Art as a Social Tool
Why try to tackle difficult social problems with art? In a culture where art is often seen as fluff that fills out the entertainment section of the newspaper, it’s a valid question. At a time when our democracy is fairly healthy, we tend to lose sight of the radical potential art always holds for focusing social discomfort. This is why one of the first acts of a despotic government will always be to try to silence artists. Because art can transform a citizenry in powerful ways.
History is full of examples of art that has proved instrumental to social change. From Goya’s anti-war etchings of the early 1800’s to Rivera’s revolutionary murals of the 1930’s to the protest and freedom songs of the 1960’s, art encapsulates social feeling in ways that nothing else can.
Art also has the unique ability to bridge all barriers between communities, whether of language, culture, religion or even time. Art’s most powerful effect is not in its literal interpretation but in its ability to move people beneath the skin. Art affects us in ways that we can’t even clearly identify. Although we are moved to tears by great works of art, it is always hard to say why that is. It affects us beneath consciousness, which is where the source of much social difficulty lies, and therefore where the solutions can often be found.
As a sculptor I began working a few years ago making sculpture out of books published by the “World Church of the Creator”, whose hate-filled racism they insist is a religion called– of all things– “Creativity”! Almost immediately I began receiving hate mail by white supremacists. It really didn’t surprise me because after all, hate is what they’re best at. What concerns me isn’t so much the potential for harm from a flock that may not even be big enough to form a bluegrass band, as that their simplistic attitude is the same dangerous black-or-white reduction we hear daily from radical religious fundamentalists, rogue politicians, and terrified presidents: ‘there are only good guys (us) and bad guys (them) and if you’re not with us, ‘we will destroy you!’
The democratic spirit is imperiled any time there is a denial that all people are created equal. Our political opponent is not our enemy but our contender in a contest of ideas. As soon as we see our opponent as an enemy to be destroyed, we abandon our own fitness for democracy. Yes, violence needs to be defended against, but much as terrorists (those whose only means is violence) can never win by that means, still they can indeed make us lose-- by stooping to their level. There is no such thing as constructive violence.
Nor is there such a thing as destructive art. Much as the white supremacists feel attacked by my sculptures, they fail to understand that art cannot hurt anybody unless it is hurled overhand. Good art can never wound, just as a person cannot be forced to change their heart. Rather, art is light, whose sole power is to illuminate. The reason it sometimes feels horribly intrusive is that it is sometimes shined into those dark, unconscious places that we want most dearly not to see.
Art is powerful because it asks tough questions. Art is the opposite of violence. While violence cannot build, art cannot tear down. That’s not to say that we are not sometimes made to feel vastly uncomfortable by art. When art causes such discomfort we should grit our teeth and face what becomes illuminated.
The danger is not that we may be wounded by art, but that our hearts might be changed. That’s creativity!
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Monday, January 22, 2007
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Why Sex?
It’s what sells everything marketable, spices up films and TV, floods the internet, and reportedly crosses a young man’s mind every three seconds. Downright disgusting. We have a love/hate relationship with sex: we are sick of it appearing everywhere and yet we can never seem to get enough. What is it with sex that everybody knows what it is and yet it is indefinable, transitory and it entirely escapes any attempt to civilize it? Why can’t we just grow up and move on?
I agree with Thomas Moore, who says in his wise and delightful book "The Soul of Sex", that it is precisely because we cannot truly absorb its nourishment that we become so obsessed with sex. Sex is a wildness loose inside our humanity that will forever remain outside of our attempts to control or even understand it.
As a sculptor who has worked with the subject of the nude for 30 years I have to wrestle with the volatile dynamics of a subject that no longer refers primarily to the fertile human as it did the prehistoric peoples, the beautiful human as it did to the ancient Greeks, or the glorious human as it did the Renaissance Italians. I can’t seem to make an image of a nude without its referring first of all to the human whose sexuality is uncovered. I remain perpetually astonished at both how much power the sexual aspect of the image of the human body wields and at how blind we sometimes seem to be about it. It strikes me as highly curious that with so much focus in American culture on sex and its effects on our lives there is yet so little dialogue about its symbolic meaning.
