Madonna & the Promocratic moment
"I'm not here to be popular, I'm here to be free," Madonna declared to a packed, adoring audience on Tuesday night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Howard Gilman Opera House.
If there is a system now in place, a discernible system that is, in the tradition of capitalism, Marxism, feudalism, socialism etc., it is the system of Promocracy, in which the individual is free to achieve a level of self-promotion that allows that individual to participate accordingly in a representative government controlled by people who have achieved even greater levels of self-promotion. We the People are consumers of the identities self-promotion creates.
This new system has formed a Government, now so expansive as to include hard news, business, the arts, sports, fashion, food, science--all the sections of a major daily newspaper such as The New York Times, which provided the Madonna quote above ("Taking Chances, and Phones", Jon Pareles, C1, Sept. 19, 2019).
As a student of Giotto, the first person to have drawn a perfect circle by hand, I wonder how large a circle can be made before it grows beyond its boundaries and blows up, or disintegrates under the weight of its freedom?
Though the machinations of the new promocratic state are confounding, and the promocratic content provided is superfluous by its very nature, it's often fun to watch. Madonna, Mike Pompeo, Brett Kavanaugh, Boris Johnson, Greta Thunberg, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bruce Bochy, Bibi Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Mitch McConnell, Patti Smith, Corey Lewandowski, Andre Leon Talley, Joseph P. Kennedy III, Justin Trudeau--just a few of the names in the news this morning--perform admirably, all fulfilling their roles as proscribed by the rulers of promocracy, those avatars of self-promotion who prefer to remain behind the scenes while putting forward promocratic leaders already risen and soon-to-be rising on the world stage.
I wish The State was Deep and not such a concoction of frivolities (with the exception of Ms. Thunberg, age 16), though I must admit I am entertained. And I'm excited for the future, excited being a touchstone word for the promocratic class. I presume all citizens of the Promocracy are excited, there's so much more content to be devoured, unfathomably more, so much more information to be consumed, streamed, shared on Facebook and Twitter and heretofore unknown communication platforms. Though a coherent worldview is now impossible, it is possible to assemble the fragments left behind by the thought-leaders of Promocracy into something that resembles an established order, a ruling class dedicated to keeping us informed and, therefore, safe if not completely civilized.
"All the News That's Fit to Print," it reads on the masthead of The New York Times, a promocratic oath if ever there was one. I offer an alternative, one of two sayings attributed to the little-known philosopher Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360-275 B.C.):
"Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention."*
(*From Sculpture in the Age of Doubt, Thomas McEvilley, Allworth Press, 1999).
"Giotto", painting-in-progress, acrylic on linen, photo by author, September, 2019.