There is a big danger in this line of thinking. Pretending like we don't need to inherit a lot from the previous generations, or from people who think different from us in our current time, is willful ignorance. Every wild-eyed utopian who has striven to rewrite all of the rules has tended to fail pretty badly and has also tended to bring a lot of other people down with'm as well.
We do not need ideologies that call for full breaks from the past any more than we need ideologies that offer no improvements.
Taking over from the previous generation and moving things in a new direction is something that should be carefully considered and by getting as much feedback as possible. If revolutionaries actually listened to the people around them, we'd have a much better world out there...
I'm afraid that current trends have done a lot of damage to a bunch of existing cultural institutions. An easy example of this for readers of this forum would be the music industry. It has been a full-on technological assault which fragmented everything. The sales, the business and the artists themselves were absorbed by Apple, Facebook, and Google and a select few other social networks.
Art needs to be on the outside looking in, so it can properly reflect on society. And art should find it's way in to everyone's hearts, no matter their profession or specialties, so don't think I'm just talking about musicians here. And even within the scope of the music industry the "slacker middle class musician who should just get a programming job" is a really easy target and a huge straw-man.
You're gonna have to go out and define the word "art" on your own terms. Funny enough, you actually have to go out looking for it, it's not just gonna be whatever you read on Wiktionary.
I'll give you a little hint though. Wanton destruction of our cultural heritage is pretty much going in the exact opposite direction.
Art is meaning, expressed. It's another matter that art isn't inherently profitable the way technology is, though.
I'm having trouble understanding your point, possibly due to my own ignorance. It sounds like an indictment against any unpopular change, which would imply society should be a pure democracy. But that seems far from desirable.
> We do not need ideologies that call for full breaks from the past any more than we need ideologies that offer no improvements.
I think that sums it up nicely.
As for art? It doesn't have to mean anything. Art, love, beauty, and truth are all different names and expressions of the same universal thing. Trying to define them is ultimately impossible because they live outside of human constructs like language, but we can FEEL them very easily. We know what love is but only the best artists can even come close to describing it for others.
You seem pretty hung up on binary answers and solutions for things. Well, I hate to break it to you buddy, but you're not gonna find any "one true solution". We need compromise and compassion to rule the day. We all need to understand that none of us silly little humans could possibly have the answers but that we can all FEEL the answers.
So no, I'm not arguing for pure democracy any more than I'm arguing for pure totalitarianism. I know, it's confusing and seemingly a paradox, but I think you're just pivoting off of the wrong thing. Look for the art, dude, look for the art.
We do not need ideologies that call for full breaks from the past any more than we need ideologies that offer no improvements.
Taking over from the previous generation and moving things in a new direction is something that should be carefully considered and by getting as much feedback as possible. If revolutionaries actually listened to the people around them, we'd have a much better world out there...
I'm afraid that current trends have done a lot of damage to a bunch of existing cultural institutions. An easy example of this for readers of this forum would be the music industry. It has been a full-on technological assault which fragmented everything. The sales, the business and the artists themselves were absorbed by Apple, Facebook, and Google and a select few other social networks.
Art needs to be on the outside looking in, so it can properly reflect on society. And art should find it's way in to everyone's hearts, no matter their profession or specialties, so don't think I'm just talking about musicians here. And even within the scope of the music industry the "slacker middle class musician who should just get a programming job" is a really easy target and a huge straw-man.
You're gonna have to go out and define the word "art" on your own terms. Funny enough, you actually have to go out looking for it, it's not just gonna be whatever you read on Wiktionary.
I'll give you a little hint though. Wanton destruction of our cultural heritage is pretty much going in the exact opposite direction.