Posted on 07/27/2012 4:42:37 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The past has after all this time finally moved ahead of the present.
[SNIP]
Culture implies growth, vitality. Teaming off the corpse of cultures long past suggests parasitic rot.
And if decay is where our creative community is at it is largely because our creative community resides in America, a nation living on the fumes of past glories as it puts its future further into debt. Borrowing, bailouts, and handouts indicate that people don't want to put in the work. Art imitates life.
Creativity requires creation. Too many artists today take instead of make. So more and more consumers shut their eyes and ears to current and rediscover an old program on Hulu, flip a classic into the DVD player, and download yesteryear on iTunes. Technology isn't the wave of the future but the undertow that drags us back into our past.
Dining on stale bread and generic mush isn't a healthy diet. American moviegoers, television junkies, and music lovers consume what eats away at their humanity. Bad art is bad for you.
Is it any wonder that the public prefers the actual past to the borrowed present?
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
And what does “teaming” (sic) with metaphors and cliches indicate? I mean, sheesh!
Maybe he meant to say “teeming”?
Maybe he meant to say “teeming”?
Perhaps if you read the body of the essay [linked] it would be clearer.
It’s the Baby Boomers. We’ve been stuck on over 50 years of rock and roll. A few years back, one of my friends was absolutely giddy because he was going to get to see The Rolling Stones. I was a kid in the 60s, but I remember how the teenagers made fun of Frank Sinatra and Glen Miller and any music not produced by electric guitars. Current American literature and poetry is the diary of the dysfunctional. It’s the MFAs reading each other’s books and telling each other how edgy they are. Painting? Sculpting? No concern for the audience and lazy. We Boomers are aging, though not well. As we pass from the scene, our self-centered, self-absorbed excuse for art will pass with us.
This is not an inspiring period in America’s culture. Crass porn does not fill in for love. Materialistic overdrive as an end unto itself, means nothing. Amorality is a starvation diet for the human spirit.
But don’t you think most of this infatuation with the past has a lot to do with America’s aging boomers? We are reliving a culturally cleansed version of the radical boomers’ 1960’s and 1970’s in a lot of ways.
The article is correct about creativity. Though I believe the one thing we have managed to create is a culture of hatred. That’s the kind of rot that warps the soul and kills innovation.
When people do not trust one another there will be no cooperation or vision. You look at the world and say why should I do these things that are only going to benefit those who hold me in contempt. No one wants to live as a hated slave.
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