As it is wants, needs and desires that by their being an addiction,
bring damage to both ourselves and society……. what better way to
understand this by the ism of capitalism. We see that in capitalism
is the lower instincts that are taken as our template for who we are as human
beings…greedy, lustful addicts that demand our daily fix of whatever is
for sale today……. we are what we buy… and we buy junk to fulfill our
addiction to materialism………This explains why ART is so unimportant these
days… we no longer have the eyes to see ART as something that can change
our perception of the world or who we are… we go to ART exhibits to
see famous ART, not to get a new understanding of the world or an
understanding of who we are. I recall seeing the Mona Lisa in Paris…
We arrived fairly early and waited in line and once we got into the Louvre
museum, we headed toward the stairs toward the Mona Lisa, but there is a
very famous statue of Nike of Samothrace on the staircase itself and I didn’t even
realize that it was there…so we paused to see this statue, all the while
people were racing past us and I mean running and they were running to get
to the Mona Lisa first. You have to get by some pretty good art to get to the room
where the Mona Lisa is, but these people didn’t care about that… the goal was
to be able to say, “I saw the Mona Lisa in person” It wasn’t about whether
the Mona Lisa was good art or bad art, that didn’t matter… it was about
being able to claim an experience, not the art itself…….and few even realize
that on the other side of the Mona Lisa is a very good painting…but the goal
isn’t seeing ART and/or experiencing ART… it was about boast to come, not the ART.
ART be it painting or sculptures or novels or poetry or architecture, when you
look at ART, what do you see?
In our capitalistic, materialistic culture, ART is devalued, negated because
it cannot be bought and sold like our TV sets or our cars… you can buy
a copy of the Mona Lisa but why? Art doesn’t feed our addiction to materialism…
and for an addict, it is always about the next fix and insofar as ART isn’t
able to feed your fix, what value does it have?
Capitalism is about feeding your lower base instincts of greed and lust
hate or anger, in fact, capitalism isn’t about if something is good or bad
or dangerous or pretty. Capitalism is about making the sale, making money,
and not about values that bring us closer to our being human, really human, not just
animals that can only act upon our instincts……
the only value that capitalism has is money… everything else is unimportant,
negated………… we are matter and energy… what does money mean
to us when we are the same material as the universe itself…….
everything we can buy is the same as us, matter and energy…
but ART is something beyond matter and energy… it tells us something
about the matter and energy that the universe is made of… it tells
us about the possibilities of being human…
so what does ART mean to you?
Kropotkin