High Culture? WTF? Part Twelve

LX

In section LIX of Part Eleven we gave a brief presentation of the necessary conditions for successful alienation:

* Social Protection

* Psychic Insulation

* Problem Exposure and Solution Postponement

* The Preference for and Capacity to Tolerate the Cognitive

Tension, Psychological Disorientation and Emotional

Disturbance associated with High Level Problem-Solving

* A Sensitivity to Cultural Incoherence

* A Capacity for Self-Validation that the Ignorant and

Unsympathetic confuse with Arrogance

* The Ability to Live without the Need for Constant Approval

Adding, that all of these are dangerous to the individual cannot be doubted for a moment, simply because every one of them is capable by itself of producing behavioral dissolution.

But, again, the history of Romanticism in the 19th century shows the dangers, and in the 20th century shows that the dangers can be resisted, and in the 21st century with PRC, that the dangers can be transcended. The reason is simple. So what’s the reason?

For the 20th century artist, alienation had become, through the struggles of 19th century Romanticism, institutionalized for a small but accessible part of the population of the West. It had become economically viable, partly of course because of the very old tradition of the artist as genius, and of the arts (and sciences), as a model of behavioral limitation and self-policing.

Given how valuable all of this knowledge is for the essential activity of high level problem-solving and significant innovation (essential for our survival), and given the access we had to this knowledge pre-Internet and the instant access we have to it now with the Internet, one is justified in raising serious doubts about the intellectual, social and moral qualities of those in charge of our teaching-learning institutions who either deliberately ignore this knowledge, or are completely ignorant of it. It would certainly explain why educators are now indoctrinators and why our teaching-learning institutions throughout the entire Western world are guilty of a civilizational-wide educational malpractice, exactly because they have abanonded the values of High Culture.

It would also explain why the United States is better referred to now as Dunning-Kruger Nation, and not just the United States.

For this reason we're better off ignoring our teaching-learning institutions as they now exist, especially the universities and their many cultural deposits now infesting, infecting and destroying our social institutions - all of them - particularly our economic and governing institutions. But more on that some other time.

LXI

Be that as it may, the good news is that the Arts & Sciences can offer an admirable training ground for not only learning the conditions of alienation, but for learning how to tolerate them.

We've already discussed the Sciences in relation to this kind of training in alienation in Part Ten. So for the rest of Part Twelve our focus will be on the Arts. This potential for learning the conditions of alienation in relation to the Arts can be put to use in teaching the artistic experience only if the aesthetics of order and the hierarchy of values are abandoned.

Why is this necessary?

Because when it comes to teaching the Arts both the aesthetics of order and the hierarchy of values are examples of policing (and remember, our task is to penetrate the armor of policing).

This sort of policing tends to drain away from the artistic experience the conditions of alienation. Nevertheless, those conditions are available. And what are those conditions?

First, art is a set of directions, and the experience or response to art is a performance. But the responder doesn’t have to do anything more than simply respond to the work of art. In short, the artistic situation is about contemplation and meditation.

So what is the artistic responder contemplating?

The work of art as a set of directions. Of course.

This is not to deny that art isn’t used to exemplify a belief-system, or even to exemplify a specific morality (often, and pretentiously, referred to as artistic truth). There’s no doubt that art is an extremely important tool of social management or policing. All art is, in fact, propaganda and rhetoric.

However, the artistic situation can combine with an explanatory analysis of the work in question to objectify the directions being exemplified, or, as is often the case, being presented baldly or overtly, as in the case with politically correct indoctrination.

In other words, the teacher needs to be governed, not by either Oh the greatness of Michelangelo’s soul!, or, Look how this white supremacist is oppressing you, but rather by Look at what this mother fucker is doing to you! Why would we do this?

Because doing this would allow the study of art to be used to abstract the patterns of direction-giving social management.

That way the study of art could be used to help us better understand The Directions-Performance Complex itself!

