Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics Ain't This America What is distinctive about American art and letters

it's not an unfair point. however, i would add to AN and say that those of us here are working toward better practices.

Well...okay, Numan. You may have a valid point there. As does Phil when he notes that you have included yourself in the Destroyers of Earth Club. But yes, I sometimes generalize the big picture.

However, my point was (as I went on to say in the post from which you extracted the above) that there are boards where the participants are NOT the intelligent, tree-hugger types that some of us here are. Why not spend your time where you can do the most good?

Speaking of big pictures... Nothing lives forever. No matter what we do or don't do. Slow destruction of the earth isn't the best choice...but destruct it eventually will. At least that's how I see it.

Here's my even bigger picture: That it's all an illusion. Nothing has any import whatsoever...other than our own interpretation, in the present instant, of whatever it is we believe we mentally or physically perceive. All thoughts and experiences are lessons from which the thinker alone can learn and evolve.

I would agree that most of the people who post here have characters and intelligence that are a notch above the generally low levels we see all around us.

However, no amount of separating glass from paper in your trash, and other sops to ecological bad conscience, can amount to more than a hill of beans in the face of the catastrophe that confronts us.

Only when we regard the ecological crisis as the "moral equivalent of war" can anything useful be accomplished. There must be a total mobilization of all the resources of society directed to restoring some balance in the world --- at least as all-encompassing as took place in World War II --- if utter disaster is to be averted.

It is well and good to say that change begins with each of us --- but it is a dangerous half-truth unless balanced by the dictum of the almost ever-wise George Bernard Shaw:

"I insist on teaching people that they must reform society before they can reform themselves."

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Yes, I am saying that. Every single one of us lives and swims (and drowns) in an ocean of drivel and lies that cannot be escaped in the modern world.

The sooner that one clearly recognizes this fact, the sooner can one take counter-measures that may allow one to neutralize some of the more harmful effects of this manipulation, and to escape from those who would destroy our humanity.

The more one denies that one is being manipulated, the more one turns one's back on it and pretends that it does not exist, the more surely will one lose one's soul.

[There, Olyve! I managed not to use the word "you" even once in this posting! At least, above this parenthesis!]

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I, as an atheist, have always thought that the words of Isaiah,

"We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteous acts are as filthy rags"

very well sum up ten thousand years of human "civilization."

We are very poor stewards of the Earth.

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Well done!
And thank you, numan.

I actually agree with much of what you say.
Although I've made dramatic adjustments to my lifestyle (I live very modestly) over the last 20 plus years, no matter what, I cannot completely escape the drivel and lies of the modern world.
It frustrates me too.
I don't watch tv so that's not a problem but I do go to the grocery store and there are a lot of lies and certainly attempts to manipulate there.
But I have to eat.

In the bigger picture, there are several threads going on here at RR that discuss the manipulation of the public and how they are soaking it up.
I think the general population here agree with that and don't like it.

Having different and very distinct tastes in art is a very different thing from all of that though to me.
I'm not as deep as you are, numan.
I enjoy a rainbow more than I'd enjoy a statue of a greek god or an essay written 2000 years ago in a barely understandable sentence form (to me). Or a pick up corner street band to Mozart.

I agree....as a whole we sure are.
Don't slam the weak but true hearted efforts that some of us are making though please.
That discourages any effort if you're trying to educate us.

I'm right there with you, Olyve! Those are the kinds of things that bring tears to my eyes...beauty and life in the here and now...but to each his own.

It may surprise some people that I agree with you about the rainbow. The works of Nature always, in the end, surpass the feeble human art that, as its highest end, reminds us in some degree of the transcendent grandeur of Existence.

Just imagine a great painting. If we examine it very closely, the art very quickly disappears. Through a magnifying glass, all we see are chaotic bumps and splotches of color. But nature, at whatever level you examine it, from clusters of galaxies to the sub-atomic particles and beyond, never ceases to amaze us with its beauty, its art and its elegance.

As for ancient Greek, if you have not learned the language, you truly have no idea of the wonders you will never experience in your life.

And to prefer a "pick up corner street band" to Mozart! I am shocked, truly shocked and appalled that you would say such a horror!

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How about in an old Budweiser Super-Bowl add, the one's with frogs, lizards, weasels and explosives? Or do you think that is just a bit to sophisticated for even the avant garde of the PoMo cultus?

About as subtle and extended a metaphor as say, Playboy - that is to say, a rather straight-forward demi-fantasy story line about the appeal of sex and the pretense that the author is somehow weaving out a tapestry of great Truth.

My favorite American art is by some of the Primitivists - the unknown "artists" who produced those simple, useful and indescribably elegant Clovis points. Perhaps my favorite "old world" artistic creation? That beautiful green diorite bust of Khafre, builder of the second pyramid at Giza.

And, surprisingly enough, Ron, the book was banned and/or confiscated in the "civilized" countries of Britain and France, but allowed to be published in the "barbaric" US of da A.:-)
Yours,
Issodhos