It should come as no surprise to those who read this blog periodically that I am one of the advocates for finding ways to create, share and express artistic beauty into an ugly culture. In this I am an ally of Mako Fujiumura, Gregory Wolfe, Hilary Brand, Eugene Peterson, Louis Huey-Heck and Jim Kalnin (to name a few.) This observation about the Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar get is so right:
"Balthasar’s theological aesthetics begins with ‘beauty’…. That which appears in the beauty of natural and created forms is the glory of being, der Glanz des Seins. It speaks of the mystery of that which transcends and yet inheres in all existents. Consequently, aesthetics is not just one department of knowledge, which in relative independence of others constitutes a relatively autonomous discipline. When one sees the beauty of a person, a work of art, or a sunset, one is confronted at the same time with the mystery of its otherness. This sense of the wonder of beauty, Balthasar believes, is at the root of all serious metaphysical endeavor.” Louis Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar
My heart, soul and mind are, therefore, keenly aware of what this means for both the continued dumbing-down of American popular culture and the public policy consequences that continue to gain traction during our financial crisis. A recent posting on The Huffington Post put it like this:
It happened first in schools and is now proposed on a national scale - the continued cutting down of arts and culture funding. A group of conservative Republicans, called the Republican Study Committee, revealed a new plan on Thursday to cut federal funding for arts down to zero. This means the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be left in the cold. Not to mention the potential hit at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Run by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the over 150-person group's plan, the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, would "save" $167.5 million pulled from the NEA and the Humanities endowment and $445 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are forecasting that this erasure of cultural funding would reduce federal spending by $2.5 trillion over the next decade.
Considering that arts and culture spending has already been reduced down to such a minuscule portion, it should come as no surprise that the Republican Study Committee has cornered the arts as a less valued endowment. And this is not the first time that arts endowments have had to fight to keep afloat. The NEA was targeted similarly in the 1990s by Republicans looking to cut "wasteful" spending.
When one thinks about all the organizations funded by these endowments, it's difficult to see the NEA as so easy to brush off. The American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, a touring Shakespeare troupe, music and poetry initiatives, and arts education programs across the country are all amongst those that would be affected by the funding cuts.
+ First, let's be honest: federal dollars only comprise 1% of the funding base for these projects. At the same time, arts-related project generate not only insight and beauty but also significant jobs and taxes. Clearly the "creative economy" as it is called in Pittsfield, is a multi-layered part of economic recovery. "On average, the arts industry generates $166.2 billion in income each year. "The government's existing arts-funding model follows conservative budgetary principles," Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch told the LA Times. "A small federal investment that's important to the health of the nonprofit arts sector helps sustain its 5.7 million jobs and the $30 billion in annual returns to federal, state and local coffers that those workers pay in taxes."
+ Second, perhaps the time has finally arrived when the United States can muster the integrity of the old slogan: It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber. The Mayor of Cleveland, Michael R. White, used to say something like, "Progressives have to learn to make poverty their friend." That is, use tough time to make hard decisions that don't have political legs when money is flowing fast and free. Nicholas Kristoff on the New York Times points out what conservatives and liberals both understand:
It was reflexive for liberals to rail at former President George W. Bush for jingoism. But it is Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Bush. And it is Obama who has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he took office. (A bill providing $37 billion to continue financing America's two wars was approved by the House last week and is awaiting his signature.)
Under Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with "top secret" clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, a sobering report from the College Board says that the United States, which used to lead the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees, has dropped to 12th.
What's more, an unbalanced focus on weapons alone is often counterproductive, creating a nationalist backlash against foreign "invaders." Overall, education has a rather better record than military power in neutralizing foreign extremism. And the trade-offs are staggering: For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there. Hawks retort that it's impossible to run schools in Afghanistan unless there are American troops to protect them. But that's incorrect. CARE, a humanitarian organization, operates 300 schools in Afghanistan, and not one has been burned by the Taliban. Greg Mortenson, of "Three Cups of Tea" fame, has overseen the building of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and operates dozens more in tents or rented buildings — and he says that not one has been destroyed by the Taliban.
