ART FOR ART’S SAKE, MONEY FOR GOD’S SAKE

 

Business as usual - art for art's sake, money for God's sake 

Some would argue that our modern society has adapted to a working paradigm whereby technology allows more flexible accessibility and interaction and that this is just the way it is, it's progress and we should be cool with all that. 

To a large degree, of course, I am. I don't fight it. I tend to embrace it. Most of us do and why not?  

But by the same token, the focus toward a value system that not only honours this paradigm - it worships it and feeds it above all else, is, in my view, paradoxically tragic. 

That society and our technological "advancements" encourage creativity of a particular type, the sausage factories that are our educational systems are still geared to create conformist consumers, adherents to the revised system of commerce, the one we know is grossly inequitable and serves primarily the upper echelons of society to the degree that it's punitive to those attempting to navigate the lower rungs. 

Yet this system of commerce and technological social interaction is favoured ahead of all else. When a government reviews its fiscus and repeatedly concludes its national deficit is a yardstick by which a failing economy is measured, no cogent wide-view picture is acknowledged despite the manifestly cyclical eddy and flow that should serve as reminders that perhaps the value system is somehow flawed. 

What I'm trying to say is that modern commerce has been shown time and again to be a manipulative game controlled by the few with inevitably disastrous consequences when the few become even greedier than is the so-called norm, overextend their exposure in a variety of ways until apprehensive system investors pull back and the system simply hasn't the liquidity to sustain any form of mass withdrawal. The crashes in the home loan market in the US, the Greek debacle, the banking crash in the UK are all stark reminders of how a debt-driven economy based around futures and hypothetical money is at best unsustainable and at worst, egregiously flawed maintaining "management" of that debt rather than attempting to revise the approach that nullifies that debt or presents a system based on credit and reward. Y'know - don't you remember how you were brought up to gain benefit from services rendered and pocket money was paid in exchange then you bought stuff when you could afford it. If you couldn't, you didn't. There was a sound, logical premise built into this methodology. Then - boom - hit the workplace, the "real" world and you're only viable if you've ever been or are in debt - everything your parents taught you not to do - it was wrong. And it is. It will always be. 

We stare like so many rabbits into the oncoming headlights as these events unfold before us, seemingly helpless and bemused, not only by the catastrophe that's occurred, but by the fact that the orchestrators of the fuck up, those entrusted custodians of the global financial system, escape unscathed and as if the system, filled with jargonised gobbledegook hasn't already confused the hell out of us, the banksters, fraudsters, criminals - call them what you will - are given a free pass, bailed out and even rewarded for their gross, greed-fuelled incompetence. 

Had any small time businessman in the private sector behaved in this manner, he'd have been stitched up and prosecuted, fined and most likely imprisoned for his crimes. 

Not so the banksters. 

Again, flying in the face of the ethical morality with which we were brought up. But hey - that's business....but it shouldn't be. 

We see a similar paradigm at work in our fabulously technologically advanced medical system, unarguably driven and controlled by the pharmaceutical conglomerates to the degree that we no longer promote wellness and health but encourage management of symptomatic conditions, ironically oftentimes the result of simply existing in the system - ensure the consumers are as beholden to the medical system as they are to the financial one, in fact, the systems are deliberately and emphatically linked to assure continued, repeat compliance.  The medical system is, therefore, geared to maintain sickness ensuring obscene profitability as we succumb to its onerous weight, sadly enforced on behalf of stakeholders, by ordinary citizens in their slavish belief that this is the way, the only way it can and should work. 

It simply isn't but if we haven't recognised this by now enough to initiate a silent rebellion against these inequitable, unhealthy and insidious models then it's hard not to conclude that we deserve exactly what we get. 

We have stopped being critical and asking critical questions. The result - our financial  and "health" systems continue to fail at a horrifying cost both human and monetarily. 