Meaning, this approach to the study of art could then be applied to The Directions-Performance Complex in any and every social institution, and in any and every aspect of human behavior, to all teaching-learning institutions from the family to the Phd., from all value institutions from the family to one’s religion or football team or Rock band, to our economic institutions from the family to small and medium sized businesses to the corporation, from our government institutions from the family to the nation-state, and from our idea institutions from the family to the Arts & Sciences, which brings us back to the very subject of this entry.

That way you could figure out not only what the Pope wanted Michaelangelo to do and why, what Michaelangelo did and why, but also and even more importantly, how both the conservative traditionalists on the Right and the Wokester Psychos on the Left are responding to the work and why, and how both the Right and Left want you to respond to the work and why, or else, as is the case with the Left.* Above all, you can examine the how, what and why of your responses and the interests behind them. And by interest is meant, not motive or intention, but mode of adaptation.

*As always was and will be the case with the Left. In fact, since the Right is so bad at preserving what it values, portraying them as a legitimate threat is proof on its own that the Left is insane.

A better way of acquiring the values and skills of cultural, situational and self-awareness would be hard to imagine.

Again, this is how paradigms are broken. By the way, that the Sistine ceiling is a prime instance of such directions-giving social management cannot be doubted for a moment. Do you really think Michaelangelo didn’t know what he was doing?

And do you really think the hostile elite doesn’t know what it’s doing in its attempt to abolish freedom by renaming the flu? Shame on everyone who has fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

LXII

This marvelous irresponsibility of the artistic experience - an irresponsibility so necessary for the correction of the behavioral condition - is made possible by the fact that the artistic experience itself takes place in a situation of social protection

and psychic insulation. And the higher the cultural level of the work and of the artistic experience the truer this is.

In fact, the cultural level of a work of art can be readily determined by the degree of protection and insulation in which it is ordinarily presented. The prime function, however, of these factors in artistic experience is that art is characterized by perceptual discontinuity, or by the violation of the norms of expectancy. Or, in the simplest terms, by variation and surprise.

Note: The book to read is Peckahm’s Man’s Rage for Chaos: Biology, Behavior and the Arts.

This explains the importance of social protection and psychic insulation. Because the intellectual tension, psychological disorientation and emotional disturbance associated with problem-solving in general and the perceptual discontinuity of the artistic experience in particular is ordinarily tolerable only in psychically insulated and socially protected conditions.

All social roles which require sustained problem exposure and solution postponement, such as that of the corporate executive*, require the same protection and insulation. Such sustained problem exposure and solution postponement is the mark of fictional narrative; while in the drama disorientation is often achieved by presenting information more rapidly than it can be assimilated and sorted out and by interweaving informational series so that overlapping and switching from one series to another, without logical or other completion, is maximized.

The teacher of art - who normally doesn’t teach art, but directions for responding to art - has to abandon the aesthetics of order and give directions in such a way that the richness of the possibilities for perceptual discontinuity in the particular work are fully extracted. That this can be done and that students respond to it very well I know from extensive personal experience.

They are in fact grateful. Why? Because the aesthetics of order directly contradicts what they can see with their own eyes. They are very capable of recognizing the aesthetics of order and the hierarchy of values for what they are - brainwashing.

Unfortunately they don’t have any vocabulary of invalidation with which to counteract it. That’s what PRC is all about.

Because with my approach the teaching of art becomes an admirable training ground in the toleration of the tension, disorientation and disturbance associated with the kind of problem-solving and innovation that is so essential for our survival. This explains exactly why it is so important to abandon both the aesthetics of order and the hierarchy of values.

LXIII

The discontinuity of a work of art has to do with its form, or, the formal aspect of the work of art, how the work is put together.

But what about the meaning of a work of art?

Another way of talking about the meaning of a work of art is to refer to it as the semantic aspect of the work of art. And the first and most important thing to be recognized about the semantic aspect of art is that there is no meaning in any art form that cannot be found outside of art itself, let alone a particular work.

What makes art art is the formal aspect. Two examples are the theme and variation in music and Malchivech’s White on White, to name a personal favorite, where you have a perfect rectangle on the outside that creates the expectation and the imperfect rectangle on the inside that violates that expectation. The first time I saw it I thought of the expectation of family love and the cruel violation of that expectation by family scapegoat abuse.

