I Give Up.

Forget it. I've had this nagging desire to follow up that last post with something intelligent, even drafted a huge essay, and then scrapped it because all I could say was that neither way works. I've satisfied myself, below, with the notion that true art cannot thrive (note: it can exist) in a modern capitalist society, and in fact the decline we see now is likely to continue. However, I cannot come up with a solution to the problem that does not involve a group of elites forcing their aesthetic notions onto the rest of the world.

Mind you, that's a great idea as long as the elites are doing their job right. The problem is selecting new elites. Because fifty years from now I might be forced to underwrite Justin Timberlake with my tax dollars because the Bubblegum Music Association got a member on the board of the new, fully empowered NEA. See what I'm talking about? This is why I keep searching for new forms of government but keep coming up dry. It is a choice between three-hundred-million idiots or just a few doing the ruling, but at least if there are three-hundred-million, a lot of them might cancel each other out.

For the record: Robert Hamilton considers the State of the Arts Question to be a complete, unsolveable Catch-22. That is hopefully not going to be a life-long position, so stay tuned.

Bad Art and Red Ink

I recently received a circular email which announced, in somewhat alarmist terms, the imminent death of several public arts outlets: the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and others. As it turns out, the email was a sham; I had read, only a few days before, a news article which touted instead a new, less controversial NEA, the budget of which was likely to be passed without murmur by Congress. In any case, these two pieces of media have brought my mind back to a question that has nagged me for a long while: how should the arts be funded? And of course, the perhaps even more pressing question: why do the arts struggle so much to gain funding in the first place?

The two questions, of course, are inextricably linked. If individual painters, opera companies, art museums, etc. were perpetually in the black, there would be no need to even debate the merit of public grants. However, as affairs lie, such institutions are far from flush with capital. And considering that the stereotyped “starving artist” is fairly well ingrained into the national consciousness, it appears to have been the case for some time. Perhaps this is just a fact which we have to accommodate, but surely there are rational causes for this state of affairs. This post will examine the fundamental problem; it will be followed soon by another which debates potential solutions.

At the risk of sounding snobbish, I will venture that one of the reasons is humanity’s tendency to take the path of least resistance. I implicate myself as much as any other: it is pure human nature. After all, if one path seems easier than all others, and promises roughly the same benefits, who would not choose it? Unfortunately, this ignores the fact that the most truly beneficial course often includes difficulty early on, and humans are notoriously reluctant to take the “long view” of affairs. Thus it comes about that producers of objects d’art who have a mind more fixed on profit than creative integrity will market “art” that is pre-packaged, easily digestible, unchallenging, full of hooks and gimmicks. The nobler artist, while not necessarily shunning the tastes of the public, allows ease and accessibility to take second place to the Idea and Craft that shape his work. Naturally, the appreciation of the second is ultimately better than that of the first, but the second artisan will find it difficult to compete with his rival, simply because the instant gratification offered by the rival is so hard for humans to overlook. Any film critic will tell you that Kurosawa is the superior craftsman to James Cameron, but who produced the largest grossing film in history?

The second obstacle to the success of the Arts is the joint-stock corporate paradigm. While simple human motivation helps explain artistic foundering on an individual level, this paradigm operates on a more systemic level. The joint-stock corporation, as most are aware, is one of the most brilliant innovations of the Anglo-Saxon mind, developed around the time of the discovery of the New World. It came to early fruition in the shipping industry: no longer would the Antonios and Bassanios of the world wait with trepidation on the Rialto for news of sunken schooners. Instead, a “board of trustees” would all invest a stake in a single ship, and thus minimalize risk the risk for each individual. A capitalist could therefore invest in ten ships instead of just one, so even if two or three went down, he would still be far from ruin. This is now the model which dominates all business in the Western world, and a company’s “going public” is a major business event that usually results in great multiplication of profit for the newly-created corporation.

Of course, the system comes with some built in stipulations: for one, no group of investors will throw money into a venture which no one believes will be profitable. As with any purely market-driven system, the arrangement fails to work if marginal benefits cannot be offered to both parties — investors and company executives. Here we see how problem one creates problem two, and problem two feeds problem one in a sort of unfortunate symbiosis: if an artistic institution is run as a joint-stock company, then it cannot simply suck money away from investors, but must give them a reasonable expectation of profit. No investor without a profound streak of altruism would invest in the found-sound histrionics of German band Einsteurzende Neubauten, the experimental novels of William T. Vollman, or the expensive and little-known Berlioz opera, Les Troyens. While debate could rage on about the merits of the former two, the last is an undisputed classic of the opera world which just a few years ago finally received a second competent recording — and that was a live recording; studio technology would simply be prohibitively expensive.