Regardless of one's stance on vaccines, what should also be firing warning flares into the sky and lighting it up for all to see, is the business model that's been created to protect an industry that now manufactures at least ten times the quantity of vaccines (for everything under the sun and moon and stars) than it did when I was a child and at exponentially higher cost - they are exempt from liability when these drugs inflict injury upon people as they unarguably do (in increasing incidence as verified by vaccine injury compensation payouts over the last three decades). The compensation fund draws zero dollars from the makers of the drugs - it's maintained and replenished purely from compulsory taxpayer deductions, which makes it the most despicable piece of legislation imaginable. 

Imagine buying a lead-painted toy that poisons your child, reducing him/her to suffer permanent irreversible impairment and when you try to sue the company who made the offending article, you can't. You have to petition an obscure division of government to pay you out from the revenue they've secured through the Sales Tax on toys i.e. - your money. But you are required to fund all of your legal expenses up to the time of ruling anyway, a ruling which may not go your way in any event. We all know what a fickle beast the law is, do we not. 

The toy maker carries on regardless and continues to sell the poisonous toys - untouched and untouchable. That's how the vaccine industry model works. 

Again, try that in the private commercial sector and you'd be hauled off for collusion and protectionist practices and thrown in jail. Not so in the pharma model. It's business as usual. 

What sparked this chain of thought along was the ongoing reassertion that when an economy falters in any so-called democracy (read: capitalistic society), the first budget cuts to be made are usually within the arts and cultural sectors, which must surely suggest that these are areas of human endeavour that aren't essential to our existence. And while, superficially, it may appear that way, I have to ask - what then is our society attempting to nurture and preserve for now and for generations to come if not our creative expression? Can it be true that art, culture and the humanities have no intrinsic value to our communities and that weaponry, the rise of the machines/technology and the need to have corporate-rewarded, annuity based development run by an elitist sliver is what defines us now and for posterity? 

It may be that future generations will smirk derisively at museum pieces exhibiting washing machine sized computer drives of 40MB capacity, brick-sized mobile phones and various other obsolete contrivances to which we were addicted on our path to - what exactly? 

What will they be saying about the decline of fine art and sculpture as we became increasingly immersed in e-creativity, requiring a differing set of skills and an electrically powered medium with which to view it? Will anything of that ilk even exist? Will anyone even care? 

The fundamental premise of translating what begins as imagination into something manifestly and tactilely real through the use of our hands and tools (and yes, of course computers and 3D printers are fabulous tools) is dying and this demise is being encouraged by the system, our governments and the societies in which we live. 

The alternative we continue to support is simply a model that rewards our ongoing and growing consumerist addictions, lauding fickle, unnecessary commercialism and seducing us into buying tons of shit we don't need and which has no long term societal value whatsoever. 

I don't know about you but to me, a Gaugin or a da Vinci or a Van Gogh or a Ming Dynasty vase, a megalithic stone carving still captivates, enchants and transcends generations in ways that speaks to the nature of the people and the societies that created them. In ways that our own technology doesn't do. We can explain in mind churning detail how we made stuff but not exactly why we made it - except generally purely for amusement. 

Roger Waters so sagely observed:  "This species has amused itself to death."

Child labour sweat shops in the Far East churning out smart phones for consumers, ranging in variety from coke-snorting executives in glass towers to barefooted, tragically impoverished tribesmen in deepest Africa, speaks volumes about our contemporary society. Not how clever we are but how out of whack we are with our environment and the global population's real needs. Not that communicability isn't vital in all communities but in many instances the prestige and novelty values weigh in heavily ahead of other priorities and corporations invest billions in mobile networks more concerned about profit than funding essential infrastructure to maintain community health and wellbeing. I've certainly seen this all over Africa. 

I shudder when I consider that's probably how we'll be remembered. 

I say, bring the colour back to our lives. Support the arts. Engage in the arts and come to realise just how much value our creative expression means in terms of our presence as a species on this planet. If I'm to be remembered at all, I'd much rather it was as a result of a drawing or a poem I'd created than a smartphone I once owned that I handed down in my will...wouldn't you? 

End of rant. 

Peace and joy, people.