New art can not exist without new philosophies.
The age of philosophical discovery is over, perhaps together with the age of exploratory arts, at least in accordance with our current perception. Mankind has reached a stage of completeness that rather resembles some kind of extreme. Naturally, this does not rule out the likelihood of other extremes, or paths that must be travelled again, which is in turn contradicted by the fact that it is impossible to start everything over. The way mankind functions in our age show us that at the height of our achievement we have not been able to teach what we have learned to those in need. This means that, in a certain sense, the ''needy'' have indeed had to begin almost everything again.
On a superficial level, we already know how the passage of mankind through time took place until the present day. Individuals, small groups of people and the masses all have a mutual effect on each other. In the presence of time, actions and events must reach their conclusions. Real time can be spent waiting in idleness, but we can not turn back the clock. The sum total of countless tiny ants and destinies is what we call history, or social history, or rather that which is considered significant according to the momentary values and interests of those recording it. This summing-up of the total is the act of teaching, which manipulates the thoughts of the masses, thus changing the lives of individuals. Only mankind is capable of such "manipulation''. We do not yet fully comprehend man, but we have known since the dawn of time the strengths and weaknesses by which he can be- needs to be- manipulated. Humans change their habits, lifestyles, ideologies and behaviour, creating their own history. This is the biology that has been and will continue to be what mankind is made of.
The essence of the world as we know it is the act of living in time and this factor is what demands death and renewal, in other words: change.
During my years as a student, I often thought about the following words: modern, modernism. These expressions were proudly used at the time in connection with the arts and to describe the age in which we were living, and for lack of anything better, I used them as well. Even then I would have liked to find words more appropriate and suitable to the ear, greatly admiring the apropos of past historical ages. Basically, I was concerned about what to call the period of time that would follow the age of modernism. I was already keenly aware that all ages must eventually come to an end. Modernism as a philosophy and an artistic trend relentlessly reaches a point of fulfilment, after which it begins to fade. My personal definition of the word modern is probably similar to explanations like the following: “suitable to the intellectual and technological progress, demands and tastes of the most recent age; current".
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If we assume that evolution at a given point in time was always positive, the term modernism, at least in the literal sense, can be applied to any period of history before the twentieth century. How- ever, if we examine the path which mankind has taken in terms of historical content, we are not presented with such a uniform picture. In terms of the past and including the present, geopolitical living spaces have always had vastly different characteristics. Undiminished progress seemed almost guaranteed with the documentation of values (the written word). Despite this, historical man has often used teaching ("manipulation'') as a tool for accomplishing his own personal interests, which did not exactly serve the so-called positive evolution of the species. It is precisely this behaviour which makes man different from the other species in his environment; humans also use the tools of progress to achieve negative ends.
If we are to ask which period of time could be considered modern in terms of progress, we must look at an example from the past, one which I have already mentioned. According to some brave theories, the formation of written language, relatively speaking, had at least as much influence on the progress of mankind as the so-called co-ordinated changes taking place today. "What is significant and what is not”, or rather "what is of real cosmic value on our earth'' are subjects I will discuss in more detail later.
The following question arises: Has the progress of mankind up to now been unbroken?
Let us ask further: Are we headed in the right direction? Do we feel from our collective personal experience that the result of our progress (our present state) is appropriate? With all our tremendous talents and self-realisation, do we continue to come up with super explanations for our place in the world, and so declare our lives to be perfect?
Mankind (nature) has an enormous physical and mental capacity. Humans masterfully create artificial disguises and self- mocking circumstances until they become bored and invent "better'' ones to swear by. We can wisely "misconstrue'' this concept and define it as the natural human need for variety.
One more question: Is this the only path mankind could have followed?
Our earthly frame of mind demands certain thought process; making connections and searching for cause and effect. Our internal mechanism sets a limit on how we practice our existence. We have no choice but to follow its rules. This incomprehensible system (we would need trillions of bits of information to understand it) creates the events that occur independently of us and in unison with nature; our social circumstances and the so-called changes that affect our lives. Taking all of this into consideration, it is difficult to see the direction of our progress. In a four-dimensional universe we are only the starting point, and at most we are only familiar with a very brief and vaguely documented period of time. We can only give a true definition of progress if we have some idea of the ultimate goal.
