Does art need to be provocative, challenging the status quo?
Should the process of art-making be front-loaded with ideas and prerequisites to notions of validity?
Do artists have any responsibility to society?
Should artists be advocating, telling anyone else what to do or simply speak for themselves?
What is activism? What is quietism? What is ism?
Are humanitarian and universal values in art evasive of the problems that people experience? Or are they inclusive?
What is culture in the digital age? Is there culture in the digital age?
What is the spark, the urgency that drives the creative process?
This slew of questions came to mind upon reading a book review in which the word “quietism” was used, rather pejoratively, towards an author whom the critic felt did not take enough risk in presenting their opinions. It’s not a word I’ve seen used much other than in old zen stories in which teachers who espoused the use of koans (a kind of problem to concentrate on in meditation) used it to criticize other teachers who espoused a more open contemplative approach. And that’s probably overblown, more a matter of pointing out the potential pitfalls in either approach, aggression on the one hand and passivity on the other. In seeing it used in a literary forum I decided to look it up and was surprised to find that it has a history relating to western philosophy as well as Christianity.
In Catholic theology quietism refers to late seventeenth century contemplative and mystical practices oriented towards absorption into the Divine Essence that were ultimately deemed heretical by the church. In later times the term referred to religious practice that eschewed political activism. In early Western philosophy (second or third century) quietism was associated with a philosopher named Sextus Empiricus who espoused Pyrrhonism, describing it as a form of philosophical therapy. He felt that philosophy had no positive thesis to contribute. Rather than settling debates Pyrrhonism was intended to liberate the mind by diagnosing confusing concepts. More contemporary expressions of this idea came from Wittgenstein who influenced the “ordinary language” philosophers who considered philosophical problems to be the result of linguistic misunderstandings.
That’s paraphrasing wikipedia in as much as this is all quite new to me. If I’d have known about this when I was younger it might have spared me a fair bit of angst. I recall my college philosophy course (a subject that actually interested me) as being an exercise in the high tedium of intellectual conflict, reducing the whole of Western thought into a litany of arguments and refutations starting with the assertion “I think, therefore I am” and going downhill from there. Or perhaps I simply checked out mentally on the whole thing being that my real interests lay elsewhere and I was hungry for life experience. In reading about this now it resonates with a certain tension that I’ve long felt in considering the role of music and art in society, namely the need to speak to real issues and the need to allow the creative process free and unrestricted rein into the unknown. I’ve alluded to this in a number of previous posts and have never felt completely resolved about it. I’m not alone in this and sympathize with what my fellow artists are going through yet I’m at a loss when it comes to identifying a singular ethos that satisfies all parties in all situations.
As in…what’s the solution?
What if there is no solution?
What if the situation is hopeless?
No one likes hopelessness but what if we allow for the possibility just long enough to imagine the implications? How far do they go? What form could we possibly apply to the process? Somewhere I read an interview with a physicist who tried to describe what happens when a black hole collapses. All I remember about it was the poetic way he put it, something akin to, death dies with death. Somehow that sounds reasonable, assuring even. That which we are most afraid of. Does this help in any way on planet earth as we struggle to address our problems?
This verse from the Tao Te Ching showed up in something I recently read…
“Throw away morality and justice, and people will do the right thing.”
Pretty drastic, eh? Kind of goes against everything we seem to be fighting for. Maybe it strikes you as a form of anarchy. Or perhaps it’s pointing towards something else, the artifice that comes with making an ideology out of natural goodness, and then using that ideology as a weapon, in the name of goodness! I think there are a number of ways one might understand this statement (made three thousand years ago) but I don’t think it’s espousing that we do away with any of the tools we need to navigate the relative world. That may seem contradictory when seen as dualistic, which is actually OK because it’s the product of thought. It becomes a problem when we can’t see that and act out of a misguided belief.
I suppose this has become a theme on the blog, and yet I keep thinking that this time everything is suddenly going to be OK and there will be no need to bring it up again. There is a tension around this issue in that I used to speak out pretty strongly on social and political issues but it didn’t help, it made me feel worse, in ways I didn’t understand. That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless and not to speak out. Plenty of artists do speak out and with good reason. But perhaps it’s hopeless in a more positive sense. We are all going to die. I think that means that we’re already free, we just need to make some effort in realizing it. No matter what you choose to do, how that effort is directed makes all the difference. You can see it in the way it affects other people and you don’t have to be a sage to feel that.
As for those questions posed at the top, they’re OK, it’s just that they are all imposed before the fact. Too far ahead of the beat, as it were. Let’s see if we can find a better groove…