Consequently, pressure arises from boards of trustees and the result is our current artistic moonscape: bevies of whipped-cream-lite chick lit stacked on Barnes & Noble’s “literature” table, the proliferation of repetitive hack-painters like Thomas Kinkade, pre-packaged and overproduced concoctions of lowest-common-denominator collaborations passed off as the original work of a singer-songwriter who is actually a glorified lip-synch artist, opera companies forced to put on little more than doggedly traditional productions of one or two Puccini or Verdi standards a year, symphonies channelling more than half their energy into relatively frothy “pops” concerts that advertise film score suites with pictures of Darth Vader.

Undoubtedly, I have overlooked a significant number of other causes, but this is the fundamental cycle which I see perpetrated in the modern world, and perhaps the main reason for the current poverty of what is passed off as “art.” This, then is the problem, and I shall soon post some stabs at the solution.

Can I vote for the Other Party?

This show, too, is back on the road now; furthermore, being fed up, I'm going to just come out and talk politics. Be warned that I'm rather tired right now and seriously allergic to some herbage outside, so if this sounds like it comes from an altered mind-state ...

A few things lead me to this extremity. One is recently starting (to my shame) a Facebook profile, which contains a category for political views. The options are (very) liberal, moderate, (very) conservative, apathetic, and other. Conservative, without the "very," would have been an easy choice and not horribly inaccurate. But then, I support things like public funding for the arts and have serious trouble supporting things like the Iraq war, which would make me suspect to most conservatives. But I don't qualify as a liberal because of my views on social issues like abortion and homosexuality, and my (albeit ambivalent) association with Austrian economic theory.

So, I gave "apathetic" a thought; it's true, I can be rather apathetic when I feel that I'm not being offered any decent choices or that politics has just become sensationalised, etc. But I thought that the sheer fact that I obsess over these things proves that I'm not utterly apathetic; I feel guilty if I don't vote on something important.

What did that leave me? Other. So I went ahead and picked that. I mean, anything can thrive under such a broad shade; we can find room for Philosopher King Supporter, Christian Anarchist, Constitutional Monarchist, Oligarchical Timocrat, and so on (all things which I have toyed with to a much greater or much lesser extent).

I guess one of my big problems is that I'm just not impressed with democracy, at least the way we do it. One product of our style is that we do only have these two monstrous, bloated old parties that are practically worthless; like two old boxers who had strikingly different fighting techniques fifty years ago, now drooling on the porch and taking random swipes at one another. Sure, one party will always be pro-abortion and the other anti-; the Republican candidate is always going to propose a bit less of a tax increase -- the problem is that there's no striking vision, no vigour -- and this is coming from a former groupie of the Young Republicans, so trust me, I'm familiar with the most ardent and vigourous of young politics junkies.

Another problem (exacerbated by the above) is the simple fact that human action is difficult to motivate. The quotient of positive or negative incentives which have to be dangled in front of the average man in order to spur him out of lethargy is awesomely huge. Otherwise how could despots endure when, after all, the populace at large always outnumbers the tyrant and his minions? So when it comes to changing something in a democracy, the most leveled-off, status-quo sort of society -- there's no need to hurry. There's no real need to even go and vote, unless you've a special axe to grind. Thus, by choice, only radicals have a say in the political process.

I guess my question is, Is my position of flux and confusion a good thing? Is it actually better to settle in to a party and let yourself be defined as "a conservative" or "a libertarian" or "a socialist" or whatever? Or is it better to play at the outskirts of everyone's party and not ever accept anything quod ipse dixit -- just because they say so? What would happen if more people felt that way?

The second question is also informed by an internet trifle, namely a quiz which showed me being exactly fifty percent conservative and fifty percent liberal (Glencora tells me they cancel out and therefore I have no views ... ). One of the questions, with a yes-or-no answer, was "All authority, by its very nature, should be questioned." I pondered away at that one for a long time. My knee-jerk would be to say No, but then I realised that to call something "authority" had better mean that you have a reason to submit to it. So, isn't dialectically coming up with that reason "questioning" the validity of the authority? I don't mean this in some sort of nineteen-sixties rebellious sense -- just in the sense that blind submission is foolhardy and dangerous. One's answer can be quite definite and range from "he has a shotgun and I don't" to "he saved me from my sins and I owe him my loyalty," but it had better exist. So I hesitantly answered "yes." Any comments?

I welcome comments on anything in this post, or anything related. I know most of my readers think the Iraq war is justified and I know you all have some good arguments, even perhaps in the wake of a new round of slaughter and a whole new operation starting up, so if you want to talk war please be my guest. I shall try to add some more posts soon on related topics and see what I can't work out.

Feels good to be back. Till soon, Prester J.

