It's such an important subject, and yet, you can be quite sure that people with the least amount of common sense are secure in their belief that they have the most -- hence their right to restrict your freedom and run your life. Yes, Greta Thunberg and all the other psychotic children running for president know you don't really need that straw, cheeseburger, automobile, health insurance, etc. They have common sense. You don't.
So, how and why and when did common sense realism -- our nation's founding philosophy, or operating system -- become so devalued and marginalized?
Off the top of my head, I'm thinking that part of the answer must have to do with virtue signaling and status anxiety.
Analogously, think of the art world. I read somewhere that the French impressionists are looked down upon by many critics. Why? Because everyone likes them. That being the case, they hold no snob appeal. What's the point of knowing or appreciating something accessible to anyone?
Recall that the intellect can be twisted by pathological narcissism, no less than physical appearance, acting, or athletic prowess. But when this happens it essentially disables the intellect, since it is no longer conformed to reality, rather, to the elevation of one's self-image. Its end is no longer truth but status.
In The Rape of the Masters, Kimball writes of how "the study of art is increasingly being co-opted by various extraneous, non-artistic, non-aesthetic campaigns." Which is to put it mildly.
And just as art has become politicized, politics has surely become aestheticized. Clearly, a great deal of the elite loathing of President Trump is on aesthetic grounds. They were more upset that he puts ketchup on steak than they were at Obama eating dogs, because at least the latter is exotic.
Kimball notes that the undermining of art involves a kind of two-pronged attack: first is "a process of spurious aggrandizement" through which "you hail the mediocre as a work of genius, for example, or pretend that what is merely repellent actually enables our understanding of art or life."
Dávila: --The artist who seeks personal celebrity, not content with the celebrity of his work, becomes a clown or a politician.
A relative of mine was a serious art collector, with many very expensive works adorning his walls. Admittedly I am a simple man, but I find them visually off-putting -- AKA ugly -- or just neutral, with nothing attractive (or radiant) about them.
Plus, they are a stylistic jumble. There is no connecting theme, such that the overall effect is of a kind of disjointed psychotic dream. Not the kinds of specters I want hanging around my house.
True, they are... original. But Since obviously the authentic work of art is original, the unlearned imagines that an original work is necessarily a work of art (Dávila).
Exaggeration? One could cite countless examples. Kimball notes that when a couple of well known artists "exhibited The Naked Shit Pictures -- huge photo-montages of themselves naked with bits of excrement floating about," one critic celebrated their "self-sacrifice for a higher cause, which is purposely moral and indeed Christian."
And if you do not see that -- which you do not and could not -- then it elevates the critic at your expense. It all takes place in the mind of the critic or connoisseur, again, for reasons of status anxiety.
The second strategy (after spurious self-aggrandizement) "proceeds in the opposite direction. It operates not by inflating the trivial, the mediocre, the perverse, but by attacking, diluting, or otherwise subverting greatness."
We don't have time for a full excursion into the art world, AKA Adventures in Vertical Perception. The point is, something similar has infected the political world, such that our leftist elites simultaneously aggrandize themselves and denigrate the restavus via allegiance to their strange ideas and stranger gods.
Indeed, this is precisely why they didn't see Trump coming, nor why they cannot (thankfully) refrain from saying and doing things that will ensure the coming of More Trump.
As mentioned a couple of posts back, Woodrow Wilson was our first progressive political elite to openly denigrate the Constitution. If even literal-minded idiots such as yourselves can understand it, then it must be pretty vacuous, right? Don't we need a more sophisticated document that only the experts can appreciate and decipher?
Even the cognitively labile Jefferson had sufficient wisdom to recognize that the principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence were (and are) forever): its purpose was "not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of," but rather, "to place before mankind the common sense of the subject... it was intended to be an expression of the American mind."
But today, leftists will read Jefferson's comment and notice only that he said MAN-kind!, thereby simultaneously triggering them (because they are so weak-spirited) and elevating them above men who are infinitely superior.