In our case, do we really know the ultimate goal of man? Do our chromosomes dictate our final destiny? Is it beyond our control or is it determined by some sort of moral standard contained in our minds and bodies? Do we require a uniform vision of the future, a definition of our ultimate goal, or do we embark on a life and death struggle, embracing or rejecting the latest philosophy (intellectual-artistic trend)? Until now, the formation and transformation of social strata (social classes), along with their reciprocity or hostility toward each other have been the historical foundation on which most philosophies were based. As a major philosophy of the current age, communism made it unmistakably clear that the eternal struggle of the social classes comprises the real history of mankind. According to this “medieval axiom', the battle continues until one uniquely altruistic social class (radically different from all the others!?) emerges victorious and becomes the benefactor of humanity. The experience of hundreds of thousands of people in the past clearly shows that things are not so simple, not to mention that social theories as such rapidly become obsolete and require responsible financing to maintain. Any predictions about future changes in human behaviour can easily be refuted. Major social movements do not depend purely upon the will of philosophers, politicians, and soldiers.
Whether directly or indirectly, individuals are capable of creating and influencing new situations. Technological developments and new discoveries in the fiends of biology and physics exert a major influence on public thought. The same can be said of the questionable media barrage imposed on the masses today.
One of the most important characteristics of human thinking and learning is the fact that people spontaneously focus their attention on actions and events, which are directly reflected in our values.
The study of history typically puts a heavy emphasis on conflict situations. This may have been what confused the forefathers of communism when establishing their theories.
If we take a closer look at the reasons behind conflict, we may get a clearer picture. It is not conflict situations that mould history, but people, along with all of the positive and negative traits they carry with them both in times of war and peace. If we consider the above and call history to account based on the individual, we may gather that human history is the sum-total of the following: beliefs, a vulgar craving for power, malevolence, ignorance, revenge, the everyday struggle for survival and the complications arising from all of these factors. Which of these happened to be dominant at a given point in time can be determined by more closely examining specific periods of history. The culmination of negative events and. the conditions of survival make up not only the history of humanity, but that of human individuals, who alone are capable of turning negative circumstances around in their minds to "misconstrue'' them as positive feelings of success and happiness. Something is missing here: positive traits, peaceful creation, the goodwill that lives within all humans, the capacity to accept beauty, aesthetics and ethics as spiritual singularities, all that we can call positive gifts; the important necessities of everyday life.
Let us continual to focus on what we call the negative complications. Since we are now living in 1998, we could attempt to interpret our past accurately by putting at the centre of our attention several billion people who are no longer living. Over time these individuals have been the repository of perpetual change and unnatural circumstances, becoming increasingly skilled in both good and bad, ever more "in hiding'' , whilst proclaiming to be ever more open; at least that is what they (we) would like to believe. But what is the manifestation of this "concealment'? The passage of time sees us increasingly surrounding ourselves with artificial things of our own making. Our spirits move in a world of "artificial intelligence".
(Actually, this is the real essence of current modernism). We would like to step out of our natural reality into an imagined world, leaving our tired and ancient character behind. It is precisely this primitive nature that enables us to maintain our "unnatural'' state, forcing ourselves and our environment to acknowledge it and enjoy its fruits.
We do this until we rediscover the painful reality that despite our best efforts, we are after all only human. By our very nature we under and overestimate ourselves in our dance at the top of the food chain.
Nevertheless, we are part of the same evolution from which
may emerge beings with intelligence similar to our own. So far, the difference is still the following: while there is evidence that humans are not the only mammals capable of thought and imagination, mankind is the only being capable of self-perception and its use as a tool for his own benefit.
Our learning process has been the following: the first step by primitive man toward experiencing self-perception was his awareness of ownership and of the need to possess. Undeniably, the rise of communist ideologies as proclaimed by Engels and his cohorts, along with the subsequent pressure brought on the rest of the world by the "actualised'' communist powers, contributed significantly to the fact that society in our day and age is more often than not regarded as an organic entity.
