| Topic: |
Science > Philosophy |
| User: |
"Elijah the Tishbite" |
| Date: |
30 Nov 2004 08:47:54 AM |
| Object: |
Utility of art and Golden Age |
The aesthetic product of the civilization constitutes its
justification, consummation, and flowering. It is the thing from which
the civilization derives its fame. A species of plants is shown in the
botany books as its flower; it is the art of the civilization that
goes in the museum thousands of years since its demise. The past
civilizations we know exist to us through their artifacts and their
writings; a Bible or a book of Plato is far more relevant to modern
man than the commercial bosses of Judaic tribes or the generals who
conducted Peloponessian Wars. Thus art and literature, far from being
an impractical luxury, is rather the consummation of the endeavor of
the civilization and its mark on the world. Artistic beauty conveys to
future generation the mastery, elegance, talent, resources, vision and
hope that existed in the society. Art is the trace we leave behind in
the world; our flowering, our consummation, our justification. And our
architecture and engineering that we produce are also our mark both
for the present and future generations, and as such they must be the
most beautiful and tastefully designed possible, both for the sake of
the tastes of their inhabitants and for the sake of national pride.
Beauty takes effort and talent to cultivate and as such deserves
respect and protection; both in honor of the effort it took to produce
it - because it is the flowering of the civilization - and because it
has uplifting, enriching, ennobling effect on the inhabitants of the
world; the effect of increasing the aesthetic in a manner congruent
with the ethical, and thus increasing the area of intersection of
ethical and aesthetic - increasing the chances for happiness.
The people who believe artistic beauty to be impractical are thus
people who abdicated the human prerogative - the human will's role in
shaping the world in which we live. Artistic beauty becomes practical
when people value beauty and make concerted effort to make their
environment beautiful and to adopt beauty as an existent within their
lives, in the same way that happy relationships become practical when
people's likes and values are in accord and reflected in the partner.
Artistic beauty is practical enough in Paris and San Francisco, whose
inhabitants value beauty and produce architecture and artwork that
reflects the best talent and striving of man and woman. And it is
Paris and San Francisco, not Khartoum or St. Louis, that people around
the world travel to see and their countries recommend as the crowning
glory of their civilizations. Art becomes practical and realistic,
when people make an effort to make art a part of the practical reality
of their lives. And through cultivating inner beauty in people,
artistic beauty creates an area of intersection in people▓s
minds between the ethical and the aesthetic, thus increasing their
chances for happiness.
The sharing of this inner beauty becomes part of a most noble
enterprise - that of formation of a happy and beautiful world. Through
sharing of inner beauty, people arrive at beautiful relationships -
relationships that endure with help of compassion and self-extension -
with help of understanding of one's own and other person's inner
reality and graciously accepting the other while demanding the best of
oneself. As art cultivates inner beauty in people, there is more
beauty inside to share and use to enrich the life of the other and
enrich the relationship. The area of intersection between the ethical
and the aesthetic becomes the centerpiece of the relationship; people
share inner beauty and through that mechanism achieve for each other a
beautiful world. Each love relationship then becomes a unit, a parcel,
in formation of a beautiful civilization; a civilization in which love
and beauty is a daily reality and in which people live happily.
There are ideologies that say love to be impractical or an escape from
reality. Far rather, it is a result of sharing of real inner and outer
beauty, using the reality of the human condition - the reality that we
shape the world we inhabit - to make possible beautiful outcomes in
reality of our lives. We are the shapers of the reality of our lives.
Love becomes a reality of our lives when we choose to make it such -
when we strive with our whole beings, the real will, the real mind,
the real emotions, to make our lives reflect the reality of love. Love
is a part of the reality of people's lives, when they choose to make
it a reality. The real mechanism is the sharing of inner beauty; the
real result is a beautiful world - a world that is also happy when the
ethical and the aesthetic aspects of human condition find an area of
intersection.
Through art, is achieved beautification of emotions - their
ennoblement and their formation into shapes that are developed and
accord with the best of human intelligence. Through sharing of this
inner beauty in relationships, is achieved a beautiful world.
To the Darwinians who believe that life is all about survival, the
response is: If that were true, life would never have evolved beyond
the stage of the bacillus, the creature that can survive anywhere on
Earth. Nature is brimming with creativity; with passion, with beauty,
with inspiration, with thought, with imagination, with sensuousness,
with love. Nature is a testimony that the creator of the Universe, if
there is such a thing, is not a being solely of command and logic but
rather a being that is also sensuous, a being that is also passionate,
imaginative and inspired - and to those who do not believe in a
creator, the response is: Nature is a testimony that passion comprises
the known universe. And thus development of passion, imagination and
inspiration is a pious act, an act that is also realistic, an act that
puts us in touch with the way the universe operates and makes it known
to our hearts.