For instance, the issue of sex in advertising is a constant controversy in the media, which, not to be left out of the action, is well aware of how to attract readers and viewers. That conversation regularly rehearses the moral, esthetic, psychological and constitutional issues, but we rarely hear about the symbolic implications of sex.
In fact we’ve only recently begun to hear a flurry of voices questioning some of the basic assumptions of cultural mind that sets the stage for how we all think, even if we consciously disagree with that mind. The collective belief holds that sex as simultaneously necessary, good, even holy, but naughty and inappropriate; a fuzzy combination of the roots of our Puritan-spiked religious heritage with the goofy effects of the sexual revolution. Our cultural wisdom tells us we are merely animals, right fine ones mind you, but still biological organisms who will never be separated from certain barnyard behaviors. Boys will be boys and let’s just try to concentrate and move on...
Yet we can’t seem to make any sense of human sexual programming using biological math. We find ourselves puzzling over the human being’s notorious dissatisfaction with the sexual schedule happily embraced by the rest of our furry family. If the beasts can raise a perfectly respectable household by making whoopee once a year, it stands to reason that even that might be extravagant for the naked apes, for whom a mere few dates during the under grad years would keep the species clipping along at a fine rate of return. But every three seconds? And what the heck, then, is the female orgasm for? No, biology is little help in addressing our fixation with sex.
Our Christian forefathers were a testy lot who only just barely managed to not utterly ruin the faith they espoused, like a wad of boys charged with safely delivering the Christmas pudding. Among many other things that made them lethally (murderously?) nervous was the practice of alchemy, the early stirrings of science, which threatened the Catholic church’s monopoly on the truth. One reason for their wrath may be the illustrations that accompanied some of the secret alchemical texts, showing the kind of material that could secure for a filmmaker today a coveted “R” rating: pages and pages of drawings of a king and queen cavorting naked (often in a fountain!) and finally coming together in, well, bliss. Yet the alchemists weren’t a ring of underground purveyors of pornographic woodcuts, they were serious scholars and scientists from whose studies sprung modern disciplines we could not do without today, like medicine, chemistry and secret Masonic rituals. Why were important scholars so interested in a bunch of drawings that are not only nasty but really not all that well done? I think answer can tell us a lot about our own view of sex.
Can you imagine a technical treatise today using drawings of couples engaged in foreplay wearing nothing but their tiaras to illustrate scientific principles? Hey, don’t laugh-- if we could get our minds beyond the immediate embarrassment of contemplating images of what we today can only see as porn, we could begin to see their symbolic appropriateness. In the alchemical texts, sex between the partners represents the powerful transformation that occurs with joining of opposites, referred to variously as male and female, sun and moon, metal and sulfur, etc., but depicted as a couple getting it on. Symbols for the union of celestial or chemical bodies carry no transcendent meaning for us, but the union of opposites in the man and woman-- now there is a metaphor we can really sink our teeth into!
The pioneer psychologist Carl Jung was the one who really shed light on the richness of this metaphor when he dredged these moldy woodcuts out of medieval alchemy texts to use as illustrations of the psychic processes that describe the nature of transformation, not only as it appears in the physical world, but in the way that is more immediately crucial to each of us- within our own psyches. The mysterious internal process of “integration” that Jung identified as being the psychic homework of every human being is best symbolized by the energetic and ineffable activity of- sex!
Suddenly it makes perfect sense that while our close cousins the animals are quite happy with scoring once a year, we feel deprived if we have to wait till Saturday night! An animal’s imperative is merely a biological one which requires nothing more than the continuation of its species. But humans are given the Godlike gift of consciousness that endows us with power unimaginable by the rest of life. We therefore have the even more grave responsibility to transcend the human that can invent such things as the A-bomb with a humanity that can overcome its own threat to the very existence of that life.