Society as such is not one individual, but if we think in terms of social behaviour and consider the data available to us in view of the moral changes taking place, we can see that society as a whole moves as one comprehensive unit. Every single person making up society has identical attributes. The difference lies in which of these traits happen to be dominant in us, and to what degree. Based on the above, it is possible to regard society as a single unit, but it is difficult to do so. Individual self-perception is much easier to recognize since it is a part of every person, but measuring its degree of success is a far more difficult task.
The circumstances described above give rise to necessity. The social theories of today, as well as those of the past are so far- reaching and variable that it is pointless to rely on them for answers.
In the past, it was not in the nature of mankind to interfere with spontaneous social development. Different social strata observed each other, but no overall picture of society emerged. Mankind simply made an effort to struggle with the challenges dictated by nature based on what was at its disposal: culture, interests, social background, various technical skills and the given conditions for survival. Society as a whole did not yet have the capacity for self- observation or self-recognition. Thinking could by no means be regarded as having cosmic proportions, at least not in terms of how we regard the universe today, which is probably also destined to change.
If we look at the issue in a universal context, we come to the following conclusion: The earth has always been a part of the cosmos and exhibits the same significant characteristics, from the simplest to the most bizarre and complicated, as those which exist billions of light years away at any point in the universe. Since we have very little information about the universe on which to base a comparison, we can only discern the differences in a local context.
This massive foundation can provide the basis for our thoughts since there is nothing to contradict it. Given the above, it follows that no matter how far we go into the past or the future, whether in terms of theories born of self-perception or biological developments in a given space of time, all earthly events and philosophies had and will continue to have cosmic significance. Any occurrence, including the most advanced and unpredictable result of our genetic games, i.e. everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen in our little universe on earth will have cosmic value, independent of what items we (in our momentary lapse of reason) consider to have been of historical significance. It makes no difference when and to what degree man has been able to develop a scientifically sound picture of the world around him. All that takes place on the earth is part of the universe.
Things exist without us knowing they exist! Probably there are beautiful things still waiting for us to discover them.
Light is the enfant terrible of the universe. It has some magical qualities, but it can not bark, which our pet dog can. It was not our pet dog that created the universe, just as light can not make up the universe on its own; this in itself would be a pointless exercise. We can compare our significance to our tiny dog or to that of light in the universe, but we never forget the order in which they came, whether observing the universe or our dog barking at a burglar in the dark of night.
Tie universe is a versatile superstructure of infinite variety.
Things that seem independent of each other are part of a closed system and eventually have a mutual effect on each other in time and space. The vast amount of genetic information contained in each human is the most important documentation of history. Humans carry with them everything they have needed to foster them through the ages they require every ability they have and possess all the necessary requirements within their capacity. Therefore, the basic essence of man is to partake of all things in moderation, the acknowledgement of variety. If we wish to interpret human history by examining certain acts and focusing on specific extracts, we may obtain a clear picture. However, the moment we redirect our focus, new viewpoints immediately begin to appear and our theory loses stability in direct proportion to our changing perspective until the original meaning is no longer valid. This is not a problem until we try to put such unstable theories into practice. The results are more
tragic if we turn them over to the powers that be. Naturally, those in power can simply grab such an intellectual product, declare it their own, and put it into practice using their own unique methods, resulting in a dubious outcome. This is what happened when those in authority got hold of fledgling communist ideas; the same with National Socialism,
Internationals Socialism, and their derivatives, I would now like to point out the parallel between "liberating'' communist ideals and the "liberating'' ideals of modernism, if only in view of the fact that within a given period there is an undeniable relationship between these two intellectual trends.
Having inherited mankind as the victim of the practical joke we call the twentieth century, the social scientists of today, perhaps in acknowledgment of the above, are cautious about establishing facts or creating new philosophies. As a result of this caution, the philosophy of our day and age is the philosophy of asking clever questions. There is yet another extremely significant reason for this type of conduct. Throughout its history, mankind has made innumerable discoveries, gathering a tremendous amount of knowledge in the process.