A Problem With the Below

While pondering the import of the post below, I came to a thought-problem. As is relatively plain, I propounded a quasi-existential way of sorting out weltanschauungen: essentially, man as homo interpretans makes a series of choices in reaction to, on one level, the entire world; on a deeper level, to the Bible and its interpretive community. He was described as being in submission to this text and community.

Fine, but what struck me was the sudden stab of fear that I had perhaps just sired a brainchild that would, parricide-wise, destroy me upon maturation. After all, this system makes everything depend finally upon the individual, does it not? And is not individualism run rampant the salient characteristic of two of my less favourite establishments, namely, democracy and fundamentalist Baptistry? Sure are. Loath to simply torpedo my lovely little epistomological fancy, I began work upon an expanded theory: communal existentialism.

What think you, is this possible? Homines interpretantes, inseperable units forming a single body, a body which takes as its axioms (first and foremost) God and His Word, and as its pilots the Patristic community (which by mystical extension is absorbed into the current community, or rather we into them) and established (or re-established) rituals: the celebration of the Eucharist, the rhythms of growth and decay, the regular beat of holy feast days.

In this manner, I think the original solution is extended; furthermore, the old problem would be trumped even if every man in the community was not sufficiently broad-minded to avoid absorption into a clique: since, in the community I have described, truth is achieved in a sort of dialectical manner, our pressing questions (like Realism vs. Nominalism or the Postmodern question) begin to look, over time, very small, and are finally swamped in the flood of truth, redemptive narrative, and sacred tradition.

A pipe dream? With a gigantic influx of divine aid, perhaps not.

Repudiating 'Ism's

Debate has been raging lately on Reformed blogs germane to the question of Postmodernism and how it relates to theology. I think that the discourse has been beneficial (though I hope not too divisive), but there are some issues with the entire parameters of the debate that trouble me, and which I would like to address.

The first thing that struck me is just how much of a novelty Postmodernism is. I don't bristle when someone questions whether traditional Reformed Christians ought to accept Realism or Nominalism, because that question is centuries old. Same goes for infralapsarianism, Pelagianism, and a host of others. However, the sheer juvenility of PoMo, as far as thought-schools go, brought me up short: how on earth could it be that something so brand-spanking-new could actually inform the Christian worldview or Scriptural exegesis? I've heard some funny terms tossed around before, neologisms like "Biblicism," proposed as an alternative; somehow this doesn't sit too well with me either. Let me strip things down for a moment (and a moment only) to see if I can't come up with something a little better, epistemologically speaking. I'm not, thank goodness, trying to propose any novel epistemology; I'm just trying to look at the way a Christian might accept or reject patterns of thought.

We begin, of course, with a Man, because epistemology is (usually) about human knowing. He is surrounded by data, in the form of literally Everything: the stars, the grass, people around him, concepts, triangles, Justice, Pity, the feeling of his socks against his feet. He is homo interpretans, since he really does nothing but relate to and act upon these data. This also implies that he has no reasonable cause to doubt the efficacy of his perception or to suspect that the cosmos is a massive, Matrix-style fabrication.

So far, so good. Being presuppositionalist Christians, we will add the noumenal realm in the form of God the Trinity; this God is of course something that must be interpreted by the fellow -- and here is found the (granted) assertion that this God is knowable, not a sequestered Force. The man finds a copy of the Bible, which is the main way in which this God makes Himself knowable, and there he reads that Scripture "is of no private interpretation." So he joins a good church and begins reading not only the Bible, but the best available interpretations of it.

Now here we come to the point of contention, I think. What does he do now? Faced with hundreds if not thousands of 'ism's, he cannot help but wonder which one to choose. In fact, it might seem that polarization and contention has reached such a degree that he cannot help but actually choose one of them. He has to become a Mennonite, an Arian, an Anglican, a Freewill Baptist, a Clarkian, an Auburn Avenuer, a Catholic, a Shaker, a Propositionalist, a Thomist, or a Postmodern-Radically-Orthodox-Presbyterian, doesn't he? Surely, this is too bleak. I can see at least two alternatives, and I shall give the less interesting one first.

First, he could do what some students manage to do in their high-schools: clique-hop. He's not a jock, a nerd, or a goth, but he has friends who belong to all those groups and takes a bit from each to compile his own personal style. In other words, he's a pursuer of the 'Golden Mean.' He's sure to get closer to the Truth than the partisan types.

Second, though: what is there to prevent him from seeking the truth, period? What if he reads Van Til or Wilson or whomever and decides that no, all truth is not propositional, but then hears someone saying that all truth is vague, or that not even Christians have a monopoly on the truth, and, with the help of some Bible verses and pertinent Patristic quotations, shoots down these oddities? Why on earth should he struggle to fit into some taxonomic category, bend it, stretch it, try to make it fit with his Christian paradigm?

