Neo-Tech Advantage #104: DESTRUCTIVE POETRY
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Neo-Tech Advantage #104
DESTRUCTIVE POETRY
VERSUS
VALID ART
Can poetry be destructive? Can poetry undermine romantic love?
Yes, most certainly. Some poetry (including song lyrics,
especially certain rock lyrics), if taken seriously, can have
powerful, mind-crippling effects that undermine a person's
integration capacities crucial for developing romantic-love
relationships. In addition, certain poetry can block personal
growth and prevent prosperity and long-range happiness from
developing.
Plato, whose philosophy has been utilized by the
anti-intellectuals, mystics, and neocheaters for the past 2300
years, was ironically the first to identify the harmful,
anti-intellectual nature of poetry. Plato recognized that the
sing-song, rhythmic nature of poetry set up automatic, hypnotic,
nonthinking patterns that unconscious people used to pass on
information which often sounded good or pleasant, but had little
or no validity, accuracy, or objective meaning. In other words,
through poetry, so-called knowledge or packages of "truth" could
be handily acquired and passed on with little conscious effort,
independent thinking, or regard to honesty. Poems and chants
established dogmatic patterns that blocked new or more accurate
ideas from developing.
Plato properly identified part of the problem with poetry, but his
philosophical dishonesties prevented him from identifying the
total problem. Poetry can be cast in what appears to be beautiful
gems or nuggets of packaged "truth" and knowledge from
"authorities". Those packaged "truths" are designed for
consumption in quick, convenient gulps. That gulping of "truths"
bypasses the analytical mental effort required to integrate
information and assess its validity through one's own mind.
Determining the accuracy or validity of any information requires
analytical integration of facts and information within a full,
accurate context. But poetry and song lyrics effortlessly bypass
the demanding thinking and integration processes needed to
accurately identify objective reality. In that way, poetry and
lyrics subvert the effectiveness of the mind. Most poetry and
lyrics, no matter how beautiful, right, and "true" they sound
(that being their seductive nature) cannot be substituted for
honesty or facts any more than good-sounding slogans or
parables[ 79 ] can be substituted for honesty or facts.
Furthermore, cleverly used poetry and lyrics can be powerfully
effective tools for rationalizing laziness, dishonesty, injustice,
mysticism, and neocheating.[ 80 ]
Most poetry if taken seriously (especially emotional or
"beautiful" poetry that lacks an objective base), not only
undermines a person's ability to make independent judgments but
diminishes one's capacity to think objectively about crucial
matters. That, in turn, decreases one's ability to achieve
prosperity, psychuous pleasures, and long-range happiness. In
other words, certain poetry or song lyrics taken as packaged
"truth" will bypass the independent, in-context thinking processes
required to make the integrations and decisions necessary to
develop long-range prosperity, pleasures, and happiness.
Most poetry rests on specious or mystical foundations. But even
poetry resting on objective, Aristotelian foundations is valid
only for a specific context and is not valid for other contexts.
If, for example, one or both partners in a love relationship rely
on poetry by "authorities" to express "truth", the relationship in
that particular area will be detached from reality -- stunted by
mysticism, unable to grow on sound premises in that area.
Poetry based on mysticism or even poetry based on a particular
context of objective reality is almost always, by nature, nonexact
or abstract. That nonexactness or abstraction can symbolize
certain categories of reality, but poetic abstractions are not
facts in themselves nor can they be substituted for independent,
integrated thinking.
But valid art forms (e.g., music, fine art, literature, and even
certain intellectually honest poetry) can be abstract expressions
of objective values executed with skill and projected with a
powerful sense of life. If the artist's abstract symbols reflect
the observer's own values, then the particular art form delivers
pleasure to the beholder.
If the art work (music, fine art, literature) symbolizes disvalues
or threats to the beholder, then the art delivers dislike to the
viewer.[ 81 ] Nonskilled or amateurish art may attempt to
symbolize values to the beholder. But such art work is not
emotionally felt if the style, craftsmanship, or abstraction is
too unskilled, obscure, inaccurate, contradictory, or badly
executed. In such cases, the viewer's reaction is nonrecognition,
confusion, indifference, boredom, dislike, especially if combined
with a negative sense of life. Those cases include most of the
subjective "modern art" that has been foisted on the public by
neocheaters as a ploy to further undermine life, attack values,
and drain the value producer through the arts.
