The Monster is resignation, the forfeiture of dreams. It is the pressure that urges inaction and instigates insensibility. It looms over us, threatening our creativity and expression, turning the fascination, discovery, and adventure of youth into the dull acceptance of passive living. The Monster leeches away our excitement, leveraging life's difficulties to coerce us to its doctrine: that life's best solution is submission to the status qou. Unceasingly imposing, the Monster compels us to squelch genuine aspirations and replace them with empty complacency. The Monster is the voice that tells us that everything important, new, and interesting has already been done. It is the voice that claims there is no alternative to what is prevalent now, that life offers little room for improvement. The Monster frustrates us with its paralysis, consumes us in stagnation. It is uninspired, except in its determination to nullify us. The Monster is covert and formidable, strong and arrogant from prolonged fulfillment of its designs.
      By Eat the Monster, we mean to annihilate this entity, to banish it from ourselves and from our culture. We mean to combat the harsh realities of life through creativity, excitement, and dedication. From the Monster's doctrine of listlessness we dissent. Our creed is one of optimism and hope. We encourage those who have been devoured to be reborn and to stand along side us. We hold no policy of exclusion, only of inclusion, in the effort ahead; the battle against the Monster can not be easily won alone. By Eat the Monster we mean that there are new ideas everywhere, new projects to undertake, new definitions to make. We believe in constant newness, eternal novelty. We mean to unite presentation and observation, imagination and analysis. We oppose specialization, and foster a broad based and holistic understanding of life, experience, and creativity. We mean to achieve this end with the happy exuberance of a child and the courage to engage ourselves fully. We will face the apathy of our culture and we will not turn away or back into ourselves. As the Monster moves in to devour us, we will retaliate likewise. We will Eat the Monster.

Matthew Shultz and Don DeSander
3/10/99
Join us in eating the Monster. Email eatthemonster@umich.edu.