Frederick Turner in his book, "Beauty: The Value of Values", suggests that human sexuality actually borrows much of its power from an underlying human drive toward beauty, a universal attractor that indicates the direction of evolution in the universe, to which the human is extremely sensitive. I heartily agree, and would add that there is also an imperative woven into the fabric of the universe that everything be creative to the fullest of its ability. For the animal kingdom that means hooking up every time the bell rings. But for humans the assignment is much more complex, demanding all our astounding creative capacities.
Humans are the only life forms we know that have the ability not only to reproduce our own form, but to create totally new forms, and in fact to continually upgrade humanity itself. I think we are obsessed with sex because it is the perfect symbol for a psychic programming that constantly urges us through the difficult process of transformation through uniting the opposites within us. If I can look at sex and the powerful attraction it carries– both in my own self and in the culture I live in– as a symbol of the crucial process of transformation, I can redeem my obsession with it. Perhaps the real reason we are so captivated with sex is not because we are otherwise in danger of depopulating, or because we are bad children who are using the gonads God gave us against God’s own wishes. Perhaps the reason is that we are charged with the most important work in all of evolution-- sex is a metaphor for our own transformation, a serious duty we mustn’t be allowed to forget.
The big question of history is whether the human species can use its imagination to create the morality necessary to handle responsibly the power of its own creations that now threaten life on earth. Will the king of technology be able to unite with the queen of wisdom, the king of globalization with the queen of fairness, the king of power with the queen of love? It’s clear that the very survival of the entire story of life on earth comes down to successful human sex!! Metaphorically speaking. So indeed spending one second out of three thinking about sex IS disgusting. It’s a waste of two seconds!
Tim Holmes
It’s what sells everything marketable, spices up films and TV, floods the internet, and reportedly crosses a young man’s mind every three seconds. Downright disgusting. We have a love/hate relationship with sex: we are sick of it appearing everywhere and yet we can never seem to get enough. What is it with sex that everybody knows what it is and yet it is indefinable, transitory and it entirely escapes any attempt to civilize it? Why can’t we just grow up and move on?
I agree with Thomas Moore, who says in his wise and delightful book "The Soul of Sex", that it is precisely because we cannot truly absorb its nourishment that we become so obsessed with sex. Sex is a wildness loose inside our humanity that will forever remain outside of our attempts to control or even understand it.
As a sculptor who has worked with the subject of the nude for 30 years I have to wrestle with the volatile dynamics of a subject that no longer refers primarily to the fertile human as it did the prehistoric peoples, the beautiful human as it did to the ancient Greeks, or the glorious human as it did the Renaissance Italians. I can’t seem to make an image of a nude without its referring first of all to the human whose sexuality is uncovered. I remain perpetually astonished at both how much power the sexual aspect of the image of the human body wields and at how blind we sometimes seem to be about it. It strikes me as highly curious that with so much focus in American culture on sex and its effects on our lives there is yet so little dialogue about its symbolic meaning.
For instance, the issue of sex in advertising is a constant controversy in the media, which, not to be left out of the action, is well aware of how to attract readers and viewers. That conversation regularly rehearses the moral, esthetic, psychological and constitutional issues, but we rarely hear about the symbolic implications of sex.
In fact we’ve only recently begun to hear a flurry of voices questioning some of the basic assumptions of cultural mind that sets the stage for how we all think, even if we consciously disagree with that mind. The collective belief holds that sex as simultaneously necessary, good, even holy, but naughty and inappropriate; a fuzzy combination of the roots of our Puritan-spiked religious heritage with the goofy effects of the sexual revolution. Our cultural wisdom tells us we are merely animals, right fine ones mind you, but still biological organisms who will never be separated from certain barnyard behaviors. Boys will be boys and let’s just try to concentrate and move on...
Yet we can’t seem to make any sense of human sexual programming using biological math. We find ourselves puzzling over the human being’s notorious dissatisfaction with the sexual schedule happily embraced by the rest of our furry family. If the beasts can raise a perfectly respectable household by making whoopee once a year, it stands to reason that even that might be extravagant for the naked apes, for whom a mere few dates during the under grad years would keep the species clipping along at a fine rate of return. But every three seconds? And what the heck, then, is the female orgasm for? No, biology is little help in addressing our fixation with sex.
