we encounter the array of masterpieces in Western Civilization, and to appreciate them requires exceptional gifts of temperament and mind. What is a masterpiece? A masterpiece is a work of an artist whose ambition was to construct something so beautiful, so humanly dramatic and poignant that it will endure beyond the reach of Time. That is the aim of genuine artists whether their art is sculpture, painting or writing architecture or composing musical masterpieces.

 

Each of our minds has the gift of integrity, but embracing the popular is a certain way to degrade that gift.  Of course, the question must be asked, how can something be mistaken when hordes of morons sing its praises? Because that praise is based on inadequate perceptions and inferior judgments.  It may be based on ignorant familiarity or based on what the neighbors say. But in order to develop, the mind must start to ask questions of itself.  What is it about the popular that is so priceless and imperishable?  Will the popular still be revered in a few years or a few decades or will feckless fashions and fads demote it until you then find out, to your horror, that you have worshipped what was worthless, that you supplanted your integrity with something false and ephemeral.

Coming to the sound conclusion about matters of art or politics requires powers of judgment. A sound mind questions not only what it believes, but how it came to belief it. How did it invade our mind? What put it there? Neighbors steering us into the wrong path? By ill- informed friends that tried to have you endorse their faulty conclusions as your own in the name of fellowship?

The weight of numbers is always on the wide of the stupid.  Think of history, of popular fads, the US military leaders who, before Pearl Harbor, said Japanese would never be competent pilots because their mothers carried them on their backs when they were babies. Think of your own examples. How did such idiocy gain approval? How did such rank nonsense get passed around as if it were the authoritative truth?

An error repeated two million times is still an error.  It is something inferior and weak that postures as strength. It is something shoddy that the meagerly gifted natures among us embrace as something priceless because mediocrities are always gullible and sell themselves cheap. Mediocrities lack critical talents. They lack the moral courage to deride the inferior.

If you admire a rock or a tree or a bird in your backyard, should make the effort to see many trees or many rocks or birds as you can in order to erect a sense of hierarchy that makes clear which of them has merit and superior durability.

Remember that true merit is the enemy of popularity. True merit is not immediately recognizable. Its voice is a still one. It doesn’t bray, it doesn’t posture, and it doesn’t strut.  It convinces the open- minded who are determined to grow, not conform - minds that display a hunger to share what they have learned with similar minds. They are not startled or put out by an unfamiliar note.  And remember, that note may be heard by others, who may stop to listen, wondering what its meaning is.  Idiots are always certain that their truths are absolute simply because they rule the day.  But the thoughtful, the generous, and the unbigoted, always keep an ear cocked for the new note and are willing to spend the energy to decipher its meaning. 

Popularity is a vulgar steamroller that flattens everything good or bad. It makes no distinctions. It is incapable of measuring accurately something unfamiliar which it discards as useless. Merit takes time to create its own appeal.  Popularity is like a train announcer, herding and ordering pliant minds to and fro.

Another thing.

The goal of education is to train the intellectual and emotional endowments of each of us, no matter unequal they are, to appreciate the complex, the subtle, the depthful, the outstanding in culture and art. Inequalities will always exist, but with help, each of us can become something deeper, more serious, more earnest and more determined to make the effort to improve. If education doesn’t do that, it has failed us.

Remember, your perceptions are sacred and inviolable - trust them. Believe what you see. Other people may see it, but they will never see it in the same way. That is the truth. What they see is not what you see. In proportion that you are endowed with an original turn of mind, cling to what you saw. Never be talked out of it. Never surrender your sight to what others say about it.  I have told here on the site about being three years old and standing behind a red barn when I saw two lights. Then I saw four and ran away. I was constantly mocked by my parents, but then a dog was an eviscerated, and it became clear that a pair of bob cats lived behind the barn. It was the light of their eyes I saw.

The monotony of other people’s inert reaction to anything out of the ordinary teaches us little plus it disheartens.  Be observant. Be a remembering animal.  If you don’t know the meaning of what you saw, keep it tucked away until additional facts make clear its meaning. What rules today is what is popular with greater number of people.  But how qualified are they to judge? Most are not.  There are exceptions of course, but it is their fate of any good things to be ignored or, worse, shouted down.  Familiarity seems to be the standard of acceptance today, but familiarity is a mere habit. It never probes, questions, reexamines. It is incapable of new and original conceptions.

What is truly disgusting and retarding to the mind’s development are the paid trolls of TV news whose see their jobs as schemes for betterment rather than the discovery of new truths, new original insights, or new angles of vision. They originate nothing. They endlessly drink each other’s bathwater.  Their minds are like rats circling the bottom of a piss pot.  They can’t stray or explore and can do nothing to escape their narrow orbit to which they are everlasting condemned. 