+ And third, beauty - public or private - encourages both the inner journey of the soul's deepening but also the outward journey of compassion. Part of my commitment to the arts comes from the fact that art feeds me spiritually - I am in my deepest prayer while playing music and experiencing the sacred energy flowing through a band of different people becoming one in a song - but that is not all that happens. In a tender and insightful essay entitled, "How Is Art a Gift, a Calling and an Obedience?" Andy Crouch captures the ethical and even broadly political importance of art:
We who are privileged enough to live in North America live in a world that is forgetting both pain and play. Our popular culture offers us endless diverting amusements that fall flat and well short of real celebration. Our so-called serious culture offers us endlessly difficult dead ends. Who will be the people who can play gracefully - unusefully - in the world? Who will be the people who turn unafraid toward the pain all around us? Who will be the people who believe in beauty without being afraid of brokenness? Who will be the people who champion that which is not useful?
Crouch then summarizes our utilitarian obsessions calling this the age "of the economist and the evolutionary biologist, each of whom have gotten very busy explaining why everything we thought was particularly human is actually just useful." Then he cuts to the heart:
Once you have lost the idea that the world is a gits - that culture is something that can be taken, blessed, broken and given as something useful - then eventually... you can do the same thing with human beings - consider them useful, too. (Or not...) So what is at stake in our attitude toward art, toward the beautiful, broken, unuseful parts of culture, is ultimately our attitude about those creatures that the Lord God formed out of the dust. And without a reason to believe in the beauty of what is unuseful, who will be left to champion those people who are not useful? People who cannot be substituted for one another, who are stubbornly and particularly themselves...?
The unemployed? The abused? the dying? The deformed? The mentally ill? It is no wonder Dostoevsky wrote that "Beauty shall save the world." But we must support it and honor it and advocate for it. Sometimes, you know, the light is forced out: think of art and ethics during the time of Stalin? Or Mubarak? Or the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or McCarthy?
There is more at stake here than scoring political points or even reducing federal spending by a few pennies in the overall budget. To me it comes down to what Pastor Neimoller said after his experiences in a Nazi prison camp:
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
"Balthasar’s theological aesthetics begins with ‘beauty’…. That which appears in the beauty of natural and created forms is the glory of being, der Glanz des Seins. It speaks of the mystery of that which transcends and yet inheres in all existents. Consequently, aesthetics is not just one department of knowledge, which in relative independence of others constitutes a relatively autonomous discipline. When one sees the beauty of a person, a work of art, or a sunset, one is confronted at the same time with the mystery of its otherness. This sense of the wonder of beauty, Balthasar believes, is at the root of all serious metaphysical endeavor.” Louis Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar
My heart, soul and mind are, therefore, keenly aware of what this means for both the continued dumbing-down of American popular culture and the public policy consequences that continue to gain traction during our financial crisis. A recent posting on The Huffington Post put it like this:
It happened first in schools and is now proposed on a national scale - the continued cutting down of arts and culture funding. A group of conservative Republicans, called the Republican Study Committee, revealed a new plan on Thursday to cut federal funding for arts down to zero. This means the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be left in the cold. Not to mention the potential hit at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Run by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the over 150-person group's plan, the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, would "save" $167.5 million pulled from the NEA and the Humanities endowment and $445 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are forecasting that this erasure of cultural funding would reduce federal spending by $2.5 trillion over the next decade.
Considering that arts and culture spending has already been reduced down to such a minuscule portion, it should come as no surprise that the Republican Study Committee has cornered the arts as a less valued endowment. And this is not the first time that arts endowments have had to fight to keep afloat. The NEA was targeted similarly in the 1990s by Republicans looking to cut "wasteful" spending.
