Part 27 (1/2)
It is highly doubtful that the pract.i.tioners and admirers of modern art have the intellectual capacity to understand its philosophical meaning; all they need to do is indulge the worst of their subconscious premises. But their leaders do understand the issue consciously: the father of modern art is Immanuel Kant (see his Critique of Judgment).
I do not know which is worse: to practice modern art as a colossal fraud or to do it sincerely.
Those who do not wish to be the pa.s.sive, silent victims of frauds of this kind, can learn from modern art the practical importance of philosophy, and the consequences of philosophical default. Specifically, it is the destruction of logic that disarmed the victims, and, more specifically, the destruction of definitions. Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.
Works of art-tike everything else in the universe-are ent.i.ties of a specific nature: the concept requires a definition by their essential characteristics, which distinguish them from all other existing ent.i.ties. The genus of art works is: man-made objects which present a selective recreation of reality according to the artist's metaphysical value-judgments, by means of a specific material medium. The species are the works of the various branches of art, defined by the particular media which they employ and which indicate their relation to the various elements of man's cognitive faculty.
Man's need of precise definitions rests on the Law of Ident.i.ty: A is A, a thing is itself. A work of art is a specific ent.i.ty which possesses a specific nature. If it does not, it is not a work of art. If it is merely a material object, it belongs to some category of material objects-and if it does not belong to any particular category, it belongs to the one reserved for such phenomena: junk.
”Something made by an artist” is not a definition of art. A beard and a vacant stare are not the defining characteristics of an artist.
”Something in a frame hung on a wall” is not a definition of painting.
”Something with a number of pages in a binding” is not a definition of literature.
”Something piled together” is not a definition of sculpture.
”Something made of sounds produced by anything” is not a definition of music.
”Something glued on a flat surface” is not a definition of any art. There is no art that uses glue as a medium. Blades of gra.s.s glued on a sheet of paper to represent gra.s.s might be good occupational therapy for r.e.t.a.r.ded children-though I doubt it-but it is not art.
”Because I felt like it” is not a definition or validation of anything.
There is no place for whim in any human activity-if it is to be regarded as human. There is no place for the unknowable, the unintelligible, the undefinable, the non-objective in any human product. This side of an insane asylum, the actions of a human being are motivated by a conscious purpose; when they are not, they are of no interest to anyone outside a psychotherapist's office. And when the pract.i.tioners of modern art declare that they don't know what they are doing or what makes them do it, we should take their word for it and give them no further consideration.
[”Art and Cognition,” RM, pb 76.]
As an example of an entire field of activity based on nothing but the Argument from Intimidation, I give you modern art-where, in order to prove that they do possess the special insight possessed only by the mystic ”elite,” the populace are trying to surpa.s.s one another in loud exclamations on the splendor of some bare (but smudged) piece of canvas.
[”The Argument from Intimidation,” VOS, 193; pb 140.]
Just as modern philosophy is dominated by the attempt to destroy the conceptual level of man's consciousness and even the perceptual level, reducing man's awareness to mere sensations-so modern art and literature are dominated by the attempt to disintegrate man's consciousness and reduce it to mere sensations, to the ”enjoyment” of meaningless colors, noises and moods.
The art of any given period or culture is a faithful mirror of that culture's philosophy. If you see obscene, dismembered monstrosities leering at you from today's esthetic mirrors-the aborted creations of mediocrity, irrationality and panic-you are seeing the embodied, concretized reality of the philosophical premises that dominate today's culture. Only in this sense can those manifestations be called ”art”-not by the intention or accomplishment of their perpetrators.
[”Basic Principles of Literature,” RM, 79; pb 97.]
The composite picture of man that emerges from the art of our time is the gigantic figure of an aborted embryo whose limbs suggest a vaguely anthropoid shape, who twists his upper extremity in a frantic quest for a light that cannot penetrate its empty sockets, who emits inarticulate sounds resembling snarls and moans, who crawls through a b.l.o.o.d.y muck, red froth dripping from his jaws, and struggles to throw the froth at his own non-existent face, who pauses periodically and, lifting the stumps of his arms, screams in abysmal terror at the universe at large.
Engendered by generations of anti-rational philosophy, three emotions dominate the sense of life of modern man: fear, guilt and pity (more precisely, self-pity). Fear, as the appropriate emotion of a creature deprived of his means of survival, his mind; guilt, as the appropriate emotion of a creature devoid of moral values; pity, as the means of escape from these two, as the only response such a creature could beg for. A sensitive, discriminating man, who has absorbed that sense of life, but retained some vestige of self-esteem, will avoid so revealing a profession as art. But this does not stop the others.
Fear, guilt and the quest for pity combine to set the trend of art in the same direction, in order to express, justify and rationalize the artists' own feelings. To justify a chronic fear, one has to portray existence as evil; to escape from guilt and arouse pity, one has to portray man as impotent and innately loathsome. Hence the compet.i.tion among modern artists to find ever lower levels of depravity and ever higher degrees of mawkishness-a compet.i.tion to shock the public out of its wits and jerk its tears. Hence the frantic search for misery, the descent from compa.s.sionate studies of alcoholism and s.e.xual perversion to dope, incest, psychosis, murder, cannibalism.
