ARTISTS AS HEROES
Art, truths and resistance
The world is messy, unsettled
with threats from oil magnates
and one of their spin-off product - the Climate Crisis;
with threats of at least two of the 56 wars* now being fought
spreading to Middle and Western Europe;
with expansionist atomic weapon rattling Putin;
and with deaf politicians
who refuse to take the neocons and neoliberals in hand,
forcing them to end the evil price jacking and covert austerity.
What we in the West have come to learn
from the extraordinary lives of Dante, Da Vinci and perhaps Goethe**
is that we can and should strive for a maximum of individuation.***
To do so we must develop a need to embrace
and to be embraced into a community.
In that way we can live a good, fulfilling existence.
In that existence we can embrace intimacy,
show kindness,
help others
and care for our beautiful planet.
In what seems like an intellectual and political wilderness,
where understanding and being able to value who we are
and what we can do
there is a desperate need for artists.
Why?
Because:
1
FRUITCAKES
The results of the US elections were foreseeable:
the selection of rapists, racists,
war mongering emotional unstable dictator loving Neo-Conservatives
and shyster**** businesspeople to represent the US
in its Diplomatic Corp
and to lead (read as ‘to limit and destroy’)
its safeguarding institutions.
So, if foreseeable why were so many suckered into supporting them?
A lack of imagination.
2
ILLNESS
Meanwhile so many more people in my circle of family,
friends and acquaintances are ill,
all too often with serious mental or physical problems
and several have died.
Of course we can attribute this to poverty,
to lack of knowledge or interest,
to the seduction of advertising –
which leads people to (for instance)
consume ultra processed foods.
In the UK it is thought to be
66% of the total population,
56.8% of total consumption for teens’,
and 47%. for an average toddler.
We know the dangers. They are clear.
Why does little happen to closedown production of these slow acting poisons
and to financially supplement mineral and vitamin rich organic foods
for all people?
Why is this hardly discussed?
What embrace of market freedoms can this possibly rationalise?
Perhaps a lack of imagination.
3
COP 29,
a desperate last chance to save the earth,
led by self-interested men from Azerbaijan
who rule an economy with 90% of its wealth from oil.
The academics, scientists, the medical professionals,
and even a handful of politicians and policy advisors
know the real problems.
Why do they bow to the multi-billionaire oil diggers?
Meanwhile climate campaigners have condemned the US government
after they, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter,
argued against the US being legally obliged
to combat the climate crisis.
This is more madness and a lack of imagination.
4
VALUES AND MORALITY
Some present critics
argue that there has been a demise of middleclass values and morality.
Really? Since when?
Read about how the first newly arisen middle classes
stole power from the newly arising artisans and working classes
of 15th century Florence.*****
Read about how they crushed them
and used their new professional armies to destroy resistance.******
Not a pretty story
but when you think through how the American and English middle classes
prostrated themselves to Regan’s and Thatcher’s introduction of neoliberalism,
to false dreams of a newly enriched dawn,
to the supposed generosity of the laughable trickle down theory
(which, led to the hovering-up of wealth from the working people
into the pockets of the wealthy).
For instance, quoted from Oxfam:
•”The richest one percent of the world’s population are responsible
for more than twice as much carbon pollution
as the 3.2 billion people who made up the poorest half
of humanity.”
•”The carbon footprint of the richest 1% of people on earth
is set to be 30 times greater than the level compatible with the 1.5 degree C
goal of the Paris Agreement by 2030.”
• “The poorest half of the global population
will still emit far below the 1.5°C agreed for 2030.”
We need help to imagine a better future.
5
JUSTICE
English justice moves like a feather in cold molasses.
We witness an injustice occur in society.
Newspapers howl “outrage”
while trying to demean the working people and innocent poor.
Politicians blame the other party
which blames judges
who blame the other political party
and round it goes for the next 15 years
while Sir this and Lord that take their time deciding what to do
(read as ‘how to kick the problem down the road
until everyone in power is dead’)
and we who see and sense the injustice
do nothing but rub our chins in despair.
Why do we not howl for justice?
6
RESPONSIBILITY
Look in the mirror
Who will stand up and be counted if not you?