Still, much more harmful is the mystics' and neocheaters' use of
objective art forms to bilk the producer on a grand scale: The
prime example in history is the brilliant coup by the Roman
Catholic church to save itself during the rise of honesty and
logic that occurred during the Renaissance. The master neocheaters
of the Roman Catholic hierarchy recognized the starkly obvious
values of the burgeoning, new art forms. They then captured those
art values for exploitation by aggressively commissioning the most
skilled artists to produce highly obvious values. The master
neocheaters captured those values at first through architecture,
the fine arts, and sculpture. Later they added music to their
arsenal through the great classical composers. Governments and
tyrants right up to Lenin, Hitler, and current neocheating rulers
also seized that neocheating ploy. To gain easy credibility and to
capture support through the emotions, they used the fine arts,
literature, music, and even the most integrated art form --
opera[ 82 ].
Since the value of art can be sensed through emotions and requires
no intellectual analysis, the public needs only to notice the
obvious art and architectural values to erroneously link those
values of the master artists to the master neocheaters presenting
that art. Thus, the masses are deluded into seeing those obvious
values of great art as also representing the values of the
neocheating church or government. Subconsciously they conclude: "I
can see, hear, and feel those architectural, art, and musical
values. I know those values are real and valid. Thus, those values
must also represent those who own and present this art -- the
church or government. Therefore, all that I do not comprehend
about the church or government must be as good and valuable as the
art that represents them."
Through that brilliant, but dishonest use of art as non sequiturs,
the church and governments were able to survive the rise of
honesty and logic during the Renaissance, the resulting industrial
revolution, and then the rise of capitalism and free enterprise.
Regardless of their understandings or economic conditions at that
time, those great artists betrayed honesty by selling themselves
to the dishonest intentions of the neocheaters in church and
government. Those artists are culpable and responsible for giving
a major boost in power and endurance to the evil machinations of
especially the Roman Catholic church and its neocheating leaders.
Even Michelangelo must be held accountable. His great work in the
widest context must be condemned as a net disvalue to human life
for the dishonest role it played in supporting the immoral mystics
and destructive neocheaters throughout the subsequent ages.
Without selling out, he might have lost some immediate prosperity
and fame. But if he had stayed honest to reality, his work would
have risen to even greater beauty, value, and fame.
* * *
A major difference exists between the beholder's view of valid art
versus one's use of poetry. Art represents an abstraction that
symbolizes a value. The beholder merely contemplates a piece of
art for the emotional pleasure it delivers in reflecting back or
symbolizing that person's own values. Unlike poetry, the beholder
normally does not use art abstraction to replace his or her own
independent thinking for understanding reality or establishing
facts.
Art is a crucial value for human beings. Art is a source of
pleasure and psychological fuel that reflects and confirms one's
deepest values through aesthetic symbols. Poetry, on the other
hand, can harm a person's thinking process if that person accepts
as concrete fact the inexact, out-of-context nature of poetic
abstractions. When accepted as self-contained packages of "truth",
song lyrics, parables, slogans, epigrams, political cartoons, and
"famous" quotes by "authorities" fall into the same harmful
category as poetry [Re: Table 72, Neo-Tech Reference
Encyclopedia].
Aristotelian-based poetry that is intellectually valid and certain
song lyrics that are non-mystical can be objectively valuable when
viewed as symbols of one's own values and not as packages of
"truth" to be swallowed whole, without integration. Still, the
effect of poetry on most people is harmful because they allow the
abstract symbols of poetry to enter their minds as unintegrated,
unchallenged "truths" or as pre-packaged value systems ready for
direct use. The problem is amplified because many poets, song
lyricists, and political cartoonists proceed with dishonest,
destructive intentions to mislead the reader. They want their work
swallowed blindly as "truth" by their audiences, regardless of the
validity or context of their work. Such work is neither art nor
honest; it is neocheating.
