Let us not pervert art into decadence. One must separate their hedonistic ethical practices from art.
I am referring to idolatry. The term seems kind of off, so instead of forcing on it a new meaning, I will just coin a new term: idolness. I am referring to idolness. It is the most genius, most powerful weapon humanity had thus created: the power to powerlessness, to the consent to weakness. Humanity's hedonistic values had been given the Excalibur to vanquish the demon king! Tied beautifully in a knot by none other than her holiness Aphrodite, through her beauty and love, weakness had then been ignored. It had been treated as a sort of inescapable human condition, an inevitable and impossible challenge, the tall, three-meter thick iron wall that is the originator of tragedy. The appreciation of art, the passionate cheerfulness, and the intoxicating will to support, can be traced back to the veneration of these two values. I call those who possess these two values as "idols", our contemporary idols. The affirmers of these values, they are to be called "fans" or more generally, "consumers". The idol-fan dynamics as itself should be no harm to us, my friends, but we should tread carefully, for this is a tightrope that one trip can very easily lead to our fall to decadence. I have tripped, and I assume that you have as well, but together we shall climb back up and restart our adventure towards the higher type of idolization. — Nagel
I share this sentiment, but let me explain why it doesn't matter, whether you believe that or not. If you're not an aesthetic realist, if you are an anti-realist that believes "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" then there is no true or actual conception of 'decadence' vs. art. There just isn't. — Dharmi
A crazy woman screaming hysterically is just as beautiful as the moonlight sonata unless there's an actual standard of beauty. — Dharmi
In modern times in which the loss of conscious attention and dominance of imagination is obvious, what can be done for people to realize what is being lost? Can a certain quality of art help humanity to "remember?" — Nikolas
I am concerned of how present idols (Singers, boy bands, K-pop artsist,...etc) are used as a sort of drug to intoxicate one away from the glory of the art (specifically, the it's pains and suffering) of life. — Nagel
↪Nikolas I see, thanks for sharing this to me.
I am concerned of how present idols (Singers, boy bands, K-pop artsist,...etc) are used as a sort of drug to intoxicate one away from the glory of the art (specifically, the it's pains and suffering) of life. I suppose this matches the notion of how people are driven away from the reality of life to images and dreams and illusions (regardless of whether it is for the supernatural or the modern artists).
In modern times in which the loss of conscious attention and dominance of imagination is obvious, what can be done for people to realize what is being lost? Can a certain quality of art help humanity to "remember?"
— Nikolas
This may be semantic, but my take on this is not that art has this certain quality, but that we do. It is up to us to view life as an aesthetic phenomenon and find how we can best appreciate it. — Nagel
Mainstream taste has never much differed from what I can see. Very few people choose high art over popular forms. — Tom Storm
But the real harm is the devolution of impartial conscious attention. This loss IMO supported by negative expressions for some reason called art, assures the gradual devolution of Man into its animal nature. — Nikolas
but that it's unhealthy. — Nagel
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. — Nikolas
But for Plato, that doesn't matter, does it? Humanses are ephemeral, but it's the ideas that are eternal, and this is all that matters.I wonder what the implications of the above sentence are for Plato's view that we're all chained to the floor of a cave, forced to perceive only the shadows of truth? If the mind itself is susceptible to and does create its own false reality, what hope do we have? — TheMadFool
As far as literature goes (and this has implications for other forms of art): Studying literary theory can go a long way in both demistifying art and in making one aware of one's place in relation to it (thus making it less likely that one will be a mindless consumer of it).not that it's absolutely wrong, but that it's unhealthy. Note that I am using the word 'escape' here, but escaping from what? Duties, work, personal problems,...etc. All forms of art have the capacity to sooth one from the daily frustrations of living, and it is that temptation to abandon one's real life situation for a pleasure-based consumption of art that I am concerned with. Reading a Shakespearean book /.../ — Nagel
Do you speak German? I don't know any English sources directly for this. — baker
For example, an introductory book like John Sutherland's How Literature Works: 50 Key Concepts can be very helpful for this. — baker
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