Moses was appalled when he got back. He’d been up on the mountain considering the meaning of it all and while he was gone the people erected a golden calf, these days frankly reproduced as the bronze bull on wallstreet, and it’s an expression of base materialism plain and simple. When just stuff is worshiped greed sets in and the people begin behaving like pigs, doesn’t matter the time or place. Pretty soon their civilization crumbles and they go back to cooking over an open fire and living with animals, waiting to start over.
Moses decided to give them something else to think about, like when the vet distracts your dog before it gets its shot. He said look over here and see these stone tablets given to me by the one and only god, and drag yourselves away from doing better than your neighbor for a moment that you might see life differently. The commandments aren’t particularly bad advice in a general sort of way but that’s not the point. Humans are capable of incandescent attainment and we have the examples of DaVinci, Beethoven, and Einstein, and we have the art of the ancient chinese, the egyptians, the meso-americans and the greeks, but when things get good we can backslide.
Convenience comes in handy and having household machines that help with the chores should leave us free to read a book, to visit a museum, to expand our universe and live up to our potential, wouldn’t that be great? To see how we’re doing let’s look at our art since after all, it’s the way we judge all the civilizations that came before us. It seems we’re in trouble. The scrapping and replacing of the last century’s monuments, righteous and necessary no doubt, reveals an easing of standards that’s less than comforting, and millions and millions of dollars for dogshit art at auction is a ‘let them eat cake’ formula for disaster. Somehow just having more free time hasn’t made us better.
It was an eye-opener to me and a novel notion of democracy when I read that attendance at the theater in ancient greece was mandatory. Utilizing their art and literature they were imposing intelligence and rationality on the population. Every citizen was being to asked to measure themselves against the culture’s highest ideals, and it seems to have worked well for a few hundred years, average citizens accomplished and thoughtful with lives well lived. Here we have our own version of democracy and each of us decides what to look at and what to think about on our own, it’s that way in writing. We also have more choices, from the imbecilic to works of art that are smarter than we are, and we get to pick and choose which to live with and see every day. Does it make a difference, the greeks thought it did.
Moses decided to give them something else to think about, like when the vet distracts your dog before it gets its shot. He said look over here and see these stone tablets given to me by the one and only god, and drag yourselves away from doing better than your neighbor for a moment that you might see life differently. The commandments aren’t particularly bad advice in a general sort of way but that’s not the point. Humans are capable of incandescent attainment and we have the examples of DaVinci, Beethoven, and Einstein, and we have the art of the ancient chinese, the egyptians, the meso-americans and the greeks, but when things get good we can backslide.
Convenience comes in handy and having household machines that help with the chores should leave us free to read a book, to visit a museum, to expand our universe and live up to our potential, wouldn’t that be great? To see how we’re doing let’s look at our art since after all, it’s the way we judge all the civilizations that came before us. It seems we’re in trouble. The scrapping and replacing of the last century’s monuments, righteous and necessary no doubt, reveals an easing of standards that’s less than comforting, and millions and millions of dollars for dogshit art at auction is a ‘let them eat cake’ formula for disaster. Somehow just having more free time hasn’t made us better.
It was an eye-opener to me and a novel notion of democracy when I read that attendance at the theater in ancient greece was mandatory. Utilizing their art and literature they were imposing intelligence and rationality on the population. Every citizen was being to asked to measure themselves against the culture’s highest ideals, and it seems to have worked well for a few hundred years, average citizens accomplished and thoughtful with lives well lived. Here we have our own version of democracy and each of us decides what to look at and what to think about on our own, it’s that way in writing. We also have more choices, from the imbecilic to works of art that are smarter than we are, and we get to pick and choose which to live with and see every day. Does it make a difference, the greeks thought it did.
2 comments:
We do require some mandatory attendance in this democracy even if it's just some elementary schooling. Why not expand on that a bit. What would be the harm in a more enlightened electorate, for example? But there is a long history in this country and culture of considering knowledge an affront to faith, or an obstacle to some ideologies' grand design. We humans have such a propensity for shooting ourselves in the foot - perhaps the closest thing we have to proof of the divine is visual art, music, and literature, and yet we focus on everything else.
The new football complex at scott county rivals some small colleges, actually blows them away, it was on the evening news and they're proud of it. A mentality is imposed alright on genetically intelligent humans by their schools but based on my high school class as represented on facebook, it's mostly about consuming and running up the score. Artists are on the right side.
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