We can learn nothing from them except their defects and what to avoid.  It is ungifted mediocrities who teach us to think in unison.  Yet our minds and nature are individual.  There is no getting around that.  Each of us unique. Each of us has gifts which are uniquely our own. Be faithful to them. Feed them, nurture them, encourage and support them.  Mental riches will be your reward.

I have seen books described as “page turners.” What does this mean? Are they easy to breeze though? Are they are driven by plot rather than character? Can you skim over them and yet obtain a good idea of what they are about?  What was the writer’s point in writing them? Fame? Money? Being seen on the TV news? How can a good writer expect to convey what he has accomplished in two minutes on the air? A crowd is nothing but impatient and superficial. Do they want to be inspired by a thoughtful explanation? Detailed analysis?  Your success depends on making a favorite impression on the audience so be modest, be humble, throw yourself on the crowd’s compassion, and perhaps they will understand the exertion of reading what you worked so hared to write.

Finally, you can only praise what your mind grasps. If you are tone deaf, even the most magnificent music would be unable to impress or move you.  To the deaf, music would be like knocking on a locked door.  No one will come to answer.

We must cultivate in ourselves what resists. We must resist the easy, the effortless, the fascinating, the mindlessly diverting, the inert, the routine, the bland habit. All these work to dethrone the virtues of the mind. You don’t sharpen a blade by hitting with a stone. But that is what the TV news does. It dulls the edge of the mind and once the edge is gone, the blade is useless.

But enough.

Comments

[Account Deleted]

Thanks for your wise and beautiful words Mr Sale. I shall continue to uncork your bottles for as long as they bob about on SST.

Never enough.

[Lyttenburgh]

“When the Italian Dante finished his The Divine Comedy,” the critical opinion of the day damned it as “Gothic obscurantism.””

I’m sorry, but who said that? AFAIK, the so-called “Divine Comedy” was fairly popular and copied by people of letters at leisure.

“Even The Iliad, Homer’s masterpiece, required a long span of time before its imperishable beauty was praised. The Greeks of Homer’s time were so corrupt, they even denied that the Trojan War took place.”

No, they were not “corrupt”. They were Dorian Greeks, who just recently smashed the Mycenaean Greek civilization. It’s just Homer had to live in the so-called “Greek Dark Ages”. I also would like to know, who in that time period denied that “the Trojan War took place”. Never heard about it.

“What is a masterpiece? A masterpiece is a work of an artist whose ambition was to construct something so beautiful, so humanly dramatic and poignant that it will endure beyond the reach of Time.”

Could be argued. I for one think it just a creation of something, that qualifies you as a Master. After that you might do whatever you want – you are already recognized as a Master, and no one really requires another master-piece from you. Should you create one – kudos to you! But most don’t bother. The thing is – not everything created by the Master is a masterpiece.

“The goal of education is to train the intellectual and emotional endowments of each of us, no matter unequal they are, to appreciate the complex, the subtle, the depthful, the outstanding in culture and art”

Again – could be argued. The goal of the “universal” education we have these days is the mass production of the “qualified individual”, possessing the bare minimum of practical knowledge. Nowhere does it say that “education” teaches anything but that. It certainly does not make people smart. Only self-education and innate qualities make the people something more than just “qualified”.

“If education doesn’t do that, it has failed us.”

Why? It performs just as intended.

[David E. Solomon]

Hello Richard,

A very nice and thoughtful piece. I have said this before and I will say it again. The best way out of this dilemma is to stop watching television. It is an extremely destructive medium.

Regards,

David

[Haralambos]

Thank you once again, Mr. Sale for your thoughts. I first encountered these ideas 45 years ago in several courses examining this question in Hume's "Of the Standard of Taste": https://web.csulb.edu/~jvancamp/361r15.html

A modern explanation addressing the issue of the "Canon" and the controversy it continues to provoke can be found in the late-Professor Herman Sinaiko's essay, "Hume's 'Of the Standard of Taste': How Is the Canon Determined?" in _Reclaiming the Canon_ (1998).

[Cortes]

An interesting essay. Thank you.

All of us stand on the shoulders of giants whose innovations were probably scoffed at at first. And in the humanities, chaff takes a while to winnow out.

[confusedponderer]

Mr. Sale,
thanks for the post, it was great to read it and it was, as usual, quite inspirational and fascinating.

I also like your point about trusting your senses and mind, not what others tell you. To live up to that is actually hard and demands discipline and experience.

An example: Ever since I did my NBC course in the army and learned about the unpleasant things the course dealt with I cannot stand this occasional White Helmet type clownery about alleged 'evidence collecting' in Syria - absurdly in t-shirts and short pants.

