Culture

Culture invitation Art is not just about enjoyment. Another quality is even more important: the underlying meaning which degrades or uplifts. Works of art can injure and shatter, or they can heal and inspire. Without a way of distinguishing between low and high culture, we are adrift.

Problem Actual situaiton Questions Insights Vision

Our goal is to reach a nonarbitrary vision that will help us create Requests for the places we use, Collaborative, provocative, Actions, and Visionary News to make all this self-evident.

HERE ARE ENSHRINED THE LONGING OF GREAT HEARTS AND NOBLE THINGS THAT TOWER ABOVE THE TIDE THE MAGIC WORD THAT WINGED WONDER STARTS THE GARNERED WISDOM THAT HAS NEVER DIED Brooklyn Public Library

An Invitation is waiting for you inside...

Presenting the problem Addiction to mass spectator activities, such as television, internet, movies and sports, is the everyday way we participate in oblivion.

They contribute to power and prestige mongering, superficiality, degradation, pleasure-seeking. They are appropriate ground for action, because they make global social problems possible. We can address any one of these issues at the personal level.

“There is pollution in our consciousness. Television, for instance, is a form of pollution for us and for our children. Television sows seeds of violence and anxiety in our children, and pollutes their consciousness, just as we destroy our environment by chemicals, tree-cutting, and polluting the water. We need to protect the ecology of the mind.” Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step “A large part of the population, literate or subliterate, indoctrinated by the mass media, reinforced by the more fashionable leaders in schools, colleges, and museums, accepts this madhouse ‘art,’ not only as a valid expression of our meaningless and purposeless life— as in one sense it actually is—but as the only acceptable existential approach to reality.” Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine “American popular culture is in a free fall, with the bottom not yet in sight... There is an eager and growing market for depravity, and profitable industries devoted to supplying it. Much of such resistance as there is comes from people living on the moral capital accumulated by prior generations.” Robert Bork

Questions How does a work of art address what is most important?

“Well, what do these two men [Homer and Shakespeare], centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us of conviction respecting what it most behooves that intelligence to grasp? What is their hope – their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest – any redemption to our misery?” The Genius of John Ruskin,

Actual situation “Contemporary life in industrial societies operates almost entirely with such simple stimuli. What is stimulated are such drives as sexual desire, greed, sadism, destructiveness, narcissism; these stimuli are mediated through movies, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the commodity market.” Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness “The prevailing sensibility of the video culture is that of surrealism: the project of blowing the lid off civilization through abrupt releases of irrational, libidinous energy.” Martha Bayles, Hole In Our Soul

Insights “The value of culture is its effect on character. It avails nothing unless it ennobles and strengthens that. It’s use is for life. It’s aim is not beauty but goodness. Too often as we know, it gives rise to self-complacency. Who has not seen the scholar’s thin-lipped smile when he corrects a misquotation, and the connoisseurs pained look when someone praises a picture he does not care for. There is no more merit in having read a thousand books than in having plowed a thousand fields. There is no more merit in being able to attach a correct description to a picture, than in being able to find out what is wrong with a stalled motorcar.” Somerset Maughum “All things carry a surplus of meaning over being – they mean more than what they are in themselves. Even finite facts stand for infinite meaning. It is as if all things were vibrant with spiritual meaning, and all we try to do in creative art and in good deeds is to intone the secret strain, an aspect of that meaning.” Abraham Heschel, Man is Not Alone

“A good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Sign over the entrance to the New York Public Library reading room.

New York Public Library

Vision “We gauge culture by the extent to which a whole people, not only individuals, live in accordance with the dictates of an eternal doctrine or strive for spiritual integrity; the extent to which inwardness, compassion, justice and holiness are to be found in the daily life of the masses.” Abraham Heschel Foster a careful, actively benevolent love “Every day and every hour, every minute, walk round yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. You pass by a little child, you pass by with ugly and spiteful words, with wrathful heart; you may not have noticed the child, but he has seen you, and your image, revolting and godless, may remain in his defenseless heart. You don’t know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him and it may grow, all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself a careful, actively benevolent love.” Feodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov “To the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealist tendency.” Original Nobel Prize document

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Social project: Beautiful Books Visit Implications for more culture Requests

‘Banned Books week’ is a national event that celebrates freedom of speech and condemns censorship. Beautiful Books compensates for the harmful effects of Banned Books by defending the idea that some books are better than others. In a world where tolerance and open-mindedness are valued as mightily as they are, suggesting that we ought to concentrate on what is good rather than in the value of everything might appear to be radical.

We don't support the censorship of ideas. Government should protect the free expression of ideas. We are not calling for government action. Our most effective tool is moral confrontation, backed up by moral authority earned from integrity, and by rebuking or applauding those who stock our libraries and theaters with vile or valuable material.

In any venue where Banned Books Week is used to promote the culture of radical tolerance, Beautiful Books can highlight intellectual and artistic works that are meaningful, elevating, or profound.

We can fight back against degrading, mediocre and meaningless art, mainly through the positive presentation of beautiful works.

This event should take place at all of the sites and 'venues' that are being propagandized by Banned Books week. Activities may include: discussion of the importance of standing up for beautiful works of art; readings of inspired works, past and present; and actions to support the dominance of good over harm.

High level Expresses these transcendent qualities: beauty, truth, good, love, and the sacred.

Nourishes these personal qualities: Purity, depth, inwardness, awareness, holiness, integrity, honesty, faith, compassion, commitment, care, autonomy.

Effect: Recognizes your whole self, and calls you to your higher nature.

Mediocre level Magnification of the profane, superficial, and material. Life is entertainment, and art is distraction from what is transcendent and eternal. Ignorant, one-sided, and ideological.

Personal qualities: Greed, narcissism, self-interest, hard-heartedness, isolation, and sanctimony.

Effect: Diminishes the ability to perceive realities outside of oneself.

Insensitivity.

Low level Appeals to these realities: the ugly, the false, hatred, and evil.

Magnifies these personal qualities: bigotry, destructiveness, and sadism.

Effect: Destruction of the capacity to see what is good: Degradation and nihilism. “Begin, Experience, Seek, Hope, Explore, Dream, Inquire, Imagine, Discover, Create, Transcend, Become.�

Steps at entrance to Portland, Oregon Public Library

Invitation Put good into your mind.

Do not waste your life on trivial pursuits.

Defend the gentle virtues (purity, gentleness, affection, beauty, humility, vulnerability, and simple goodness) Implications.org Take account what you use, with Ratings, Information and Action. Include movies, television, Internet, books, music, performances, paintings, etc. Support works that address the real needs and longings of our shared humanity. Stand up against superficiality, manipulation, and degradation. Ask for meaning at any cultural event.

Explore the meaning of Culture in a Visionary Society Topic Accept this invitation! Go to www.visionarysociety.org/ culture/invitation A project of Visionary Society www.visionarysociety.org/culture