Certain branches of science have become so in-depth, with such an intricate web of data that the average person can only scratch the surface of the knowledge they contain. We have developed a financially powerful entertainment industry, which has managed to capture all levels of society, including the scientific and intellectual elite as both its creators and its audience. Society expressed a strong desire to climb higher and delve deeper in a mad rush to achieve the maximum in all things. Never in the history of mankind have we seen so much pointless and infantile foolishness as that which gained popularity in the twentieth century; all this because the public audience created by the media was witness to acts more extreme than all others that came before it. We also saw the development of a profitable entertainment industry. The age of bread and circuses was to be followed by the age of bread and television, which succeeded in capturing people from all walks of life, including the intellectual elite, who were both its creators and its audience. Anyone who wished to express themselves in simple human terms outside of the competition was automatically deemed old-fashioned, regardless of whether their thoughts, desires and emotions were the result of a healthy personality.
The desirable aesthetics and ethics of today are expressive and synthetic.
Going back to the philosophers: well, they obtained or were forced to select the domain they found attractive. It is no longer fashionable to know about everything; that age has passed. Where does a philosopher of today get the courage as a matter of fact, how dare he attempt to explain the well-oiled mechanism, that long- desired thing we call a prosperous society; or should I say” the modern age'' ?! How did philosophy work in the oft-cited age of Ancient Rome? (Perhaps our age will serve as some kind of example a few thousand years in the future.) The society, economy, and culture of Ancient Rome were the personification of progress (!) and the thinkers of the time were at the summit of their achievement. People took advantage of every opportunity to criticise society and the world around them, in spite of the fact that culture and society had reached levels of democracy never before dreamed of (sound familiar?!) and that things had seemingly reached the apex of development.
So then, our ancient thinkers “came up with "the tired clinches we have come to know, using human nature as their starting point and aware that as long as man lived on earth, he would be the source of everything that was to come. It is not the current order of society that determines mankind, but mankind who establishes society, however difficult a task this may seem. We must strive to see behind things, to see them in their true light, and to recognize their potential effects.
We must see, feel, hear, taste the world and smell its fragrance. We must use all five of the senses, maintaining an awareness of our innermost emotions and insights.
I am aware that nowadays it is inappropriate, even a mistake, if someone has an outbreak of emotion. It is more intimate than any sphere of sexuality. Sex today is no longer an intimacy in our lives, but is rather like a corpse waiting for autopsy, and we gleefully proceed to dissect it in front of an expectant audience. We cheerfully applaud performances from which only impotence can be gained; and there are surveys which indicate that this is an increasing tendency.
According to the direction our Social values have taken today, it is undesirable to display emotions, but this is exactly why sex is on the dissection table: it does not really work without feelings. It is callous to teach sex free of feelings or the intimacy of romantic desire; people are not machines incapable of thought and emotion. They possess a fragile biological structure and are still the most vulnerable of any living species. It is merely our environment and our world of thought that have become somewhat synthetic; our biology remains the same.
All of this is simply a test of our tolerance. Fortunately, we still have the ever-present opportunity to make changes.
We have mentioned how society perceives itself and the influence of the political and economic factors which serve to maintain its existence. These were followed by ethics, emotional culture (the senses), and the arts; all of the things which make humans complex, living beings. And then there is philosophy in all its lonely solitude.
What exactly is the human race engaged in nowadays? Essentially, it is doing what it has always done; staying alive and reproducing, albeit things are not quite so simple. Over the last few centuries, mankind has built a culture of monumental proportions, making it an integral part of everyday existence to such an extent that life is impossible to imagine without it.
Thus, humans are net only keeping themselves alive, but their culture as well. This brings about the differences of opinion that may and do lead to physical confrontation and the most extreme of solutions; the destruction of human life by humans. If we examine this phenomenon without emotion, which is usually quite difficult, we come to the conclusion that in terms of both negative and positive, ambition and the appetite for things bigger and better are the motivation behind everything. The age-old heartbeat of human self- recognition is the ability and the need to possess.
Existence being the most burning necessity of mankind, he will use all possible means at his disposal to serve this purpose until he feels a lack thereof. However, a sense of deficiency is also a form of self-recognition, and so is an awareness of the flow to build up reserves. The degree to which these are felt is not guaranteed, nor can we guarantee the safe protection of goods, even today. Humans in their most advanced stage of development, as individuals or in small groups can still be faced with the uncertainty of their existence at any given moment. Moreover, huge masses of people have been forced to struggle with the problems of everyday survival since the dawn of humanity, not even dreaming of the civilization we are currently living in, or of the "advanced'' culture we have managed to construct from our vast stockpile of reserves. (Naturally, the quotation marks can be left out).