Now, what was again about protection? I remember doing such collection things in coal filter or rubber overalls with a gas mask.

Given what I learned back then, in a real poisoned place they would be dead in their 'unsuitable dress up', and that death would come quickly and painfully.

But then, beyond the known knowns there are Rummy's nasty unknown unknowns. So, perhaps, praying a lot makes you resistant to poison? And while at it, perhaps it makes you happy and prevents dementia? Or they use an 'alternative approach', like this?

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91pdhLed20L._SY679_.jpg

I like the bottle metaphor and reading it has reminded me that one of the things I want to do in the next time is to go and uncork a bottle about "Lampyridae". You'll see.

There are two other bottles that I work on atm, but I can't quite find the time and concentration to properly finish them, and to do so in time. With one of the two I am too late and missed my intended finishing point for about what, three or four weeks. Alas, shame on me. The scond one has more time to be finished but I feel I'm late there as well.

Ah well. Thinking takes time, so does proper research and so does proper writing about things in ways that are interesant to more folks than just myself.

It's as with that marvellous White Helmet evidence of alleged Syrian chem weapons use - collected by somebody, without protection, and done so without credible verification by somebody else? Well, IMO either it's a mysterious marvel or it's ill-scripted BS. I made my choice.

[JJackson]

Many thanks for taking the time - keep posting either your anecdotal, or these more thought provoking pieces, and I will always read them.
As I read your art appreciation opening I was anticipating your jump-shot to the dangers of mass communication. That the mob are easily swayed, al a 'Friends, Romans, Countrymen', is long known and with mass communication we have handed a terrifying power to those with massive audiences. The lazy mind consumes regurgitated opinions and conclusion like a voracious penguin chick - why think for yourself when someone has already provide the answer. Sadly Murrow's prescient 'wires and lights in a box' speech have come to pass, and more. Not only has television been used to lobotomise rather than inform, as he feared, it is now the preferred means of mass misinformation.

[LeaNder]

Lyttenburgh,

Could be argued. I for one think it just a creation of something, that qualifies you as a Master. After that you might do whatever you want – you are already recognized as a Master, and no one really requires another master-piece from you. Should you create one – kudos to you! But most don’t bother. The thing is – not everything created by the Master is a masterpiece.

Something that qualifies you as master? Who decides?

Can you specify?

But I agree, I have had a pretty similar impression when I read this:

>i>It took 150 years for the greatness of Shakespeare to emerge, thanks to the Romantics.

But yes, some of the most prominent minds on my own national scene have felt urged, if that is what happened, to squeeze Shakespeare into whatever larger argumentative flight of thought.

When it gets more hard to endure, or they seem to be simply mis-using Shakespeare's name to prove whatever point, I contact them. The latest in this context was Peter Sloterdijk:

https://petersloterdijk.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_texts_of_Shakespeare%27s_works#/media/File:Bad_quarto,_good_quarto,_first_folio.png

[richard sale]

Just because you haven't heard about it, doesn't mean it isn't fact. all my conclusions are based on scholars and historians.

Richard Sale

[richard sale]

Thank you for your comments and taking the time to read it.

Richard

[richard sale]

Thank you.

Richard

[richard sale]

Thank you.

Richard

[Babak Makkinejad]

Richard Sale:
Certainly the history of Persian literature attests to the veracity of your main point; of the hundreds of Persian poets recorded in extant histories of poets - tazkarit al sho'ara - precious few have survived the selective sieve of Time.

[RDC]

Much communication -- visual / aural / literary -- takes place within a fog of conventions, only some based on truth. During an initial time frame, these communications may seem truthful statements, but over time the conventions evolve and the communication is perceived as flawed, sometimes false.

Masterpieces endure because they are firmly based on truth. Jane Austen wrote in a very different Regency Age and very different Regency Fog from our own. But her grasp of enduring human character is so sure that she speaks to us clearly and truthfully.

Shakespeare is a slightly different case, constrained as he was by censors and hostile power, which ultimately forced his retirement. But he too had a firm grasp on truth and his characters vibrate with recognizable human life facing recognizable dilemmas.

[Lyttenburgh]

“Something that qualifies you as master? Who decides?
Can you specify?”

During so-called Middle Ages, with the Guild structure and all that, other Masters reviewed the work of the promising Journeyman to decide whether it qualifies as a Masterpiece, i.e. as a ticket to their top-tier of the Guild.