A side note on rationalism - the belief that the Universe is rational,
and through rational method of inquiry we can arrive at universal
truth - is that it is a philosophy that seeks to project upon the
entire Universe the method of rational logic that is one function of
human cognition - in much the same way as Hegel projects upon the
Universe the dialectic that is another form of conducting inquiry.
Both can therefore be seen to be an absurd case of hubris - of seeing
the entire Universe to represent the way of cognition with which one
is most familiar - until one asks whereby such functions exist in the
human mind. For if the Creator of the Universe is as perfect as Bible
states, then certainly He will place in His creatures the mechanisms
of cognition with which they can understand His creation and
approximate Him through analysis of Him as reflected within the
creation - and in this case, both rationalism and dialectical systems,
and also inspiration, insight, and romantic passion would be useful in
apprehending the Universe, even if neither may do so completely. If we
have evolved, then linear logic as well as the dialectic, and also
passion and inspiration, are features of human species - ones that can
be employed to its benefit or to its harm - but that are regardless in
no way demonstrative of the truth of the Universe, merely of advantage
of survival therein - unless, that is, the very process of evolution
has allowed over time for the structure of the Universe to be built
into the mechanism of the brain, with all its multifarious complexity
creating different mechanisms which are congruent with different
aspects of the universal whole and are useful for comprehending its
different parts.
It is thought that beauty is a concept. No, it is a quality. The
contention of the second verse of Tao Te Ching that in conceiving of
beauty we create a duality that manifests ugliness is manifestly
false. Beauty is a quality, not a concept, one that neither requires
its opposite to be defined nor one that manifests in its opposite when
thought about. Beautiful environments are created by people striving
for beauty; ugly environments are created by people who do not care.
The contention of Taoism - that the phenomenal world is a duality that
consists of interaction of opposite forces, forces such as yin and
yang or day and night - is at the center of integrationism. However,
the concept is perverted when the Westerner adds to these components
the concept of good and evil. Quite simply, evil is not a legitimate
force; it is an aberration, a case of something gone wrong. Same with
ugliness; same with disease. A distinction has to be made between
legitimate existents - existents such as reason and emotion, or
competition and cooperation, or individual and society, which can work
together toward creation of best products - and illegitimate existents
such as disease and evil, existents that in no way improve the world
in which we live. A legitimate synergy, or dialectic, is one between
legitimate existents. Not all claimed existents are legitimate.
It is said that beauty is only skin-deep, but ugliness goes down to
the bone. That is entirely not the case; a woman who▓s
beautiful, loving, compassionate, soulful and artistic - who
constantly finds beauty around her and portrays it in her artwork - is
beautiful all the way through, while many people who look bad at one
point in their life can look good at another. The myth that beauty is
shallow is a lie based on limited understanding; there is nothing
shallow about Michelangelo▓s work, nor about Yosemite Park, nor
about Paris or Barcelona. True natural beauty is a flower of the
universe; true manmade beauty is a flower of the civilization. Manmade
beauty requires talent and effort and deserves the highest respect.
Through cultivation of inner beauty with help of art, poetry and
philosophy, and its ongoing sharing among people, is created a
beautiful world for people to inhabit. A world in which art is as
practical and formative as production is now; a world in which people
live beautifully, think beautifully, interact beautifully and are
beautiful inside and out. Sri Aurobindo's ideal - that the substance
of moral endeavor is to make one's whole life beautiful - becomes
enshrined in the lives of the people; and the goal of all moral
science - to arrive at the merger of ethical and aesthetic, with the
aesthetic informing the ethical into optimal shapes and the ethical
informing the aesthetic into morally justifiable action - is thereby
achieved, arriving at the integrity of the civilization and the
practical happiness of its populace. And Baudellaire's cry - "Make
life beautiful, make life beautiful" - becomes formative of the
civilization, motivating people into creating a life beautiful inside
and out. Which, by increasing the area of intersection between the
ethical and the aesthetic, leads to happiness.
Oscar Wilde said that we have been given a world which only our folly
prevents from being a paradise. The paradise is achieved when one
lives at the area of intersection of reason and emotion, or ethical
and aesthetic - the area at which beauty in all its forms can be
achieved and shared. The result is happiness and ongoing ecstasy.