Having come this far, we may be closer to understanding the construction of society mentioned in the previous pages. Taking into consideration the concept of ownership, the safe-guarding of life, and the distribution of material wealth, the essence of social philosophy up to the present day continues to be in the struggle for power. This seems likely to go on for a long time because if we cleverly remove the "mask'' from the smallest unit of power or even from a single
individual, we will find that not much has changed throughout history.
Humans still carry with them the basic traits which make them human, and can still put these to use. It is precisely the "well-intentioned'' communism we spoke of that produced strange results in this area.
Allow me to present a few thoughts concerning that most significant system of requirements, the maintenance of life. How do living things keep themselves alive? What a simple question! Everybody knows the answer to that. The simplest of living things are plants, which feed on inorganic materials. Plants have no education, but they still know which of the many minerals they need to tints in their environment here on Earth. Then we have more advanced living creatures, the animals, which feed on living organisms. They have developed the ability to find and choose the nutrients appropriate for their survival. There are carnivorous animals and carnivorous plants etc. They all know what is edible and make no bones about eating it.
And then we have humans; superior, omnivorous beings. They take the scientific approach to feeding, not to mention the fact that they also have a huge amount of knowledge and experience in the area of nourishment. Whole libraries are filled with books on the subject of nutrition. Without focusing on specific geographical locations, let us consider the following fact: nowadays, people are still dying of starvation, or in the best of circumstances "only'' of malnutrition, while almost every region on the planet is overloaded with wild and cultivated plants that are edible and nutritious, along with a host of other living organisms mankind can use for nourishment. (My intention here is not to reveal the torn and dirty cliché of "the fair and equal distribution of wealth according to Joseph Stalin”)
Somehow we had to go from our primitive beginnings to our present age of civilization, which itself may be considered ancient after the next several thousand years. Over time, our reflexive behaviour was increasingly replaced by conscious assessment in both the tangible world and in the sphere of imagination. Belief systems were born, along with religions, folk customs, legends, and "faulty interpretations''. Then came friends and neighbours, girlfriends, boyfriends etc. The basis of human decision-making today can still be found in the same place it has always been; in our everyday environment.
In spite of our advanced civilization, a great many things in our daily lives are still determined by "what the neighbours say'' and “what so-and-so said”. It is the total influence of all these things that leads to large numbers of people starving to death surrounded by a natural cornucopia.
They die merely as a result of their bad habits, their beliefs, the "sins'' they have committed, or their own pride, and so on. Simply put, some refuse to eat what others consider to be the hastiest of delicacies.
Human nutrition has in other aspects become unnatural and unhealthy. Have we forgotten our skills in this area, or have our beliefs indirectly caused us to neglect them? The sections of society that have unlimited access to the daily necessities of the consumer lifestyle get their food pre-selected, processed and packaged, ready for the dinner table. If some quirk were to appear in the machinery, they would face serious problems as far as their eating habits are concerned. Obviously, nobody wants this to happen, and even the assumption itself is bizarre and inappropriate.
On one hand we see the highest achievements of civilization, while on the other hand large numbers of people are lacking even the most minimal knowledge of how to survive. Furthermore, our lives are filled with age-old automatic responses, fears, and prohibitions that we have forced upon ourselves, along with the exaggerated pride that comes with well-being and our need for status symbols. This last form of behaviour is nothing new; it is still the most common signalling device of the animal world.
Concerning the lifestyle we lead in connection with our primitive nature and eating habits, we can safely say that mankind became confused somewhere along the way. It seems as if our bodies were preventing us from developing our "true'' way of life; I am referring here to the nature of "modern'' civilized humans.
