Gość: Stanton
IP: 168.103.126.*
28.05.03, 19:01
America’s Dying Arts and Philosophy Hold the Cure
by John Stanton
www.globalresearch.ca 28 May 2003
The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STA305B.html
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The wonderfully bizarre and philosophically fertile novel Insatiability,
written in 1927 by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, describes a society in rancid
decay faced with the external threat of a “Sino-Mongolian” army with some
very distinct Soviet and Nazi characteristics. The armies of conformity are
on the border waiting to attack.
Meanwhile in Witkiewicz’s society, religion, philosophy, politics, art,
literature and sex have become devoid of transcendent qualities. They serve
only to further the utilitarian interests of racism, nationalism and
patriotism. Sex is no longer surrounded by love; instead, it is merely a
means to produce more workers, more soldiers, more taxpayers. Witkiewicz’s
nation is frenetically engaged in an orgy of motion for motion’s sake which
means that it is has extraordinarily high rates of productivity. The people’s
days are full of activity whether it be producing or manufacturing, reading
the newspapers, visiting an art museum, listening to music, or propagating
the human species. The masses, as Witkiewicz describes them, “all those
dukes, counts, farmers, peasants, workers, craftsmen, army…” are vacuous
automatons who had long ago lost the ability to look beyond the given image
or word; that is, to think with depth.
The dying society that Witkiewicz portrays can only be saved by the artists
and the unblemished spiritualism of religion freed from corporate structure.
The writer, the philosopher, the poet, the painter, the musician, and the
religious leader collectively hold the cure for a culture on its death bed.
Why? As they have throughout recording history, this merry band of refuseniks
are constantly exposing the brutality of reality and are continually
challenging institutions and the propaganda they spew forth. It is their lot
in life and their duty to ask the tough questions. No open society can
prosper for long without them. In Witkiewicz’s world, those with the cure
have relinquished their responsibilities. They no longer refuse