An inversion can take place, however, when the scapegoat realizes that he can violate the cruel expectations of his sick family system by learning to love himself and go No Contact.

This explains my intense interest in cultural transcendence. Because cultural transcendence is ultimately self-transcendence.

The joy of knowing and transcendence truly is deeper than the sorrow of suffering and the memory of having suffered. Just as the pain of one’s history and self-awareness is nothing compared to the happiness of the learning, change and growth that follows.

In any event, throughout the 20th century there was a very popular and even dominating doctrine which stated that a work of art consists of a special meaning unique to that work - which is why it is value laden, and that the work has a capability of presenting “truths” not accessible outside of the realm of art and artistic experience. Of course this is 100% Grade A Bull Shit.

But that didn’t keep it from being adopted by The Frankfurt School who simply replaced the word Art with the words Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, to lay the foundations of what would become Identity Politics, Woke Inc. and Cancel Culture.

What they did was exploit a golden opportunity to use art for the cultivation of a radical sensitivity to problem-solving that could then be applied to The Directions-Performance Complex itself (If you think that was a coincidence you’re pathologically naive).

And they did it by subverting the notion of self-criticism without anxiety, unique to the West, in an attempt to get themselves placed above criticism, so that when they took complete control of the West's social institutions they could then demand to be loved unconditionally and blindly obeyed. Or, as Chaim Weizmann once put it, the old evil in a new and horrible guise.

That’s why, as I’ve said before, what we are witnessing, what we are all living through right now, is nothing less than a full return to superstitious thinking in its most barbaric form. And this barbarism is the direct result of the hostile elite’s infiltration and subversion of Western Civilization’s social institutions for the purpose of, among other things, abolishing High Culture.

No authority has ever permitted itself to be criticized. If anyone attempted to criticize the elite in anyway the elite in question exercised their power by leveling the four sanctions of economic deprivation, imprisonment, torture and death onto their critics.

It has only been in the last couple of hundred years and only in the geographical areas of Western Europe and North American, in short, The West (the land of whiteness) where there has been an attempt to invert those sanctions into economic ease, the privileges of freedom (extended to all groups beyond that of the host population and thereby refuting the laughable and historically illiterate notion of white privilege), respect for the individual and the value of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (not the promise or guarantee of happiness).

And this effort was made possible by the values of High Culture, which is why the hostile elite had to abolish High Culture if they were to assume control of the culture’s institutions, especially the universities, and that is exactly what they have done.

With the imposition of Identity Politics and Cancel Culture on our teaching-learning institutions, the educational experience has been converted into a political experience of absolute (though indefinable) moral value, which itself is centered around a list of mythical entities bearing no relation to a concrete reality. Hence the return to superstitious thinking in its most barbaric form.

And what is meant by this is what was said in our entry on CRT, that none of their propositions, none of their many vague abstractions, glittering generalities, and absurd absolutes, can be converted into theories that are then tested on an indifferent and unyielding reality that doesn’t give a damn what we believe in.

The whole point of High Culture is exactly because intense belief is not preceded by reflective thought or rational argument but by the rush of emotion. When it comes to problem-solving:

No emotional detachment - No intellectual insight.

No intellectual insight - No problem-solving.

No problem-solving - Lots of problems.

Lots of problems unsolved - Lots of chaos.

Lots of chaos - No social management.

No social management - Behavioral dissolution.

Behavioral dissolution - Civilizational collapse.

And that is the position we are in today.

LXIV

Identity Politics and Cancel Culture are the antithesis of that alienation which is the condition of behavioral correction.

This is why, with what I am proposing, the teacher of art should emphasize in their analysis the incoherence of the work as a set of directions. That way they can show why the historical conditions in which the work was produced have been transcended and abandoned. The value that lies behind this idea is that the dynamics of Cultural History are to be found in the fact that changing circumstances of a society reveal incoherences in its culture which were once felt as coherences.