Which lasts for as long as people can make it last - sometimes a
lifetime, sometimes a few months, sometimes a tracer that points to a
world as it can be - and is never forgotten, motivating the person to
either attempt to recreate it or wait for it in another lifetime.
The belief widespread in many of the world's religions that the things
that happen do so by the will of God, or that all power comes from
God, is as easy to turn on its head as is postmodernism. If everything
is done by the will of God, then the changes that the leader, or the
revolutionary, or the influential figure whether or not approved by
the religion, makes in the social order by exercising his mind and his
will is also will of God. Which means that, with any changes made to
the social order, the religious people will have to live because it is
will of God. Deifying the status quo means that any status quo - even
the one created by people who are not part of the religion - is
divinely ordained, and governments such as those of Communist China or
Castro's Cuba are there because God willed them to be there. Thus, the
success by whatever means at getting the power means that God is on
one's side; a tenet that is at best Machiavellian and at worst
sociopathic. The logical action, given such beliefs, is to take power
by whatever means and keep it by whatever means - an action that, in
places that exercise such beliefs, more than a few people took and
were thereafter justified by religions as having taken.
The status quo at any given point in history is an amalgamation of
influences, some good, some bad. The people who practice the
aforementioned belief claim that spiritual advancement consists of
accepting the world as is, whatever its influences. This kind of
mentality negates man▓s highest faculty - the faculty of moral
choice. A human being has the moral prerogative to determine what
influences are right and what influences are wrong. He accepts what is
right and fights what he knows to be wrong. It is due to this process
that has been achieved the best of the status quo, and it is through
this process that a status quo worthy of human habitation can continue
to be achieved.
The spiritual belief that ego or mind is something to be overcome is
therefore a fallacy. It is in man▓s ego and in man▓s mind
that moral choices are made, and it is man▓s ego and man▓s
mind that motivate man to achieve and take risks and perform
courageous, innovative action to benefit self and others. To
eviscerate ego is to eviscerate man and to render him incapable of
moral choice and constructive action that benefits the world. The
Western civilization is a product of hundreds of millions of minds and
egos striving courageously to create the best possible world; and to
deny the ego and the mind is to deny the Western civilization. Rather
than denying it, far more honorable it is to channel it - to guide it
- to allow it to work with the spirit in a dynamic harmony, informed
by the wisdom of the spirit and thereto imparting its energy.
If the theory of evolution is true, then rationalism - search for
universal truth in reason - and romanticism - search for universal
truth in emotions - are both legitimate enterprises, as both have
evolved for the best outcome of the species. If people have been
created by a perfect creator, the same holds true, as in both the
reason and the emotion is the mark of the Creator. However, both
rationalism and romanticism by themselves have been shown to produce
garbage along the way. Rationalism by itself produces dry, heartless,
hateful and mean people who have no wonder in their hearts or
compassion for fellow man - people who think that machines are
superior to human beings and that passion as well as compassion are
manifestation of inferior functions; people who would willingly
sacrifice the lives and the future of everyone in their vicinity in
order to make a better gadget or serve eugenic formulas. Romanticism
by itself produces people who are moved by every emotion that they may
have and lead chaotic lives. Both, however, have also produced great
results as well: Rationalism, scientific and technological progress;
romanticism, beautiful literature and art. And in the concept of
universal consciousness, rationalism and romanticism merged to arrive
at a conclusion discerned, from one side, by quantum mechanics, and
from the other side by mysticism and literature: the conclusion of
cosmic consciousness, that led to the belief that the new age was
coming - but which new age has taken time to come.
I suggest a better model than the New Age. I suggest the model of
synergy between the bottom-up and the top-down in the ultimate sense -
the natural and supernatural in the human being; the integrative
synthesis between animal and God; the dynamic harmony between
man▓s science and art and God▓s revelation. The model of
including both heaven and earth and applying both to achieve the best
outcome of both levels of human existence, with the bottom-up result
of human effort and the top-down revelation united in a synergy that
understands, consummates, checks and extends itself to involve and
make the most of both components and achieve the best synthetic
products. Resulting in a dignified, ennobled, fully human and divinely
inspired existence that allows people to be human beings and creatures
of God at once, through their thought, inspiration, passion and
revelation both competitively and cooperatively - both
self-interestedly and altruistically - both individually and socially
- both in business and in government - both in science and in art -
both in worldly matters and in religion - making a Pareto-optimal
situation that is the best world possible: the world of progress,
beauty, goodness, nobility, mutual understanding and dynamic harmony
leading in multidimensional synergy toward ever better outcomes for
the universe and for mankind.
For more, see: http://www.geocities.com/drr0cket/pareto.htm
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