Our Christian forefathers were a testy lot who only just barely managed to not utterly ruin the faith they espoused, like a wad of boys charged with safely delivering the Christmas pudding. Among many other things that made them lethally (murderously?) nervous was the practice of alchemy, the early stirrings of science, which threatened the Catholic church’s monopoly on the truth. One reason for their wrath may be the illustrations that accompanied some of the secret alchemical texts, showing the kind of material that could secure for a filmmaker today a coveted “R” rating: pages and pages of drawings of a king and queen cavorting naked (often in a fountain!) and finally coming together in, well, bliss. Yet the alchemists weren’t a ring of underground purveyors of pornographic woodcuts, they were serious scholars and scientists from whose studies sprung modern disciplines we could not do without today, like medicine, chemistry and secret Masonic rituals. Why were important scholars so interested in a bunch of drawings that are not only nasty but really not all that well done? I think answer can tell us a lot about our own view of sex.
Can you imagine a technical treatise today using drawings of couples engaged in foreplay wearing nothing but their tiaras to illustrate scientific principles? Hey, don’t laugh-- if we could get our minds beyond the immediate embarrassment of contemplating images of what we today can only see as porn, we could begin to see their symbolic appropriateness. In the alchemical texts, sex between the partners represents the powerful transformation that occurs with joining of opposites, referred to variously as male and female, sun and moon, metal and sulfur, etc., but depicted as a couple getting it on. Symbols for the union of celestial or chemical bodies carry no transcendent meaning for us, but the union of opposites in the man and woman-- now there is a metaphor we can really sink our teeth into!
The pioneer psychologist Carl Jung was the one who really shed light on the richness of this metaphor when he dredged these moldy woodcuts out of medieval alchemy texts to use as illustrations of the psychic processes that describe the nature of transformation, not only as it appears in the physical world, but in the way that is more immediately crucial to each of us- within our own psyches. The mysterious internal process of “integration” that Jung identified as being the psychic homework of every human being is best symbolized by the energetic and ineffable activity of- sex!
Suddenly it makes perfect sense that while our close cousins the animals are quite happy with scoring once a year, we feel deprived if we have to wait till Saturday night! An animal’s imperative is merely a biological one which requires nothing more than the continuation of its species. But humans are given the Godlike gift of consciousness that endows us with power unimaginable by the rest of life. We therefore have the even more grave responsibility to transcend the human that can invent such things as the A-bomb with a humanity that can overcome its own threat to the very existence of that life.
Frederick Turner in his book, "Beauty: The Value of Values", suggests that human sexuality actually borrows much of its power from an underlying human drive toward beauty, a universal attractor that indicates the direction of evolution in the universe, to which the human is extremely sensitive. I heartily agree, and would add that there is also an imperative woven into the fabric of the universe that everything be creative to the fullest of its ability. For the animal kingdom that means hooking up every time the bell rings. But for humans the assignment is much more complex, demanding all our astounding creative capacities.
Humans are the only life forms we know that have the ability not only to reproduce our own form, but to create totally new forms, and in fact to continually upgrade humanity itself. I think we are obsessed with sex because it is the perfect symbol for a psychic programming that constantly urges us through the difficult process of transformation through uniting the opposites within us. If I can look at sex and the powerful attraction it carries– both in my own self and in the culture I live in– as a symbol of the crucial process of transformation, I can redeem my obsession with it. Perhaps the real reason we are so captivated with sex is not because we are otherwise in danger of depopulating, or because we are bad children who are using the gonads God gave us against God’s own wishes. Perhaps the reason is that we are charged with the most important work in all of evolution-- sex is a metaphor for our own transformation, a serious duty we mustn’t be allowed to forget.