Ask, ‘Do you really care
about the deteriorating condition of this beautiful planet?’
Ask, ‘Is the fate of others
all our fates, and also our children’s fate?’
Ask, ‘Do I expect the government alone
to change my country or can I?
Can I also be effective?
You have skills usable to help people living near you
to have a better life…to be less hungry, less frightened, less lonely.
You can claim your humanity loudly and clearly
that ‘I will help to make a better community
and therefore a better world?’
That my small change,
my one 8 billionth of the population’s contribution
will be fair
and a wonderful contribution to making a better world.’
7
Resilience
What will your children ask when forests are burning,
seas are swelling and skies are endlessly crying?
What will your hungry children ask
as crops are flooded or withered under a burning sun?
Will they remember how safe and trusting they felt in your arms
when they asked what you did at that critical time?
We are born into a world of oppression
mostly ruled, owned and operated by elderly men
who insist on nothing changing
that would threaten their power and wealth.
They are as Titans******* who have created a world of torment,
chains, walls, borders, battles
and now a world on the verge of destruction.
They have spun for us a worldview of myths,
using their media, advertising, education, the BIG LIE,
and distorted theories
as Darwin’s, Christ’s and Mohamad’s ideas about creation,
life and love.
The dying Titans have woven a world
of subjugated imaginations and narrow knowledge.
What is growing clearer is that we are living in the twilight of their world
which will commit untold damage before they are dispelled.
This is why, in our period
those heroes who are capable of escaping the oppression
and recognising it for what it does to them and us,
find ways to transform these unconscious realities
into visual, musical and literary beauty.
These shards of culture
are threatening to the dictators and their bankers,
are threatening to the trustworthiness of their armies
and to the steadfastness of their media.
They know that the rebels,
these heroes of our time,
must be absorbed by either being made rich and celebrated or silenced.
Sure, in some countries they arrest them,
in Russia they shoot them in the back of the head or poison them,
but in the US and the UK
they withdraw funding,
they block us from the theatre’s stages, the museum’s walls, or the concert halls.
They leave us to be overwhelmed in the digital world
by the millions of childish expressions of interests (likes)
in cats, sex, styles, asinine activities,
and new but meaningless or even more alienating techniques
which lead people into delusional worlds of meaningless chatter.
The dying Titans, these weary and worried old men
have led us into obscurity, “to have eyes but to not look”,
to have ears but not to listen”. ********
These are the signs of oppression,
but signs as well of what must be rebelled against
and it is rebelled against by anyone who is a genuine artist,
one who stands in the face of the unrecognised and identifies it,
one who renounces the Titan’s assumptions with deeper truths,
one who calls upon the Titans to reveal who and what they really are,
one who can show reality so clearly that the surface of things
becomes the two way mirror into which they see themselves reflected
upon the realities of the everyday world.
It is those who, in the face of an oppressive society
see freedom is part of who they are
and need to share it with others.
NOTES
*There are at the moment 56 wars between 92 nations at present:
there are 156 on-going conflicts including internal struggles
as in Myanmar, Syria, and Mexico.
**Dante, Da Vinci and perhaps Goethe
are artists who made the people of the western world
aware of their individuality being separate
from the impositions of religion
in which we are more than mere reflections of their God.
*** the process by which an individual becomes distinct, one’s own self
and more humane
**** Shyster is slang for someone who is disreputable, unethical,
especially in the practice of law, sometimes also politics or economics.
*****see the paintings of the late 16th century Italian painter Caravaggio’s
paintings. He was the first to use the workers and poor people of the streets
to model as saints in his religious paintings much to the ire of the middle classes
who paid for his work to adorn their homes and churches
representing them as the blessed.
******see the second volume of Arnold Hauser’s 4 volume SOCIAL HISTORY OF ART which provides a lucid material history of those class wars and how they were the background to the fine High Renaissance art that was then produced.
******* In Greek mythology the Titans were greater than the gods with whom they fought for eons . They ruled the universe with absolute power. In psychology this implies that previous to the creation of gods, humankind were already evil and violent.
********see ART AND THE CREATIVE UNCONSCIOUS by Erich Neumann.