Can America be "great" without great culture?

[Tim Randal Walker]

I have come to lower my expectations. Now I hope to find material that is fairly good. (Note the qualifier fairly).

That is minimum level of quality for material worth passing on to future generations.

[David Horn]

(02-25-2019, 11:38 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I have come to lower my expectations.  Now I hope to find material that is fairly good.  (Note the qualifier fairly).  

That is minimum level of quality for material worth passing on to future generations.

Really high quality is now reserved for the 1%, and even then, the best is still reserved for a small fraction of them.  I had the pleasure (?) of browsing in a very upscale car dealership about a year ago.  There was nothing so gauche as a price sticker anywhere, but I know enough about cars to be certain that nothing cost less than $250,000.  Was the quality there?  Absolutely!  Was it my quality to enjoy? Of course not -- unless being a voyeur can be considered enjoyment.

[Eric the Green]

(02-24-2019, 06:04 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: l never really expected greatness in modern culture/arts.  Maybe because I grew up watching television, which has been primarily a medium for advertising.  

In general, I have hoped for material that reaches  the level of good quality-but never greatness.  Actually, over the years even good quality seemed to get harder and harder to find.

I did expect this, because there was an Awakening that was inspiring. There was hope that the doors of perception had opened for many people. So, the potential for great art today comes not only from new technology, but even more from the new awakening, and some of that was due to technology for opening the mind, known as psychedelics.

It all depended on the people, what they did with this awakening. Did we follow a spiritual path? Did it open up philosophy and inquiry into the human condition? Could some of this new sensitivity and inquiry be expressed in the arts? Could it be great art?

It didn't happen, not very much; not as much as I thought it might. I enjoy what did come. I still think more can come. The Awakening remains open to everyone, anytime, to those who do not ignore it or put it down, to those who open their minds beyond the dominant, out-of-date materialist and technology-worship paradigms of our time.

If most of the art in our culture is not great or not even very good, that's ONLY because the predominant values and preoccupations of the people don't support and honor it.

We can look to the pre-awakening past; to the golden age of movies and big band music; to the promising trends in art a century ago; to the romantic, neoclassical, baroque, renaissance, medieval, classical, and archaic ages and wonder and learn about all the great expressions in art of spirit and discovery, and supported by the patrons and rulers of the past, all over the world east and west, north and south. We have more access to this than any people has ever had. 

But if this past art does not inspire us to greatness, does not encourage us to take our contemporary awakening that opened the doors of perception, and make something lasting of it, then we are not fulfilling our potential. We can; we are not inferior to people in the past. Our creative juices and intuitions are available to us, and have been opened. We have more opportunity than any people has ever had to live well, and to communicate our visions, sensitivity and discoveries.

[Eric the Green]

(02-26-2019, 02:55 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-25-2019, 11:38 AM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I have come to lower my expectations.  Now I hope to find material that is fairly good.  (Note the qualifier fairly).  

That is minimum level of quality for material worth passing on to future generations.

Really high quality is now reserved for the 1%, and even then, the best is still reserved for a small fraction of them.  I had the pleasure (?) of browsing in a very upscale car dealership about a year ago.  There was nothing so gauche as a price sticker anywhere, but I know enough about cars to be certain that nothing cost less than $250,000.  Was the quality there?  Absolutely!  Was it my quality to enjoy? Of course not -- unless being a voyeur can be considered enjoyment.

Cars are not culture. The question is only can we open to what is available to us, as I described above? It is so vast, so rich. It is available to each and every one of us. We all have access to libraries, the internet, television and radio, netflix and multi-media, galleries, schools, travel; we can see and be inspired by it all. We have access to human potential classes and gurus, to spiritual literature, to any kind of teacher you want. All the sciences, all the learning is available to us. We can experience it, and we can contribute to it too.

In the sixties, the Beatles inspired countless thousands to form bands. Just regular young people like us. By 1966 these bands were everywhere, and they were inspired and opened by the awakening. It was a mini-renaissance. This can happen again at any time, in any field. We can all contribute to the new renaissance today. Out of this culture, some great artists will arise. They come out of the whole field of creative talent and tradition, not out of nowhere.

I've been feeling it since 1966, might be over now, but I feel it still!





I'm so happy when a song like this comes along. Like this one below came along ....

[Eric the Green]

(02-25-2019, 09:18 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-24-2019, 06:04 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: l never really expected greatness in modern culture/arts.  Maybe because I grew up watching television, which has been primarily a medium for advertising.  

In general, I have hoped for material that reaches  the level of good quality-but never greatness.  Actually, over the years even good quality seemed to get harder and harder to find.

