The End of Civilisation
sunnuntai kesäkuu 13, @01:41, Barry Smith
Yhdysvaltalaisen filosofin kommentti.
Human beings have a formidable capacity for greatness,
and this capacity is magnified where human beings are
competing with each other to do good. Whether this be
in the area of athletics, of artistic creativity, of
scientific invention, or of finding new ways to
satisfy the needs and desires of their fellow human
beings by manufacturing goods for sale.
The high art of the Renaissance was a reflection, in
no small part, of the competition among the small
Italian city states for status and glory. The great
cultural achievements of Europe were are a reflection,
too, of competition between Europe's constituent
nations. Adolescents can be motivated to greatness by
competing with their fellows in mathematics olympiads
or in singing contests.
But human beings have a formidable capacity for evil,
and this capacity, too, is magnified where human
beings are competing with each other to do bad. In
normal circumstances such competition is kept in check
-- by the force of law or powerful social stigma. But
such checks occasionally break down.
Currently in many cities of Europe the buildings --
even the ancient buildings of Rome -- are becoming
smeared with graffiti, a problem which apparently no
one has the will to do anything about. (Rudy Giuliani
where are you when we need you?)
This progressive destruction comes about because
adolescent males are competing with each other to
shine by producing the most conspicuous, brutal,
monstrous, thoughtless mark on buildings themselves
marked by high visibility. From day to day the problem
gets worse. Nowadays, in Rome, even the cars are
beginning to be sprayed with paint. How did we reach
this point? How did we allow the respect for visual
beauty to decay so far that the most conspicuous and
often the most beautiful visible surfaces of our world
are being gradually destroyed?
Artists, surely, bear at least part of the blame.
Artists were once the standard-bearers of visual
beauty. They have allowed their mission in this
respect to become corrupted to the point where visual
beauty is regarded as being not simply irrelevant but
indeed as contrary to artistic achievement, which is
nowadays measured largely in terms of brutality.
Artists compete amongst themselves to imitate the
worst tendencies of adolescent males when it comes to
proving how cussedly imaginative they can be in
overturning the values of their parents. Where
undisciplined pigs are smearing with spray paint the
external walls of public buildings, the internal walls
of the same buildings are being smeared in no less
brutal fashion by their elders.
As the case of witch burning, or the Rwanda massacres
show, there are episodes in history where human beings
go off the rails. We in the West are enjoying one such
phase today, with adults competing with each other in
attempting to establish who can perform the most
disgusting acts -- and have other adults call it 'art'
while still keeping a straight face.
Barry Smith, PhD
Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and
Medical Information Science, University of Leipzig
Julian Park Distinguished Professor of Philosophy,
University at Buffalo, NY (USA)
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