The big question of history is whether the human species can use its imagination to create the morality necessary to handle responsibly the power of its own creations that now threaten life on earth. Will the king of technology be able to unite with the queen of wisdom, the king of globalization with the queen of fairness, the king of power with the queen of love? It’s clear that the very survival of the entire story of life on earth comes down to successful human sex!! Metaphorically speaking. So indeed spending one second out of three thinking about sex IS disgusting. It’s a waste of two seconds!
Tim Holmes
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Art- The Vibrance of Culture
Looking across the expanse of history, we see that art plays two crucial roles in the stories of civilizations. Art illuminates the truth of the reality that a culture faces, allowing citizens to see their situation clearly. It also serves to exemplify the highest nature of a culture, expressing the most compelling ideals of its people, giving meaning to their lives.
The quality of the art produced by a culture determines in large measure how that culture is evaluated in the eyes of history. It is through the cave paintings produced in Europe some 30,000 years ago that we know their creators were not simply unconscious savages living brutal lives of mere animal survival. We can see that they were sensitive and aware human beings.
There is a deep connection between the vibrancy of a civilization and the quality of the art it produces; the kind of connection we associate with Classical Greece or Renaissance Florence. These are among the cultures that we lift to the top tier of world civilizations- because they produced great art.
Of course the Athenian sculptor and the cave painter didn’t think about their place in history when they did their work. They simply were expressing a deeply felt personal vision, while trying, probably desperately, to keep their families fed. They could have no concept of the magnitude of the gifts they left to the rest of history. They could never know the incalculable value of their vision of what it was to be a human in their time.
We don’t know how these artists were supported but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the result of commercial success. That’s because about the only thing that can be determined by a broad survey of commercially viable art through the ages is the colors of art buyer’s couches. Art that supports itself tends to reflect a safe worldview that is already well-established. This is not where great art comes from. It almost always arises from the hard labor of one person or a small group struggling all alone, often in desperate conditions, to birth some deep inner revelation that will transform the hearts of the people.
Great art is often invisible to its own time. Michelangelo’s Pieta, one of the crown jewels of Western art, had to be smuggled by its creator in the dead of night into St. Peter’s Basilica. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his whole life. Yet these artworks are among the most valuable objects on earth today, precisely because the artists’ experience of what it is to be human, gives meaning our own lives.
Speaking as a commercially successful artist I confess I’m a little nervous that future historians will find that my work carries a certain resemblance to Montana’s couches, not because that’s what I aspire to, but because the market is where the encouragement seems to come from.
Great art is not always shocking but it is always a surprise. And surprises tend not to sell well, because they have not had time to sink in. How many broken souls have been healed by Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings? How many patriots have come alive upon seeing Picasso's Guernica?
Art has the power to transform our often bewildering and pedestrian lives by giving shape to our longing and direction to our aspirations. I can’t make sense of what’s going on in this weird world, but somewhere, right now, in Pony or Roundup or Circle, some artist struggles over a piano or an easel or glides across a dance floor on the verge of birthing an vision that will transform my life. I don’t know where it will come from- I may not even recognize it when I see it for the first time, but I know it will appear. It always has and always will.
Our culture in our time will be judged by future generations on the basis of what we leave behind, whether that is a conscious choice of not. Think about that for a minute and you can see why community support for the arts is so crucial.
There is no greater role the community can fulfill than supporting this kind of work- in our own best interest. This is our responsibility, both to our selves and our progeny. All of us in this room hold the power to support creative artists who are courageous enough to see beyond the demands of the market. As a member of this council I feel very honored to be able to participate in that process, allowing me to say- I was a part of what made that happen!
Tim Holmes for Montana Arts Council 6/06
Looking across the expanse of history, we see that art plays two crucial roles in the stories of civilizations. Art illuminates the truth of the reality that a culture faces, allowing citizens to see their situation clearly. It also serves to exemplify the highest nature of a culture, expressing the most compelling ideals of its people, giving meaning to their lives.