If an individual is aware of the misleading nature of poetry, he
or she can avoid its harmful effects and perhaps gain some
reflective values from certain Aristotelian-based poetry. For
example, the following poem, while not deeply intellectual, does
aesthetically reflect the soul and character of heroic, innocent
value producers:
THE GOLDEN
They are the rare, the radiant men
The children of truth, the parents of ken.
Pain but strengthens them, pity intrudes.
Rebuking surprises them. Guilt eludes.
Deception disgusts and envy astounds.
Misfortune challenges. Malice confounds.
They are the open, the honorable,
The honest, the just, the vulnerable.
With no respect for the twisting of truth,
Faithfully wed to the promise of youth,
They are the pure, the benevolent,
The incorruptible few -- the Innocent.
(Reprinted with permission from Darlene Bridge and Bridgeberg
Books)
Poetical sing-song or hypnotically rhythmic meter are often found
in the rhetoric of dictators, evangelists, sibyls, politicians,
theologians, mountebanks, social "intellectuals", media men,
medicine men, hallucinating psychotics, chanting shiites, and
screaming terrorists. Consider how millions of normally rational
Germans thrilled and responded to the poetical cadence and
charisma of the consummate altruist neocheater, Adolph Hitler. The
results: a reign of destruction with tens of millions of human
beings slaughtered so one impotent man could indulge his mysticism
to feel unearned power. All that slaughter was for nothing more
than to let one neocheater feel a pseudo self-esteem. ...Twenty
million dead so one pip-squeak could feel big and important.
"So what!" cry the mystics as the lifetime efforts of a thousand
productive, innocent individuals are blown to bits every day
without a backward glance. So what if the troops roll across the
country with military cadence and guns ablaze. So what if they
level town after town, reducing to rubble and corpses all the
values, beauty, and life that took generations of productive
effort to build.
And that is all the chanting religious automatons or splendid
Panzer divisions know how to do -- to destroy in a moment, without
a thought, all the values that producers labored for lifetimes to
build. Chanting mobs or marching troops never glance back, never
think for a moment of the death and destruction they leave behind.
So what! the mystics and neocheaters cry. So what if genocide
happens in Russia, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Cambodia, Red China, or in
our land. "I don't want to hear it! To hell with the lifetime
efforts of productive individuals! ...Save the snail darter!"
By using specious nuggets of poetical "truth" and spell-binding
slogans, malefactors, demagogues, and neocheaters such as Hitler,
FDR, Nader, Khomeini, Lincoln, Mao, Billy Graham, Pope Paul, Jimmy
Swaggart, Castro, Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Jim Jones could
smoothly, quickly subvert the objective concepts of justice, good,
and love. And they often did that by manipulating words to sound
good, just, or loving. Why? To promote their own rationalized
schemes of "higher" causes. Such people use those poetic
techniques to keep their rationalizations sounding valid. And
their unthinking followers grab the beautiful nuggets of "truth"
and eagerly swallow them without thought or challenge.
Modern Art
Below is a quote from the archangel of modern art admitting that
he is nothing but a clown:
"Most people can today no longer expect to receive consolation
from art. The refined, the rich, the distillers of quintessence
(art critics) desire only the peculiar, the eccentric, the
scandalous in today's art. And I myself, since the advent of
cubism, have fed these fellows what they wanted, and satisfied
these critics with all the ridiculous ideas that have passed
through my head.
"The less they understood them, the more they admired me. Through
amusing myself with all these absurd farces, I became celebrated.
But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider
myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word.
Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt and Goya, they were great painters. I am
only a public clown.
"I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the
vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession
of mine -- more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last
it does have the merit of being honest."
Pablo Picasso, November, 1951* A master neocheater making an
honest confession.
*Also reported to be from a fictitious interview: The Black Book
by Giovanni Papini, 1951.
To "appreciate" modern art, a person must figure out, interpret,
or understand the "artist" and his meanings that "transcend
reality". By contrast, all lasting classical art of great value is
immediately recognized as a value by everyone throughout all ages.
Such art needs no interpretation or understanding of the artist.