Obviously, even language like 'Christian paradigm' is straying close to 'ism' language. I almost said 'Biblical-Traditionalist.' But 'Traditionalism,' for all its virtues, has led people to invent all sorts of weird doctrines to explain little curios that develop in an almost Darwinian way through the eons of tradition. So, I think it's rather plain that clutching after the vagaries of 'isms' and trying to shape them to what you yourself already believe is going to produce a lot of heat but not much light. What we need to do is focus, in the tradition of lectio divina, upon reading the revealed Word and allowing it to shape our consciousness, unimpeded by the protests of Reason. From there, we read the manifestos of the 'isms,' and while we can read them as entire 'metanarratives,' to use a Postmodern term, we can also take them thought-by-thought and interact with each concept on our own (and hopefully, God's) terms. And of course, this process is communal, and linking up with like-minded people even to the point of forming 'movements' is sometimes beneficial. But for goodness' sake, let's not act as though Posmodernism is the next hermeneutical breakthrough; let's remember that God and the Bible have been around a hell of a lot longer than Jacques Derrida.

Musa Nativitatis

Christmas always delights and appalls me simultaneously, though my ideas about many things have usually changed by the time another year cycles by. Affairs are no different this year, but something in particular -- for once, not something wholly negative -- has seized my attention. This something is the Christmas Muse.

The Christmas Muse is an odd lady. Within her purvey are surely the most recognizeable tunes, ditties, and holy hymns in the world -- anyone who does not recognize "O Holy Night" or "Jingle Bells" is unhealthily detached from society. I also used to say that anyone who didn't enjoy Christmas music was touched in the head; since then, however, I've run into a good many who don't like the stuff one bit.

It's not as though they don't have their reasons: indeed, the Christmas Muse has in her repetoire some pretty miserable tripe, and even the better ones have been beaten into a sort of milky pallor by an endless stream of hack tunemongers and advertisers. All this leads me to wonder just why the designation "Christmas song" has preserved such odd anachronisms that would never have survived on their own. For instance, I was listening to "Jingle Bells" the other day and realized that it was nothing more than a 19th century pop song, and not a terribly accomplished one at that. Such is the case with more modern "carols," such as the woozy, hopelessly dated offerings from the likes of Mel Torme and Johnny Marks.

So, what is the purport of all this? I think it must simply have to do with the amazingly deep-rooted, quasi-Mediaeval resonance of the single holy day which we in America still significantly observe. Of course the holiday has been ravaged by Madison Avenue heathens; of course St. Nicholas is reduced to a hip-hop dancing geriatric, telling us that anything we want can be found at Circuit City. Such is life in a Postmodern republic. Even so, the sacred events which all this stuff commemorates are, somewhere, still manifest to average Americans -- and therefore, even the transient fluff that surrounds it takes on a sort of sacral aura, or at least is found more important than other commercial tripe. Anything with the power to make perennial favourites out of vapid pop jingles, to withstand the onslaught of wire-frame reindeer with electric revolving heads, and to bring "O Holy Night" preserved through the myriad murder attempts of every warbling tenor-atrocity of the century, deserves some sort of respect from anyone. Hail the Christmas Muse.

Civilisation and Artifice

It has been far too long since I wrote on here; I shall try to do better for those few who read.

It is late now, but I simply want to ask a question: what is the relation between rational civilisation and human nature? Here is what I find odd and fascinating. What we think of as a "state of nature" is generally described as a primitive state characterized by instinct and lack of reason. Essentially, in this state, no structures exist. The hand of the artificer has failed to touch these "innocents" in the natural state.

This is all well and good, and it is easy to understand how, for the sake of convenience and mutual concord, artificial structures would have organically arisen. What is strange is that these works of artifice are universally taken to characterize that which makes us human. For is not humanity defined as reason, refinement, leisure, and study? I think that none of these exist in what we call the natural state.

So the question is, is the natural state really natural -- is it actually possible to live a life with no art of civilisation? Or have we simply improved ourselves through these means?

Another question is raised: is someone like Kant correct in assuming that after history has taken its full course, a new state of nature will evolve in which virtue will be integral to human existance? I'm reminded of passages in Jeremiah which speak of no man teaching his neighbour to love the Lord, since all will have the law written perfectly in their hearts.

On the other hand, the primal garden of paradise was a cultivated garden -- or at least destined for cultivation. The destination of the blessed is a monumental cubic city -- indeed, a city "foresquare." I think that the work of an artificer is likely rooted in the Creator's shaping of the Chaos into form, and is therefore fundamental to existance as a rational entity.

Most likely both will co-exist. Ah, synthesis.