The quality of the art produced by a culture determines in large measure how that culture is evaluated in the eyes of history. It is through the cave paintings produced in Europe some 30,000 years ago that we know their creators were not simply unconscious savages living brutal lives of mere animal survival. We can see that they were sensitive and aware human beings.
There is a deep connection between the vibrancy of a civilization and the quality of the art it produces; the kind of connection we associate with Classical Greece or Renaissance Florence. These are among the cultures that we lift to the top tier of world civilizations- because they produced great art.
Of course the Athenian sculptor and the cave painter didn’t think about their place in history when they did their work. They simply were expressing a deeply felt personal vision, while trying, probably desperately, to keep their families fed. They could have no concept of the magnitude of the gifts they left to the rest of history. They could never know the incalculable value of their vision of what it was to be a human in their time.
We don’t know how these artists were supported but we can be pretty sure it wasn’t the result of commercial success. That’s because about the only thing that can be determined by a broad survey of commercially viable art through the ages is the colors of art buyer’s couches. Art that supports itself tends to reflect a safe worldview that is already well-established. This is not where great art comes from. It almost always arises from the hard labor of one person or a small group struggling all alone, often in desperate conditions, to birth some deep inner revelation that will transform the hearts of the people.
Great art is often invisible to its own time. Michelangelo’s Pieta, one of the crown jewels of Western art, had to be smuggled by its creator in the dead of night into St. Peter’s Basilica. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his whole life. Yet these artworks are among the most valuable objects on earth today, precisely because the artists’ experience of what it is to be human, gives meaning our own lives.
Speaking as a commercially successful artist I confess I’m a little nervous that future historians will find that my work carries a certain resemblance to Montana’s couches, not because that’s what I aspire to, but because the market is where the encouragement seems to come from.
Great art is not always shocking but it is always a surprise. And surprises tend not to sell well, because they have not had time to sink in. How many broken souls have been healed by Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings? How many patriots have come alive upon seeing Picasso's Guernica?
Art has the power to transform our often bewildering and pedestrian lives by giving shape to our longing and direction to our aspirations. I can’t make sense of what’s going on in this weird world, but somewhere, right now, in Pony or Roundup or Circle, some artist struggles over a piano or an easel or glides across a dance floor on the verge of birthing an vision that will transform my life. I don’t know where it will come from- I may not even recognize it when I see it for the first time, but I know it will appear. It always has and always will.
Our culture in our time will be judged by future generations on the basis of what we leave behind, whether that is a conscious choice of not. Think about that for a minute and you can see why community support for the arts is so crucial.
There is no greater role the community can fulfill than supporting this kind of work- in our own best interest. This is our responsibility, both to our selves and our progeny. All of us in this room hold the power to support creative artists who are courageous enough to see beyond the demands of the market. As a member of this council I feel very honored to be able to participate in that process, allowing me to say- I was a part of what made that happen!
Tim Holmes for Montana Arts Council 6/06
Monday, June 19, 2006
Are We Trainable?
Here is the USA, a mighty military machine trying to make the same square peg fit in the same round hole in Iraq where others have failed- some quite spectacularly- before us. In fact, we have failed ourselves several times in the last 30 years to produce tender feelings of devotion in populations that we insist on beating into submission to our will. In looking at the stupid mistakes we human beings repeat over and over I wonder if the quality of growth of a civilization can't be determined by the speed with which it learns from its mistakes.
I continue to discover new surprises about history that were left out of my school texts. For instance I just learned that at the onset of W.W.I. the US was neutral and fancied that it could serve as peacemaker between the British and the Germans. That was until the British sabotaged the undersea cable serving as the communication line between Germany and the US. Suddenly all European perspectives had to be channeled through London, where they were cleaned up to align with official British dogma before being forwarded to the US. By 1918 Americans, fed on years of British propaganda, harbored a vitriolic hatred of Germans that resulted in the Sedition Act, which imprisoned Americans for uttering a single sentence questioning American participation in the war or not buying enough war bonds to support it. (Recently in Montana, my home, our governor posthumously pardoned 78 such 'criminals', almost 100 years too late. See: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1519811)
The world, including many shocked Americans, watches in horror as our government carries out the same programs of silencing our detractors, including secret imprisonment and torture. The Patriot Act is simply a rebirth of the Sedition Act of 1918 . We travel the same road of self-deception for short-term PR at the cost of long-term success. The refusal of our leadership to hear the truth, indeed to listen to dissent of any kind, does not change reality but only postpones its inevitable consequences.