Such art represents beauty, values, and skill that are immediately
recognized by the expert and the untrained layman alike. That is
why the Roman Catholic church acquired only classic art -- art
that needs no interpretation to understand and value. The Catholic
church was too shrewd to buy abstract art needing interpretation.
Indeed, modern art seldom represents beauty, values, or skill.
Moreover, the layman does not know what most modern "art" means,
while the chic "expert" plays phoney games of interpreting the
artist's meanings.
Today, the high prices of famous modern art works are supported by
the tax-deduction system: Wealthy holders of such modern art
profit handsomely by donating purchased works to the major
modern-art museums (e.g., The Museum of Modern Art in New York).
In turn, such museums provide grossly inflated appraisal prices
for tax deductions. Thus, those museums gain ersatz art works
along with cash donations for those fake, tax-purpose appraisals.
At the same time, the wealthy "collectors" profit and modern-art
museums perpetuate themselves through the tax system. When that
neocheating scheme collapses, most modern art works will fall to
an objective free-market value and become essentially worthless.
The Law of the Arts
Consider the following quote concerning modern art:
"For this seems, finally, to be the law of all the arts -- the one
essential prerequisite to the production of a great work of art is
a great man. You cannot have the art without the man, and when you
have the man you have the art. His time and his surroundings will
color him; his art will not be at one time or place precisely what
it might be at another; but in the end, the art is the man and at
all times and in all countries is just as great as the man.
"Let us clear our minds, then, of the illusion that there is in
any important sense such a thing as progress in the fine arts. We
may with a clear conscience judge every new work for what it
appears in itself to be, asking of it that it be noble and
beautiful and reasonable, not that it be novel or progressive. If
it be great art it will always be novel enough, for there will be
a great mind behind it, and no two great minds are alike. And if
it be novel without being great, how shall we be the better off?
There are enough forms of mediocre or evil art in the world
already. Being no longer intimidated by the fetish of progress,
when a thing calling itself a work of art seems to us hideous and
degraded, indecent and insane, we shall have the courage to say so
and shall not care to investigate it further."
Kenyon Cox
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
December 13, 1912
Abstract Symbols -- Real vs. Unreal
Real abstract symbols are accurate metaphors. They serve as
powerful, shorthand communication that can deliver intense
personalized values, especially in love relationships. On the
other hand, unreal symbols are inaccurate metaphors or non
sequiturs. They misrepresent reality and undermine values in life
and love. A person must differentiate between real and unreal
symbols to flourish [Re: Table 73, Neo-Tech Reference
Encyclopedia]. By making use of real symbols or metaphors, a
person can experience new dimensions of life and romantic love. By
recognizing and rejecting unreal symbols, a person preserves
confident control over reality and, thus, over his or her own
life, love relationships, and future.
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Footnotes:
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[ 79 ] A parable is a short, fictitious story usually used to
illustrate a moral or religious principle. Almost all parables are
specious rationalizations, non sequiturs, or false wisdom used out
of intellectual weakness to conceal or evade facts and logic.
Jesus's teachings were cast almost entirely into parables by those
who later exploited him. Not until three centuries later did the
professional mystics and neocheaters resurrect Jesus as a
manipulative symbol around which to rally their victims.
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[ 80 ] Unintegrated music, especially rock music, breaks down the
thought patterns of the brain. That breakdown provides a drug-like
effect in blocking or avoiding the struggle, effort, and at times
the pain required to think consciously. Such brain-blockage leaves
one in a "pleasant", nonthinking stupor. With music constantly
pounding on their eardrums, rock addicts effectively block all
thinking and integrating efforts. That rhythmic pounding, in turn,
keeps the anxieties of their incompetence buried within their
nonthinking minds.
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[ 81 ] Artwork (including certain poetry) that reflects negative
values to the viewer can still be admired for style or
craftsmanship if skillfully executed.
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[ 82 ] Opera integrates the major art forms: music, romantic
fiction, plot, performing arts, fine arts. Verdi's opera Aida is
the first and only major art work that celebrates the heroic
production of a major commercial and technological value -- the
opening of the Suez Canal.
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