So it's a whine-win situation (in that order), as is true in general of the celebration of liberal victimhood. It's an inversion of "the meek shall inherit the earth," i.e., the weak shall inhabit the state, thus a monstrous confluence of ineffectuality and omnipotence. But just because God humbled himself in becoming man, it hardly means that all victims are gods. But that's what we have these days instead of common sense: identity politics is just a grotesque inversion and perversion of Christianity.
[N]othing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in [later] life -- save only this -- that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education. --Prof. John Alexander Smith (in Kimball)
[To which I would add one more critical faculty, that is, the ability to situate vertically the person or movement with whom you're dealing. Broadly speaking, there are children of the Light, of the Earth, and of the Darkness, and it's not all that hard to discern which is witch.]
10 comments:
That a person is 100% responsible for what they create in their lives, absolutely.
That they should hold others able to run their own lives, youbetcha.
That life is unfair, oh yeah.
So if your father dropped you on your head as a baby resulting in a lifetime spent in blindness (Zach Warner), it doesn’t automatically make you a loser, unless you choose such a lifestyle. Zach seems pretty happy and fulfilled. But it helps being the son of an NFL great (life is unfair + 100% responsible). I’m sure there are others just like him though less fortunate, who also choose the higher road. That family is a Christian one, BTW.
My concern is with allowing pathological ubermensch the complete freedom to conquer great power for themselves. Ideally, in a free society the meeker majority (used to be Moral Majority) would choose to combine their resources to keep these ubermensch in check. But we don’t seem to be living in such a world like that these days now, do we?
I recently had a discussion with a ‘mental wellness’ professional. They believed that sociopaths can and do lead socially productive lives. I strongly disagreed, having been personally victimzed by a few to where I extensively studied their kind. The core value of a human born without a capability for empathy and guilt, with very low harm avoidance, is the acquisition of power. And their favorite hobby (besides sex) is the art ruining of others, even whole societies, just for the jollies. How can such a mindset, operating as say... a surgeon, not be tempted to screw with their patients body in some self-amusing way to mitigate the sheer boredom they must be continuously fighting against?
I shudder at the thought of another one of these being allowed “the liberty” of acquiring an entire nation to play with as their own gigantic toy, like Stalin did, to where the suffering nation has to wait for a few meeker supplicants to conspire for his elimination. Concentrated power is a bitch.
Anon,
How can such a mindset, operating as say... a surgeon, not be tempted to screw with their patients body in some self-amusing way to mitigate the sheer boredom they must be continuously fighting against?
There was a surgeon who faced charges some years back because it was discovered that he had a habit of cauterizing his name onto his patients' internal organs during surgery. You're correct, concentrated power is a bitch; it's also the world we live in. The older I get, the more I realize the rock hard truth Christ was speaking when he said his kingdom is not of this world. There is a current prince, though, and his foul fingerprints tend to get into every seat of power, sooner or later. Power is all he has.
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To the post,
Re. art, one of the great blessings of teaching your kids is the opportunity to broaden your own horizons. We're studying Pieter Bruegel the Elder this term; last year we had John Constable, Jan Vermeer and John William Waterhouse. Not featured: anything involving feces or the rationalization of ugliness for the sake of being ugly.
Having said that, I had forgotten that Pieter Bruegel the Elder liked to sneak toilet humor into his paintings. At least it's subtle in the ones we're studying. Plus he was actually trying to be funny, as opposed to proclaiming it deep, meaningful and very important. Getting off my high horse now...
The nature of power suggests that a working and prosperous state is only possible where you have those who are virtuous and powerful, for only power checks power (ultimately.) Thus aside from creating a new power to fight the old one, the only option is customary law (which is the true law) and training in, or selection for, virtue.
One of the virtues we have tried to instill in people is respect for the rule of law, which if the powerful have as a civic virtue, does a lot to check potential abuses, provided the laws are not ill-devised or too numerous.
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As for the post I would say that critics are probably higher in the social hierarchy than most artisans, which is why busybodies love becoming critics. But the critic's real job is to evolve a style, method, purpose or ideal of art, because they can influence and/or control the network effect which allows artists to prosper (whether via traditional patronage or through broader venues) without turning themselves into celebrity-clown-grifters. I suspect in Europe, the Great War 'broke' a lot of people and turned them against the world, which is about when European anti-art shows up. For the US, I think some time in the late 70's/early 80's there was a similar turn. Perhaps it was reaction against Reagan given the political composition of that group, or perhaps it was the appearance of AIDS.