Ours is not a stupid nation. American civilization has learned many valuable lessons: the inhumanity of slavery, the value of a free education, that human rights is a natural resource, etc., etc. We are capable of learning and permanently improving our values and thus our behavior. We are not a lost cause.
I submit that the level to which our culture rises in the eyes of history will hinge on how quickly we learn. Some may say it makes no difference whether we learn nonviolence this century or next, but as can be seen with the stakes of dealing with global warming, learning some lessons may be the difference between whether we are judged by future generations or if there will be any to do the job.
Here is the USA, a mighty military machine trying to make the same square peg fit in the same round hole in Iraq where others have failed- some quite spectacularly- before us. In fact, we have failed ourselves several times in the last 30 years to produce tender feelings of devotion in populations that we insist on beating into submission to our will. In looking at the stupid mistakes we human beings repeat over and over I wonder if the quality of growth of a civilization can't be determined by the speed with which it learns from its mistakes.
I continue to discover new surprises about history that were left out of my school texts. For instance I just learned that at the onset of W.W.I. the US was neutral and fancied that it could serve as peacemaker between the British and the Germans. That was until the British sabotaged the undersea cable serving as the communication line between Germany and the US. Suddenly all European perspectives had to be channeled through London, where they were cleaned up to align with official British dogma before being forwarded to the US. By 1918 Americans, fed on years of British propaganda, harbored a vitriolic hatred of Germans that resulted in the Sedition Act, which imprisoned Americans for uttering a single sentence questioning American participation in the war or not buying enough war bonds to support it. (Recently in Montana, my home, our governor posthumously pardoned 78 such 'criminals', almost 100 years too late. See: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1519811)
The world, including many shocked Americans, watches in horror as our government carries out the same programs of silencing our detractors, including secret imprisonment and torture. The Patriot Act is simply a rebirth of the Sedition Act of 1918 . We travel the same road of self-deception for short-term PR at the cost of long-term success. The refusal of our leadership to hear the truth, indeed to listen to dissent of any kind, does not change reality but only postpones its inevitable consequences.
Ours is not a stupid nation. American civilization has learned many valuable lessons: the inhumanity of slavery, the value of a free education, that human rights is a natural resource, etc., etc. We are capable of learning and permanently improving our values and thus our behavior. We are not a lost cause.
I submit that the level to which our culture rises in the eyes of history will hinge on how quickly we learn. Some may say it makes no difference whether we learn nonviolence this century or next, but as can be seen with the stakes of dealing with global warming, learning some lessons may be the difference between whether we are judged by future generations or if there will be any to do the job.
Knowing Nothing About Sex
Regardless of how much I love someone, you could probably prove that I don’t and I couldn’t prove that I do. Although love is the most powerful emotion, it could never stand up to argument in a court of reason. It is a mystery beyond mind.
The same is true of art. Perhaps because western civilization is so reason-oriented we tend to think that appreciating art takes some kind of special knowledge. To me the phrase, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” comes across like, “I don’t know much about sex but I know what I like". Think about it. True, an art degree might be the more impressive of the two on a resume, but when it comes to really absorbing either of them special knowledge is not required, only full presence. Sure, batting around details and associations about art helps one to see how art relates to other aspects of culture, politics, psychology, the spirit, history, etc. That’s a blast and I’ll never quit trying to learn as much as I can. But can I say that such knowledge makes my enjoyment of any work deeper than the next guy’s?