Perhaps the clearest description of our age would be the following: we are living in a daze of advanced social and technological challenges, with a much higher standard of living than we have ever had, in a closed system of infinite variety, carrying with us our ever-present human nature, and no happier than we ever were before. It is only our circumstances and the material conditions for our beliefs that have changed. With all that is happening "behind the scenes" of our human drama, we can only steal a furtive glance at the marvellous intellectual, emotional, and sensory reality that we have worked so hard to develop through the ages. It is increasingly difficult to gratify our desires and keep this reality functioning in its true form. Consequently, the nature of our thinking has changed, becoming restricted and schematic in an artificial reality that gives birth to obscure thoughts of questionable authenticity.
What exactly is modern nowadays? That which we believe to be modern, and which we declare as such. People create expressions and abstractions, and the majority live their lives according to the accepted content of these ideas. The term modernism and its continued use are the result of the philosophical deliberations of millions of people and their desires, right or wrong. It seems that people are satisfied with the word modernism and the ideas it implies; until now, nobody seems to have come up with a better philosophy.
Obviously, as with all historical ages, we must stretch everything to the point of sheer boredom before we begin to have doubts about it. Only then do we begin to search again, in the place that is the most reliable and easily accessible to us: within ourselves.
What do we have to thank for the existence of "modernism''? After all, it is the most typical characteristic of our age. What are its origins and how did it develop? It is the coincidence of several factors that has brought us to this stage. The ''accidental'' meeting of new social movements and technological developments beginning in the last century gave birth to a heroic and inquisitive behaviour that insists on forcing extremes. Always novel and forging ahead into all walks of life, technological progress reached proportions that shocked the human imagination. Those of the old philosophies that happened to be popular at the time (proclaiming eternal welfare, which later turned out to be ill-considered) were enough to satisfy the pro and contra movements of the day.
Perhaps it is better to say that nobody was looking for anything else since there were far more important things taking place outside the social realm. We know that in the presence of well-being, many basic necessities can seem trivial since this is not a natural state of affairs in our world, and for this very reason becomes a confusing factor in our overall thoughts. In terms of developed industrial countries, the second half of the twentieth century gave birth to a state of relative prosperity in which philosophy, together with all its chaos, found its place alongside numerous other intellectual creations regarded as negative, senseless, inhuman, mediocre, twisted etc. If something was deemed to be modern, it instantly became "modern".
This is how things like shards of glass, dead mice and dirty newspapers (along with things far more disgusting and horrifying) came to be artistic symbols reflecting the values of modernism. This phenomenon is not only characteristic of the fine arts. Similar examples can also be found in many other areas of life.
We have taken significant steps in this twentieth century age of "modernism'' toward not understanding and not wanting to
understand each other. People are experiencing never before dreamed of opportunities to develop their individual personalities. In such an atmosphere of peace and abundance, one would think that human relationships could become warmer and more open. Instead of this, everyday people are making great efforts to become individuals like anyone else around them who appears to be so; the pursuit of individuality has reached mass proportions. We know that strong personalities work hard at adapting their environment to suit their needs. Since their environment is also made up of self-proclaimed individuals who have cleverly copied this form of inaccessibility, it follows that the walls we have built around ourselves are increasingly an obstacle in making personal contact. Humans, however, have been unsuccessful at wiping out their biological needs and so continue to devise new theories and solutions to suit their "modern" lifestyle. Among other things, this is why sex has come to be separated from the realm of emotion, having bravely been reduced to being an instrument of pleasure. We now know everything there is to know about sex in precisely calculated form; foreplay, massages, the main act, aft play, and so on. But some play with heart and soul and some do not, not to mention the state of affairs brought about my emancipation (yet another invention of the 20th century), which has led to men and women snarling at each other in an atmosphere of common distrust.
Community spirit in this century has, for well-known reasons, become a political slogan, even taking hold in countries that have "chosen'' not to follow this particular path. This took place to such an extent that a few philosophers, sociologists, architects, and politicians began to think in terms of community houses and living spaces, even shedding tears of joy over this wonderful new feeling.
They assumed that in the wake of great spiritual development people would become more tolerant of each other, and that all of the previously mentioned positive qualities would begin to dominate.
