Website review: Alan Riding: What has happened to c...
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•1 reviews since Jul 20, 2007
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•iht.com/articles/2007/07/20/news/entracte.php
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laodan discovered 10 months ago- What has happened to culture's challenge? in The Int'l Herald Tribune, by Alan Riding
" For the past three years, this column has sought to make the case that art and life or, more broadly, culture and society are natural interlocutors: just as art can express life's emotions in a coherent form, culture can provide society with a spiritual dimension and an ethical framework. ... What might be called Western "classical" culture has lost enormous ground to popular culture and its accompanying celebrity fever. Even that fixture of the Paris Left Bank, the public intellectual, has almost disappeared. Harold Pinter still rages against the United States, Gu00fcnter Grass still beats his drum, but few writers under the age of 60 seem to feel it their duty to lead public debate. As for contemporary art, well, the marketplace rules. ... Perhaps I should rebuild my case around another premise: society is too important to be left to politicians (or journalists, priests and businessmen). There is ample room for artists, writers and thinkers to elevate the debate with some idealism. True, by now, they may need encouragement to join in. But why not? It has happened before."> What has happened to culture's challenge? Yep. We are in times of transition not knowing what tomorrow will be made of. It is not as if we have no idea of what could happen, it's simply that there are so many possibilities that we are at a loss. The market has also succeeded to imprison most of us in the role of modern slaves who have to toil every day in order to pay the bank at the end of the month. Slaves have no time to devote to thought. But FREE people who are still AWAKE should rejoice for "... what we do today depends on our image of the future, rather than the future depending on what we do today. We build our equations by our actions. These equations, and the future they represent, are not written in nature. In other words, time becomes construction. Of course, we have some conditions that determine limits of the future but within these limits are many, many possibilities. Therefore, since no deterministic prediction is likely to be valid, visions of the future--utopian visions--play a very important role in present conduct. I am more afraid of the lack of utopias. " (Illya Prygogyne In NPQ)
- What has happened to culture's challenge? in The Int'l Herald Tribune, by Alan Riding
