I was watching Martha Graham’s “The Life of a Dancer” last night, and thought I detected a bit of pretentiousness. I thought well, if anybody deserves it, it was her.
But I think the more useless society deems an activity, the more intensely the practitioner must value it. Art becomes intensely important, in part, because it is not immediately practical, because it does not fit the American propagandas of efficiency and productiveness. Of what USE is a bunch of people hopping around in tights, not infrequently coming close to being copulatory?
In my own case, I looked at it, and decided they could teach me something about sex, done properly. We don’t do “it” right much any more, or so it seems to me. Pornography makes it all about the oohing and aaahing, and the varied positions, and the duration, and the climaxes, of course. There is a large in-between zone, that used to be seen by most. She has one dance about flirtation. I liked it. Making sex somewhat Verboten, means you dance around it, figuratively and literally. There are many small pleasures, short of orgasm, and a large number of which are in some respects BETTER than an orgasm. Life on a pleasant day, with a theme of, but not reality of, sex. You can imagine that, can’t you? What could be is so often much more fun than what is. The pleasure is often in the chasing, and not the apprehending (Tom Waits line).
But then I got to thinking further, and thought about this whole anti-bourgeois thing, which grew to permeate Western culture, including American culture, some time between 1850 and 1950, with the 1960’s just being the Pop version of it, the version for kids, the version with toys and games and amusements of all sorts.
What do you get, taking a counter-cultural stance? Being an “Artiste”? It seems to me there are two elements to this, and two ways of going about it. The first is to truly enjoy being who you are, to take genuine pleasure in life, to simply not care what people think because you have developed your own way. I don’t think very many people can do this, but don’t doubt that some do.
The second is to consider yourself ABOVE the plebians, because of your superior artistry, because of your rejection of their antiquated and dull values, because of your radical politics, your vision for a radically different future, your refusal to be practical or ask realistic and obvious questions.
I was this person for a minute, so perhaps I am projecting, but I don’t think so. I grew out of that phase, because Truth has always been important to me, not in a theoretical way, but in the way which allows me to predict the outcome of things, of ideas, of people, of my own way. I have not always been a conservative, but became one quickly once I started reading history and economics. I chose not to pursue an academic career because I got tired of smelling like books. That is not quite the full story, but it’s actually pretty close.
Pretentiousness would have been nearly my only solace, reading recondite subjects, writing papers none but a handful of fellow professionals would read, which would have been irrelevant to the world at large entirely. Put another way, I nearly put myself in a cave, where I could convince myself my isolation was my superiority. Perhaps I still do that somewhat, but I am much more open than I was.
But the point I wanted to make is what becomes of those who choose this path in life, the anti-bourgeois path, the path away from money, from success as Americans understand it. What becomes of the Greek scholar, or the only-somewhat published author, or the artist who is reduced to touring art fairs around the country, who once wanted to change the world? What becomes of the committed radical, who decided when they were 25 they were going to change the world, and who somehow reach 55 without really having done anything other than shout, yell, hand out fliers, work phone banks, read radical books, cover their car with bumper stickers, and attend Bernie Sanders rallies?
There is a solipsism in all this, there is a wandering without finding, there is a narcissism, and there is a moral pretentiousness bordering on the comical.
You know these people. You have met them. What do they have, if they give up their idealism? What do they have, if they admit they were wrong? They have nothing. The hippies, who have spent their lives proud of their “victory” in getting America to retreat from Vietnam, and longing for some comparable struggle, one that would make them feel that good, make them feel that relevant, reach old age, and what is there left but anger? What is there left of that energy that made them feel unstoppable, that made them feel they burned with righteous fire, if they admit, now, that it was all a bad farce? That they knew nothing then, and know less now?
There is a Jacques Ellul quote I am going to indulge myself in writing out, again. I wrote it some time ago, but that may have been five or more years ago. I will submit that Viewpoint One is the necessity of reassuring themselves–old, middle aged, and newly radicalized–that they are right, that their cause is right, that their commitments are right.
Viewpoint Two, which is complementary–my intent here is not to oppose them, but to note there are multiple accurate perspectives, which is true of all things–is the impossibility of returning home, of going back where they once were, to who they once were.
But propaganda can also destroy the group, break it up–for example by stimulating contradictions between feelings of justice and of loyalty, by destroying confidence in the accustomed sources of information, by modifying standards of judgement, by exaggerating each crisis and conflict, or by setting groups against each other.
Moreover it is possible to provide successive stages for the individual. While he is still a solid member of a group, propaganda can introduce a factor of ambiguity, of doubt, of suspicion. But the individual finds it very difficult to remain long in such a situation. Ambiguity is painful to him, and he seeks to escape it. But he cannot escape it by returning to his previous certainties and total blind allegiance to his former group. This is impossible because the doubt introduced can no longer be assuaged while the individual remains in the original context of values and truths. It is then, by going over to the enemy group, by compliance with what provoked the ambiguity, that man escapes ambiguity. He then will enter into an absolute allegiance to the truth of the enemy group. His compliance will be all the more radical, his fusion with it all the more irrational, because it is a flight from yesterdays truth and because it will have to protect him against any return to, memory of, or nostalgia for the former allegiance. There is no greater enemy of Christianity or Communism than he who was once an absolute believer. (page 190, Propagandas)
Likewise with someone REJECTING the American Dream. Trump, in important respects, represents everything the hippies thought they were saying NO to when they dropped out and turned on. He is an unabashed patriot, a successful businessman, someone who makes no apologies for who he is, who is loyal without being weird about it, and honest without being compulsive.
As I said at the time, his election was a bookend, in important respects, to the hippie era, to the era of anti-American Americanism. His election puts the lie to everything they believed, everything they fought for. In the end, they believed nothing, fought for nothing. That is a tough pill–a Red Pill, to use a modern analogy–to swallow. Hence the irrational hatred.
I need to do useful things today, so that will have to suffice, but there is much to ponder here, I think.