The Court of Public Opinion
Acrylic on canvas
200cm x 150cm (+ 2 cm tray frame in black)
Many of us are meandering the earth, gifted in many ways, capable of fulfilment at points, but with a fundamental trauma that stops us from becoming who we might be, we don’t quite know who we are, right? We’re mainly unsure around two things in particular: our reliable sense of what we are worth, and our safe hold on our own values or judgements.
Without knowing who we are, we are inclined to have trouble coping with either denigration or adulation. If others decide that we are worthless or bad, there will be nothing inside us to prohibit us from swallowing their verdicts in their entirety, however arbitrary, dogmatic, fanatical, or nasty they may be. We’ll trail public opinion obsequiously, checking nonstop the world’s vagaries rather than consulting an inner barometer to know what we should want, feel, and value. We need to be sympathetic to ourselves. Unfortunately, there is a court of public opinion, which is an alternative system of justice, which is based on reputation, revenge, public shaming, and the whims of the crowd. Having a good story is more important than having the law on your side, right? Being a sympathetic underdog is more important than being fair, right?
Facts matter, but there are no standards of accuracy. A good story travels faster than a bunch of facts. We’ll always be asking others what we merit before seeking inside ourselves for an answer. Lacking an independent verdict, we also stand to be abnormally hungry for external praise: the clapping of a public audience will matter more than would ever be wise. We’ll be game to rushing towards whatever idea or activity the crowd happen to love. We need to be more sympathetic to ourselves.
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