In order to truly absorb what art offers, you don’t have to know the artist, the period, the medium or anything at all about it. All that’s required is your full engagement with it. The rest is gravy. The only real experts on the true intimacy we have with an artwork are ourselves. So if anybody ever tells you you’re wrong about the art you like, just smile and say “I don’t know much about sex but I know what I like”!
Regardless of how much I love someone, you could probably prove that I don’t and I couldn’t prove that I do. Although love is the most powerful emotion, it could never stand up to argument in a court of reason. It is a mystery beyond mind.
The same is true of art. Perhaps because western civilization is so reason-oriented we tend to think that appreciating art takes some kind of special knowledge. To me the phrase, “I don’t know much about art but I know what I like” comes across like, “I don’t know much about sex but I know what I like". Think about it. True, an art degree might be the more impressive of the two on a resume, but when it comes to really absorbing either of them special knowledge is not required, only full presence. Sure, batting around details and associations about art helps one to see how art relates to other aspects of culture, politics, psychology, the spirit, history, etc. That’s a blast and I’ll never quit trying to learn as much as I can. But can I say that such knowledge makes my enjoyment of any work deeper than the next guy’s?
In order to truly absorb what art offers, you don’t have to know the artist, the period, the medium or anything at all about it. All that’s required is your full engagement with it. The rest is gravy. The only real experts on the true intimacy we have with an artwork are ourselves. So if anybody ever tells you you’re wrong about the art you like, just smile and say “I don’t know much about sex but I know what I like”!
Art v.s. Terror: Balm for Bomb
Terrorist attacks on the U.S. have wounded the American psyche, a wound which our most powerful tools, like money and technology, are inadequate to heal. We respond with, as it turns out, equally brutal violence- the oldest and most pointless reaction. Though directly providing the personal remedies to grief of religion or family love is beyond the capacity of a free society, there is one balm that can succor all universally. Art.
We sink to violence only when we have run out of ideas. Terrorism tears out the roots of a community, shatters trust and leaves in its place the disease of fear. In Iraq we discover- as if for the first time- that we reap what we sow. We are shocked to find that no quantity of gunfire produces good will.
Art is the opposite of violence. Art is a synthesizer, illuminating the truth of the basic goodness of creation and human unity and as such it offers a unique emotional bond that can re-connect the most despairing person with the rest of humanity, re-forming hope in human goodness. Art affirms that the true essence of humanity is not that of hell-bent destruction of the other, but rather of joyful cooperation and compassion.
In a culture with few mourning rituals, art provides a means to connect with our own grief. And having acknowledged and grieved our loss, art is the only means of expressing the immensity of who we really are. I offer this in the spirit of balm in the face of frightening but ultimately impotent brutality. Violence appears to take the upper hand in the short term but always emerges as the wimp of eternity- overcome by the slow but inevitable progress of love.
Terrorist attacks on the U.S. have wounded the American psyche, a wound which our most powerful tools, like money and technology, are inadequate to heal. We respond with, as it turns out, equally brutal violence- the oldest and most pointless reaction. Though directly providing the personal remedies to grief of religion or family love is beyond the capacity of a free society, there is one balm that can succor all universally. Art.
We sink to violence only when we have run out of ideas. Terrorism tears out the roots of a community, shatters trust and leaves in its place the disease of fear. In Iraq we discover- as if for the first time- that we reap what we sow. We are shocked to find that no quantity of gunfire produces good will.
Art is the opposite of violence. Art is a synthesizer, illuminating the truth of the basic goodness of creation and human unity and as such it offers a unique emotional bond that can re-connect the most despairing person with the rest of humanity, re-forming hope in human goodness. Art affirms that the true essence of humanity is not that of hell-bent destruction of the other, but rather of joyful cooperation and compassion.
In a culture with few mourning rituals, art provides a means to connect with our own grief. And having acknowledged and grieved our loss, art is the only means of expressing the immensity of who we really are. I offer this in the spirit of balm in the face of frightening but ultimately impotent brutality. Violence appears to take the upper hand in the short term but always emerges as the wimp of eternity- overcome by the slow but inevitable progress of love.
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