[”Bootleg Romanticism,” RM, 122; pb 130.]
See also ARGUMENT from INTIMIDATION; ART; DEFINITIONS; GENUS and SPECIES; INTEGRATION (MENTAL); OBJECTIVITY; PERCEPTION; PHILOSOPHY; REASON; SENSATIONS; SUBJECTIVISM: WHIMS/WHIM-WORs.h.i.+P.
Money. Money is the tool of men who have reached a high level of productivity and a long-range control over their lives. Money is not merely a tool of exchange: much more importantly, it is a tool of saving, which permits delayed consumption and buys time for future production. To fulfill this requirement, money has to be some material commodity which is imperishable, rare, h.o.m.ogeneous, easily stored, not subject to wide fluctuations of value, and always in demand among those you trade with. This leads you to the decision to use gold as money. Cold money is a tangible value in itself and a token of wealth actually produced. When you accept a gold coin in payment for your goods, you actually deliver the goods to the buyer; the transaction is as safe as simple harter. When you store your savings in the form of gold coins, they represent the goods which you have actually produced and which have gone to buy time for other producers, who will keep the productive process going, so that you'll be able to trade your coins for goods any time you wish. time you wish.
[”Egalitarianism and Inflation,” PWNI, 154; pb 127.]
Money cannot function as money, i.e., as a medium of exchange, unless it is backed by actual. unconsumed goods.
[”Hunger and Freedom,” ARL, III, 22, 3.]
So you think that money is the root of all evil? ... Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?
When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor-your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?
Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions -and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.
But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made-before it can be looted or mooched-made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.
[”The Meaning of Money,” FNI, 104; pb 88.]
Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders.
[Ibid., 105; pb 89.]
So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another-their only subst.i.tute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.
[Ibid., 108; pb 91.]
Most people lump together into the same category all men who become rich, refusing to consider the essential question: the source of the riches, the means by which the wealth was acquired.
Money is a tool of exchange; it represents wealth only so long as it can be traded for material goods and services. Wealth does not grow in nature; it has to be produced by men. Nature gives us only the raw materials, but it is man's mind that has to discover the knowledge of how to use them. It is man's thinking and labor that transform the materials into food, clothing, shelter or television sets-into all the goods that men require for their survival, comfort and pleasure.
Behind every step of humanity's long climb from the cave to New York City, there is the man who took that step for the first time-the man who discovered how to make a fire or a wheel or an airplane or an electric light.
When people refuse to consider the source of wealth, what they refuse to recognize is the fact that wealth is the product of man's intellect, of his creative ability, fully as much as is art, science, philosophy or any other human value.
[”The Money-Making Personality,” TOF, Feb. 1983, 2.]
Money is a great power-because, in a free or even a semi-free society, it is a frozen form of productive energy. And, therefore, the spending of money is a grave responsibility. Contrary to the altruists and the advocates of the so-called ”academic freedom,” it is a moral crime to give money to support ideas with which you disagree; it means: ideas which you consider wrong, false, evil. It is a moral crime to give money to support your own destroyers.
[”The Sanction of the Victims,” TOF, April 1982, 7.]
See also CONSUMPTION; CREDIT; GOLD STANDARD; INFLATION; MARKET VALUE; OBJECTIVE THEORY of VALUES; PHYSICAL FORCE; PRODUCTION; PURCHASING POWER; SANCTION of the VICTIM; SAVINGS; SELFISHNESS; TRADER PRINCIPLE.
Monopoly. The alleged purpose of the Ant.i.trust laws was to protect compet.i.tion; that purpose was based on the socialistic fallacy that a free, unregulated market will inevitably lead to the establishment of coercive monopolies. But, in fact, no coercive monopoly has ever been or ever can be established by means of free trade on a free market. Every coercive monopoly was created by government intervention into the economy: by special privileges, such as franchises or subsidies, which closed the entry of compet.i.tors into a given field, by legislative action. (For a full demonstration of this fact, I refer you to the works of the best economists.) [”Ant.i.trust: The Rule of Unreason,” TON, Feb. 1962, 5.]
A ”coercive monopoly” is a business concern that can set its prices and production policies independent of the market, with immunity from compet.i.tion, from the law of supply and demand. An economy dominated by such monopolies would be rigid and stagnant.
The necessary precondition of a coercive monopoly is closed entry-the barring of all competing producers from a given field. This can be accomplished only by an act of government intervention, in the form of special regulations, subsidies, or franchises. Without government a.s.sistance, it is impossible for a would-be monopolist to set and maintain his prices and production policies independent of the rest of the economy. For if he attempted to set his prices and production at a level that would yield profits to new entrants significantly above those available in other fields, compet.i.tors would be sure to invade his industry.
[Alan Greenspan, ”Ant.i.trust,” CUI, 68.]
See also ANt.i.tRUST LAWS; COMPEt.i.tION; ECONOMIC POWER us. POLITICAL POWER; FREE MARKET; INTERVENTIONISM (ECO NOMIC).
Moral Cowardice. Moral cowardice is fear of upholding the good because it is good, and fear of opposing the evil because it is evil.