When a culture abolishes High Culture it also abolishes feedback and correction. The result is a cultural impoverishment that renders its social institutions dysfunctional and maladaptive.

Again, that is the situation we are in right now. This is why as I have said before, but will say again because it's worth repeating, Identity Politics and Cancel Culture represent a threat to human survival as does any institution, organization, country or culture that demands to be placed above criticism by asserting that its legitimacy can in no way be questioned by anyone - ever.

In any event, alienation has always been the mode for dealing with the discovery of cultural incoherence. That is why the Romantics did not invent alienation. What they did do, however, was discover it and abstract it from the matrix of human behavior.

The presentation of such incoherence is one of the best ways of training the individual to tolerate tension and even to seek it out, the aim being to direct awareness toward the irresolvable tension between policing and correction. In fact I’d say it’s the best way.

If anyone out there finds a better way, by all means let me know.

The final point is that the teaching of the Arts & Sciences, but especially the Arts, must be absolutely value-free. The teacher should select what is taught by a random sampling of all cultural levels, all cultures, and all historical periods. No mention of value should be made at all, nothing of “How beautiful this is”, but only, “That is what is going on here”, as stated previously.

This value-free teaching is of the highest importance for training students and partners to tolerate alienation and to see its possibilities as a means of correcting the current condition.

Both the traditional method of teaching art and the highly politicized method of the Left are, above all, about giving students directions of value-hierarchies and nothing more.

The problem with that is, to have value settled in an area so remote from the concerns of ordinary life as art makes the artistic experience a prime source of self-policing, for limitation of the range of behavior, and therefore for a devotion to art of an addictive character. For this reason, to present a work of art without value directions is a useful way of exposing the students to an altogether desirable condition closely approaching panic.

Beyond this it’s desirable to expose the interests that govern the current valuation of the work and its place in the hierarchy of value and also the interests that governed such valuations in the past. These two strategies together should be so handled as to expose the student to their own interests in valuation not just of the Arts & Sciences, but in valuation itself. That way the goal of training students in alienation will be reached: self-alienation.

LXV

Since education is primarily a matter of policing and training in self-policing, higher education, if it is to be reconstructed, can only be reconstructed to institutionalize alienation as a mode of existence. Such reconstruction can only be brought about by training teachers, consultants, and institutional leaders in alienation. Finally, it’s also obvious that though the study of Arts & Sciences in general and the artistic experience in particular are of great importance in preparing individuals for alienation, to use education in that way requires a total revolution in the way art has been taught in the past and continues to be in the present.

Obviously, none of this is possible in any of our teaching-learning institutions, especially our universities, as they now exist and are likely to continue to exist. That’s why it’s not necessary to storm the palace, so to speak, and demand institutional change, or else.

On the contrary, far better to let fate take care of those already suffering from an incurable intellectual, social and moral disease and instead devote ourselves to the creation of new institutions dedicated to cultivating a radical sensitivity to problem-solving, the Arts & Sciences, and the attributes of wisdom. In short, to the values of High Culture that are so essential to our survival.

Concluding Remarks

Lastly, as we said above, the Romantics discovered alienation and abstracted it from the matrix of human behavior, and in so doing they shook the world. Because Romanticism is the single greatest cultural redirection in the history of the human race.

Primarily because the Romantics realized that, since with every political revolution we end up with pretty much the same thing we started off with, the best alternative to political revolution would be Cultural Transcendence. Nevertheless, in spite of its obvious importance for an understanding of the human condition in general and the values of High Culture in parituclar, Romanticism remains the most misunderstood and even ignored movement in cultural history. That's why it has to be said that, though Romanticism certainly shook the world, few people have truly understood exactly what had happened and why.

That being the case, it only makes sense that we take another look at Romanticism, only this time from a somewhat different perspective, and try to get a better understanding of what it has to offer us in the way of high level problem-solving and significant innovation. So, to the subject of Romanticism in the final entry of our WTF? series, we shall turn. But before we do that, let's go to our Q & A on Explanation and Power. See you there!

Until then, All the best from Buenos Aires for the New Year!