The Necessary Simon Cowell

Fragment

by Cindy Mejia

Sometimes my reflections begin unexpectedly — like when I find myself orbiting an old planet I once experienced. It doesn’t mean longing or regret; it’s just how memory works. We drift near the same constellations from time to time, drawn by curiosity, not gravity.

That’s how I came across Apollo No. 2’s chiaroscuro entry this week. I wasn’t searching for him — just passing through his orbit again. And from that small detour, this reflection was born.

I was reading Apollo No. 2’s chiaroscuro blog entry today, and something in it stopped me.

It wasn’t just what he said, but how he said it — the courage to dissect, to question, to speak without varnish. It reminded me of what’s quietly disappearing from our world: the freedom to name what we see without being branded cruel.

What good is it if no one is allowed to say what they really see?

We’ve turned honesty into a scandal. We’re told to praise everyone’s defects, to glorify the broken edges, to celebrate every imperfection without the counterweight of truth — as if light alone could illuminate anything.

But it can’t.

Without the dark, there is no contrast, no contour, no meaning.

Without criticism, there’s no evolution. Without the occasional Simon Cowell, the stage becomes a lullaby of approval — safe, sterile, uninspired.

We need that voice — not the cruelty, but the clarity.

The reminder that art isn’t a participation trophy, that humor sometimes bites because truth does too. The reminder that duality is sacred: light and shadow, praise and critique, creation and collapse.

Even the Greeks understood this. Their world was not sanitized — it was raw, chaotic, and alive. There was no goddess of censorship, no deity of controlled speech. They argued, they defied, they sinned, they repented — all in public view.

Ate, the goddess of ruin, provoked heroes to confront their own horrors. Hermes, the trickster, turned words into weapons and bridges alike. The Greeks didn’t hide darkness. They gave it a name and put it on stage.

That’s why their mythology still feels alive — it breathes in both light and shadow.

If there ever were a goddess of censorship, the Greeks would have found her unworthy of worship — perhaps even tragic. A figure who tried to silence chaos, but accidentally silenced truth.

And maybe that’s what humanity has forgotten — that even divinity needs a little darkness to shine.

Language itself has become a liability.

We don’t need more light.

We need more truth — and the shadows that give it shape.

Final Thoughts

We need the Simon Cowells of the world because criticism, even when it stings, wakes something in us. It forces us to look inward, to question whether they’re right, and sometimes, to rise just to prove them wrong. It lights a fire we didn’t know we needed. It hurts at first, but later it becomes a mirror — a retrospective moment that makes us sharper, more self-aware. Without criticism, there’s no contrast, no reason to improve. The sting is the spark.