Agreed.  Quality is around, but it finds only a limited audience.  Mediocre is much more successful.

That's more like what I think. It's up to us to appreciate and support quality. If more of us do it, then the mediocre will still be around and sell well, but it just won't matter. The quality around will grow.

[Tim Randal Walker]

Unfortunately, while I might get a glimpse of another Awakening (as a very old man), I have low expectations. We be 4T, and the next turning should be 1T. While I hope to see an-all-too-limited quantity of quality, I expect most material to be mediocre, if not outright junk.

[pbrower2a]

(02-26-2019, 04:04 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-25-2019, 09:18 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-24-2019, 06:04 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: l never really expected greatness in modern culture/arts.  Maybe because I grew up watching television, which has been primarily a medium for advertising.  

In general, I have hoped for material that reaches  the level of good quality-but never greatness.  Actually, over the years even good quality seemed to get harder and harder to find.

Agreed.  Quality is around, but it finds only a limited audience.  Mediocre is much more successful.

That's more like what I think. It's up to us to appreciate and support quality. If more of us do it, then the mediocre will still be around and sell well, but it just won't matter. The quality around will grow.

Do you realize what the competition was for Shakespeare's plays in the Bard's time?

Bear-baiting and drunken revelry.

The ancient Romans had a lively theater scene at the very time that they were casting Christians to "lions and tigers and bears".

The great artists do art out of the perception that their world is so empty, stale, and meaningless that the artists (including musicians and writers) must rescue their surroundings from its intellectual emptiness. Artistic talent without such a view of the philistine nature of Humanity often goes into engineering, advertising, and industrial design. Remember: Leonardo was a superb engineer.

By accident, drafting (a thoroughly practical activity) can become impressive art.

[pbrower2a]

(02-26-2019, 04:06 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: Unfortunately, while I might get a glimpse of another Awakening (as a very old man), I have low expectations.  We be 4T, and the next turning should be 1T.  While I hope to see an-all-too-limited quantity of quality, I expect most material to be mediocre, if not outright junk.

As frustrated as I am with the way things are, I recognize that for an awakening era to truly take off, the Idealists of the last Awakening must be off the scene. Yes, there were Idealists of the Missionary Generation who lived into the Bo0om  Awakening (among them Helen Keller, Samuel Goldwyn, Bertrand Russell, Pablo Picasso, and Igor Stravinsky), but by then the cultural achievements of the Missionary Generation were mostly fossilized.

[pbrower2a]

One thing that will have to change: the music that people listen to.






Nuance, wit, varied timbre, and a listener's intellectual involvement are poor investments.

[Hintergrund]

Michelangelo also had to work for people of questionable ethics, but this didn't stop him from creating truly great art.

[pbrower2a]

(03-01-2019, 08:46 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: Michelangelo also had to work for people of questionable ethics, but this didn't stop him from creating truly great art.

The High Renaissance was not an era of great moral rectitude. The Medici and Borgia families were not nice people, The Protestant Reformation, a contemporary event, had its focus on opposing the power of the Roman Catholic Church which was bleeding people outside of Italy to support the expensive art that extolled the majesty of the upper hierarchy of the RCC, so right there is a connection between the rapaciousness and selfishness of the Church hierarchy and a rebellion against that hierarchy. The so-called "Peter's Pence" was draining the peasant and the laborer in northern and western Europe.

I once heard a delightful madrigal by the composer Claudio Monteverdi -- and I looked at the lyrics and saw praise for a Renaissance prince, praise of the sort that one would expect of some fascist generalissimo or of some Party boss of a 'socialist' state. The personality cult is no novel phenomenon, and it wasn't then. A hint: the Roman emperors most despised in late antiquity as well as modern times (Nero, Caligula, and Commodus) made the most of the attributes of divinity in contrast to those that had their heads on straighter.

Moral rectitude? It took us moderns who had a taste of the Enlightenment to dispense with the idea that kings ruled by divine right, to abolish slavery and peonage, to give women the right to vote, to recognize drunken revelry as a disaster for families whose husbands drank up the wages upon which the family depended, to get children out of the factories and mines and into schools, to recognize freedom of conscience and the legal equality of people across ethnic and racial lines, and to recognize pacifism as an ideal. That is all modern.

[pbrower2a]

Here is what many people consider the worst music possible, at least if one has no desire to make an investment of time, to put up with nuance and wit (as much wit as old Anton could do). It grows on you, and it is completely unsuited to compression. It is definitely not modern; it clearly belongs to the expressive world of the late nineteenth century.    





This is part of how I reacted to the debasement of popular music.