Hearts and Art

November 30, 2008

Over the last century, we’ve seen a breakdown in traditional systems of art, literature and music. In art, we’ve seen the death of the artist striving to put his message before the world and the rise of the artist creating something to be seen solely in the eye of the beholder. The thrill of art used to be the thrill of discovery – of realizing, at last, what the artist was saying and identifying with his message. Now, art promotes narcissism – what do you see in this Coke can? Remove the artist from the art, and you have nothing but an endless series of Rorschach tests hung in museums and sold for thousands of dollars.

With the rise of rampant subjectivism in art, it is harder and harder for art to evoke deep emotion in its audience: The audience has to do all the work. As viewer Anna Brook, age 22, told me, “Great art needs to evoke a feeling, to connect to the inner being; this was interesting from an engineering standpoint, but nothing else. There was no connection to the human condition, as there is in the art of a Michelangelo or Renoir. It was well worth seeing, but it wasn’t great art.”

Other forms of art have similarly discarded age-old systems in favor of subjectivism or at least purposeful inscrutability dictating subjectivism.

The need for subjectivism dictates that rigorous rules be cast aside. Paintings don’t have to look like anything. Music doesn’t have to sound like anything. Literature doesn’t have to say anything. Because, you see, the art, the music, the literature – it’s all within you.

Of course, rampant subjectivism didn’t stop with art. Over the last century, traditional morality has been discarded in favor of personal morality. Subjectivism in art means the death of art; subjectivism in morality means the death of a functioning society.

Amorality – the lack of objective moral standards applicable to everyone – quickly devolves into immorality. Even supposedly private actions have externalities; if everyone has his or her own set of rules, the externalities become endless. If millions are harming and being harmed, all in the name of personal autonomy without limits, chaos becomes inevitable. The only solution is state control or open anarchy. It is the Hobbesian war of all against all. Only hang-ups about the virtues of democracy prevent such war from becoming open.

Benjamin Shapiro, 20, is a recent graduate of UCLA and the author of the new book, ” Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth .”

If a 20 year old can see it so easily and clearly why can’t all the so-called experts? Can ANYONE point to a true art masterpiece of the last decades? I mean Masterpiece, with a capital M, not the multi-million $ junk that hangs in avant-garde art galleries or brik-a-brack “sculptures” that unashamedly occupy living space? And don’t get me started about the music of our times, because it may be called a lot of names, but not music. And please spare me that tastes are subjective and relative. Whatever, it sounds like junk to me. “We have gone a long way, baby,” just like the infamous advertisement declared. A long way, yes, it is undoubtedly true. What they forget to mention is the little word “DOWN,” as in “a long way, DOWN.” And I include whatever passes for Christian music these days, but that is another subject which we have handled elsewhere in this site.

The culture of a nation reveals the spirit of that nation. The U.S.A., by virtue of their dominant position, have polluted the whole wide world with their immoral entertainment business and their bankrupt cultural production, all that accomplished with formidable stealth in a modern day rendition of the Trojan horse.

These days we are all aware of “trojans” malaware which infiltrates our computers under pretended spoils. These trojans which hide in desirable programs or utilities people unwittingly download, once they are inside a computer start to do what they were programmed for by their malevolent creator:

A program that appears legitimate, but performs some illicit activity when it is run. It may be used to locate password information or make the system more vulnerable to future entry or simply destroy programs or data on the hard disk. A Trojan is similar to a virus, except that it does not replicate itself. It stays in the computer doing its damage or allowing somebody from a remote site to take control of the computer. Trojans often sneak in attached to a free game or other utility.

The Trojan Horse

Trojan comes from Greek mythology, in which the Greeks battled the Trojans (people of Troy). After years of being unable to break into the fortified city, the Greeks built a wooden horse, filled it with soldiers and pretended to sail away. After the Trojans brought the horse into the city, the Greek soldiers crept out at night, opened the gates of Troy to the returning soldiers, and Troy was destroyed.

PCMAG.com – Encyclopedia

The valorous Trojans foolishly carried the wooden horse
inside their city as a spoil and a highly desirable and magnificent work of art, without minimally stopping to think about any possible danger to them and their city. And after a ten year-long siege and war they should have exercised more caution and attention.
In like fashion, the USA, under the pretense of modernity, freedom, democracy, equality, emancipation, social development, broadminded liberalism, peace, love and all that, have downloaded upon an unsuspecting world a growing stream of immorality and filth
to which seemingly there is no end. Their Trojan Horse, however, is not a made of wood, but of real flesh and blood stars, superstars, starlets and would-be-stars, at whose famous names and faces the world bows down. Why, even in Moslem countries you can watch the latest soap or serial or reality made in the USA. They are the vehicle trough which any and all taboos have been gradually made acceptable and even desirable and woe is you if peradventure you dare criticize or launch a warning. All is relative, all is permittable, all is OK, all is fun. A recent article on an Italian newspaper reported that the police went to arrest a young man for internet activities of pedophilia. To the shock of the arresting officers, the young man while resisting arrest was yelling at them that they were infringing upon his rights, namely that he had a RIGHT to view whatever pleased him. In other times, he would have risked lynching.

Now, after allowing this modern Trojan horse into our own cultures, we are receiving the bitter fruitt: erasure or downsizing of local culture and the assimilation of such wonderful American customs like abortion, marital infidelity, divorce, fornication, sexual perversity, drugs, stress and mental disorders, disease and so on. Like it or not, people learn from what they see and when you see filth handed to you with a laugh track, one’s resistance is gradually broken down. The most moral person, when continuously subjected to filth, will begin to feel that it is not such a bad thing after all. Why, it’s on TV, everybody does it, it’s not so bad, life is now …!

Someone may object that filth and immorality has been in existence well before America was founded and that is very true. However America has made it its business to glorify and spread it all over the world. No country can surpass America’s wizardry at film making or its TV series and soaps. If you live in a country other than the USA, just observe how many Hollywood movies are playing in your city or how many American TV programs you can watch on your local TV.

In closing, a consideration: The people of Troy got their horse for free. Not so with Hollywood, you got to pay and pay to watch their filth.

and a clarification:

I am NOT anti-American, so, please, spare me. I am simply sorry for its present sorry state which no President can fix.

If my people , which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

2CH 7:14

About these ads