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Julie about humor, the glissando in the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue was apparently originally a prank the 1st Clarinet played on Grofe, Whiteman and Gerswhin, but Gerswhin thought it was great and asked him to make it even more like a wail - thus that unmistakable intro!
@ civic virtue,
The NFL has publicly televised combines: tests of strength, speed, skill and football intelligence. All NFL games themselves are also publicly televised. There are many refs, instant replays and ruling challenges allowed. Under those conditions it's going to be pretty hard for a system of cheats and tricks to become accepted as normal or inevitable.
Yet our own "greatest nation ever" government currently operates at a level barely above legalized corruption, usually in the service of powerful corporate interests.
People follow rules when those who don't follow the rules are run out of town on a rail. Whether this is done spontaneously by a mob of citizens, arranged by a few select men, or commanded by an officer or lord is irrelevant. Rule of law implies that rules are followed and rules are followed because they are enforced.
Since the NFL commissioners don't have it in their best interest for their players to cheat, they see to it that rules are enforced.
If we were to limit our vision of the corruption of the USG to the fact that it might do what some corporation wants for campaign contributions fitting a bill with some pork, we have too small an imagination to conjure the true image of its corruption.
Everybody is driven to power and enjoys the exercise of it. Even your sweet little old neighbor lady enjoys manipulating her garden. My concern is understanding why things are allowed to fluctuate so wildly when it comes to sociopathic power.
I bring up the NFL because there's also reality TV, like the old Survivor series, where people were allowed to cheat. It was popular as well. Theoretically, people could demand the utmost strictness in rule enforcement for their public servants, since this is serious business. But they don't. Why is this?
If you see the world and every interaction in it in terms of power and manipulation, you guarantee yourself a lifetime of wretched misery. Not saying those things don't come into play; obviously, they do. But to imply that growing a garden is an exercise in something sinister (which is what manipulation implies) instead of something that brings joy, comfort, solace, wisdom, life, health, and essentially something that is usually a good in and of itself (not to mention hard work) is right up there with describing marriage as a long-term prostitution contract.
In other words, that is certainly a way of seeing things, but it is about as accurate and realistic as a distorted line drawing in describing the reality of something.
Why don't people demand the utmost strictness in rule enforcement? Because not everyone is driven to power. In fact, a great many people just want to live their own lives as unimpeded as possible, and would prefer not to have to mind everyone else's business. Most of such people avoid government work. Which unfortunately tends to leave the jobs to those who do have a drive to power.
In order to get that level of strictness, in any case, you need very few rules and a small government. A large government must needs be weak, only a small one can be strong. An example of this is the Secret Service, which is a small organization and has an extremely limited scope of power. Yet, one does expect that publicly stating a threat against the president will get you a visit. Strict!
"People" aren't really going to demand anything but what their sort of person does; in any case, everyone exercises power and requires power. It's always a matter of finding the person fit for the power. As for worries about sociopathy, perhaps you should look into the sort of person most able to manipulate others for the purpose of winning popularity contests. In a real sense, sociopathy is what the people often demand, without realizing it.
Perhaps they are exercising a particular power they are not fit for? Voting among people you know personally is one thing, having to know psychological profiles of people you've never seen and will likely never know? It would require divine intelligence, wouldn't it?
Disagree RC. You need dreamers/fixers tempered by the fiscally responsible, just like in any successful organization of any kind, from families to businesses to China.
My example is that internationally, traffic law enforcement varies as does the quality of public road systems. In African countries the auto death rate is ten times that of northern Europe. In high speed Germany the death rate is a third that of the USA. Guess where law enforcement and public infrastructure is best?
Most people are too busy or tribalized to look into who their candidates really are. I don't think that "Lying Ted" or "Sloppy Steve" would have been tolerated by the Greatest Generation. So even in short time spans cultures do change.
Psychological profiles are easy, if one just reads the Bible. You'd think that Matthew 7:16-20 would be very easy for most to understand. But based on the evidence, apparently not.
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