Despite these great expectations, spiritual development also allowed the ego to blossom. (If things continue as they are, the Earth could become a world of 6 billion "personalised opinions”). Accordingly, community space could only have been a nightmare. Furthermore, having wiped the tears from the corner of their eyes, the ladies and gentlemen creating these grandiose plans retreated in the evening to their own little private homes, not bothering to turn off the answering machine, even for the sake of their best friends, let alone their own mothers. In the event that any of them actually took their own challenges seriously, they quickly came to notice that in the name of this community spirit their spouses were sleeping with someone else (just for pleasure), or that some other not necessarily "modern'' human fallibility was threatening the future of their beautiful union.
If we put all our arrogance aside and conduct a thorough examination of the social events that led to our present life, making realistic assumptions about the next million years, we should come to the conclusion that mankind today is still in its childhood. Humans live through the consequences of all kinds of imprudent ants in the absolute belief that their decisions were appropriately in accordance with the prevailing spirit of science and technology, and therefore the latest dogma must be good! In light of the above, who can say how many times and in how many places humanity has reached the peak of modernism? Let us consider the following: what will humans are doing tens of thousands of years from now? Surely they will not be conducting boring studies on the events and philosophies of the ancient past; as if in the future nothing really worth mentioning were to happen in the area of technology or culture.
This would certainly be a mistaken assumption; there will still be plenty of madness and “ordeal for mankind to contend with. The world is a given; the human biology and spirit that are the essence of our existence remain constant. The fundamental qualities that are the result of spontaneous intellectual manipulation would have to be “blasted out of existence” in order for mankind to become “something new". Until then, we shall continue to discover, over and underestimating ourselves in our search for real deliberation, and living with our own foolishness. History does not repeat itself, but its pulse- its acceleration and regression - remain an integral part of it. We live in an age of booming technological and spiritual transition, in which a great many things can be reversed. Due to our "advanced capabilities", any system of values that we have struggled to construct can be reduced to the point of zero, completely free of emotion.
Undoubtedly, many have asked whether modernism is only a distortion or a true doctrine that teaches us that the non-aesthetic can also be aesthetic, i.e. what is of zero aesthetic value can be a human need just as much as the creation of a new philosophy; everything that happens to us is in the interest of our universe here on earth! Accepting the above, perhaps we can more easily explain the aesthetic reduction and ethical chaos of our age, gaining a clearer understanding of the sometimes pointless or exaggerated conflicts we wage among each other in our intensive search, often to the detriment of ourselves and our environment.
Superficial observers have been writing and speaking more or less for decades about the ultimate death of the fine arts. But fine art is exactly what makes it possible to freely dissect infinity. Art always uses a new and therefore unfamiliar set of symbols limitless in meaning and variety, making it the most tangible way to explore the ''impossible'' and the unknown. What makes this ancient form of pictorial imagery so significant? Why is fine art current, even today? Imagery lives in humans, and as long as people think in terms of still pictures, they will continue to feel the need for them. Lacking such visual information, the human mind will stop moving pictures and store them in memory as photographic images. Anyone can conduct this experiment using their own brain. Like it or not, the human mind, for some unknown reason, operates according to an old-fashioned system. Humans think in frozen images, and if mankind is forever, fine art is forever.
A brief side-track is necessary here to better understand the real human condition. Technological development in the past few decades reached heights never before dreamed of as scientific and industrial research constantly broke new records, instantly wiping out a host of ancient taboos. The possibilities seemed endless. I would like to illustrate only two examples. One is the development of the automobile. We all know about the advent of horse-power and the race to increase acceleration. Somewhere along the line, human reaction time became the most important factor as those behind the wheel realised that above a certain speed they could no longer enjoy driving - or their lives for that matter. This gave rise to a suggested upper limit, a standard of endurance. Something similar happened in the field of space exploration, made all the more complicated by the lack of an earthly environment. In other words, the level of human endurance put a limit on those seemingly endless possibilities.
Taking into careful consideration the opportunities available to us in our present situation, as in the case of cars and spacecraft, among other things we must eventually become aware of what all of this suggests to us in terms of our universal thought. The essence of our lives today is not in a headlong struggle to reach the highest peaks at all costs, if for no other reason than because of the age-old proposition which states that goals easily attained are born of paltry desires.
Furthermore, the struggle to achieve one thing automatically denies the acknowledgement of all the others; in our race to approach the goal, we lose more than we have to gain by reaching it.
Vienna, September 1998...............................................BALINT