Nowadays it is mostly the same with small caveat, that beyond the areopagus of Masters themselves (be they recognized gurus or sensei from the field of Literature, Cinematograph, Science or whatever) we have the Time itself (the Master-piece must be able to overcome it and be truly “timeless”) but also a new factor, which is touched upon in this blogpost. I’m talking about the popularity, but not the general popularity among the hoi polloi – I’m talking about the popularity among the qualified target audience, for whom those Masters labour and thanks to whom they really exist, from whose trust they derive their right to be called “Masters” in the first place.

Can you name me a contemporarily Hollywood film director, who has more than one masterpiece under his belt? I can only name two – Speilberg and Cameron, who are hardly a “newcomers”. Everyone else either have one such masterpiece, or none at all, instead relying on “blokbuster” status of their easily forgettable works.

[Lyttenburgh]

"all my conclusions are based on scholars and historians."

Okay - who are they? I understand that just becuase I didn't heard about them it doesn't mean that it is untrue. But if you heard about it, why not share with us?

[Lyttenburgh]

To elaborate on my previous analogy as to what counts as a “Master-piece” – the whole problem with this current crisis, when the cheap popularity in the here and now have become the only thing that matters, is that the very system of issuing “Master-piece” degrees is in deep crisis and transition period. The Guild analogy I suggested previously, also assumes that it is replaced by mass producing universal, one size-fits-all, factory. As it appeals to the much broader pool of those, who consume their produce, then, therefore, the Masters are beholden to the opinion of a bigger pool of those from whom they derive their legitimacy. And, as we all now, the vast majority of everything is… well, you know what Kurt Vonnegut said about this.

So, yes – the popularity, cheap fleeting popularity counts, because people make it real. That’s a statement of a fact. That’s admitting the reality.

[Mahatma Propagandhi]

"But if you heard about it, why not share with us?"

So, you expect citations buttressing every assertion in Mr Sale's thought-provoking essay? The best writing inspires curiosity, not burying it in unwieldy blocks of supporting links and footnotes more suitable to a scientific paper.

Those whose curiosity he inspires would do better to satisfy it themselves than to demand the author do it for them.

[Lyttenburgh]

"So, you expect citations buttressing every assertion in Mr Sale's thought-provoking essay? "

For the most of them - yes. Especially for the one's that are provoking me to think - "I doubt that which is claimed to be true".

"Those whose curiosity he inspires would do better to satisfy it themselves than to demand the author do it for them."

That's rather anti-intellectual approach. With all due repsect, Mr. Sale is no prophet through whose moouth speaks the Divie.

[Mahatma Propagandhi]

"That's rather anti-intellectual approach."

No, it's an anti-hectoring approach. If a writer asserts something you doubt, look it up yourself instead of endlessly whining about his or her failure to prove every word written.

[Lyttenburgh]

" If a writer asserts something you doubt, look it up yourself instead of endlessly whining about his or her failure to prove every word written."

That's the definition of the anti-intellectualism - to accept everything said to you verbatim, as if these were Holy Truths.

What if I laready serched high and wide and didn't find anything to support any of these claims which I questioned?

[turcopolier]

Lyttenburgh

Do you have any appreciation of literature; Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, etc.? pl

[tpcelt]

My observation is that the great artists are those interested in experimenting with "what would happen if" and "I wonder if I can achieve this effect". For example, Edward Hopper experimenting with contrasts between indoor and outdoor settings occurring at the same time...Monet and the waterlillies...pretty much anything Van Gogh and Remembrant. Of course, they want to eat and sell what they produce, but I think their "masterpieces" do not necessaily emanate from a desire to create for the ages a lasting "masterpiece". The lucky ones have a patron or a Theo. Others were those who subsidized their efforts through their professional occupations...Chekov did it as a doctor who did, among other efforts, a stint on a nasty, misqueto-infected (sp?) prison, or artists with patrons.

I do, however, think the fate of "popular" artists you discuss really pertain to our modern day. Patrons and investors do not seem to invest in efforts that lack clear commercial value without a short-term return or social applause. Older-school great artists who achieved within this system, to me, are few: Tennessee Williams, Quincy Jones, James Baldwin, Monk, Hitchcock, Jelly-Roll Morton, John Huston, Billlie Holiday, Barbara Stanwyck, Frances Ford Coppola, etc. Today? Maybe Sarah Palin/Molly Ivinsfor their linguistic riffs; maybe Gaga? Hard to say.

With respect to Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Turgenev, I am sadly less familiar with respect to their placement in the pantheon. I guess I would add Gorky and Sergei Eisenstein. However, while I appreciate their work, I lack the experience to assess.

[tpcelt]

Mark Twain?

[Fred]

Lyttenburgh,

"...the popularity, cheap fleeting popularity counts, because people make it real."

Just as Ortega pointed out in "The Revolt of the Masses".