Bullet thoughts on a broad topic:
- Culture has a cyclical life, with birth, maturity, death, and rebirth.
- “Golden Ages” typically happen during cultural maturity.
- Separations of people into classes are strongest before cultural death.
- Revolutions, or death/rebirth phases of culture, come about in response to class separation.
- The democratic fight is on the side of the people taken as a whole.
- The hegemonic fight is on the side of the ruling class.
- A cultural “Golden Age” is defined as the time when developments in intellect are successfully disseminated across a large percentage of the populous.
- The ruling class typically is responsible for this development and dissemination.
- The majority of the populous is mediocre and lazy.
- …
- Crap. What a conclusion.
- By this token, revolutions are mostly setbacks to cultural development.
- Is art created during the death/rebirth of culture less developed than art created during cultural maturity?
- It cannot be that Polykleitos’ Doryphoros is a higher work of art than De Kooning’s Woman I. The former is a distilled formula, the latter is a banner for a new world order.
- Perhaps we must see art not as a higher form of the intellect to be grasped, but as an actor who is in constant need of new roles, and is never allowed to practice.
- Art is the most talented person we know, who has a knack for meeting the moment. Our job is simply to challenge it with unprecedented moments.
- …
- Art must never develop.
- …
- We must be so much more urgent with art than we consider possible.
- We must make the target move too fast to hit, then we must attempt to hit it.
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