When one thinks about all the organizations funded by these endowments, it's difficult to see the NEA as so easy to brush off. The American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, a touring Shakespeare troupe, music and poetry initiatives, and arts education programs across the country are all amongst those that would be affected by the funding cuts.
+ First, let's be honest: federal dollars only comprise 1% of the funding base for these projects. At the same time, arts-related project generate not only insight and beauty but also significant jobs and taxes. Clearly the "creative economy" as it is called in Pittsfield, is a multi-layered part of economic recovery. "On average, the arts industry generates $166.2 billion in income each year. "The government's existing arts-funding model follows conservative budgetary principles," Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch told the LA Times. "A small federal investment that's important to the health of the nonprofit arts sector helps sustain its 5.7 million jobs and the $30 billion in annual returns to federal, state and local coffers that those workers pay in taxes."
+ Second, perhaps the time has finally arrived when the United States can muster the integrity of the old slogan: It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber. The Mayor of Cleveland, Michael R. White, used to say something like, "Progressives have to learn to make poverty their friend." That is, use tough time to make hard decisions that don't have political legs when money is flowing fast and free. Nicholas Kristoff on the New York Times points out what conservatives and liberals both understand:
It was reflexive for liberals to rail at former President George W. Bush for jingoism. But it is Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Bush. And it is Obama who has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he took office. (A bill providing $37 billion to continue financing America's two wars was approved by the House last week and is awaiting his signature.)
Under Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with "top secret" clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, a sobering report from the College Board says that the United States, which used to lead the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees, has dropped to 12th.
What's more, an unbalanced focus on weapons alone is often counterproductive, creating a nationalist backlash against foreign "invaders." Overall, education has a rather better record than military power in neutralizing foreign extremism. And the trade-offs are staggering: For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there. Hawks retort that it's impossible to run schools in Afghanistan unless there are American troops to protect them. But that's incorrect. CARE, a humanitarian organization, operates 300 schools in Afghanistan, and not one has been burned by the Taliban. Greg Mortenson, of "Three Cups of Tea" fame, has overseen the building of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and operates dozens more in tents or rented buildings — and he says that not one has been destroyed by the Taliban.
We who are privileged enough to live in North America live in a world that is forgetting both pain and play. Our popular culture offers us endless diverting amusements that fall flat and well short of real celebration. Our so-called serious culture offers us endlessly difficult dead ends. Who will be the people who can play gracefully - unusefully - in the world? Who will be the people who turn unafraid toward the pain all around us? Who will be the people who believe in beauty without being afraid of brokenness? Who will be the people who champion that which is not useful?
Crouch then summarizes our utilitarian obsessions calling this the age "of the economist and the evolutionary biologist, each of whom have gotten very busy explaining why everything we thought was particularly human is actually just useful." Then he cuts to the heart:
The unemployed? The abused? the dying? The deformed? The mentally ill? It is no wonder Dostoevsky wrote that "Beauty shall save the world." But we must support it and honor it and advocate for it. Sometimes, you know, the light is forced out: think of art and ethics during the time of Stalin? Or Mubarak? Or the Taliban in Afghanistan? Or McCarthy?
There is more at stake here than scoring political points or even reducing federal spending by a few pennies in the overall budget. To me it comes down to what Pastor Neimoller said after his experiences in a Nazi prison camp:
Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Truer words there aren't, James. I'm sending you an e-mail which is very a propos this.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the time I was involved as a volunteer in public broadcasting here in Ontario (Canada), and a conservative slash and burn government came into power. The trapeze act we had to do to keep from being gutted was difficult, wrenching.
Ironically, a liberal (roughly equivalent to Democrat) government following did a lot more damage.
I was very moved by your email re: Speer and the triumph of Facist ideology in the West: sadly, as one commentator noted after the fall of the Berlin Wall, without a comparable challenge to capitalist organization, the bottom line trumps all else: and while the beat goes on - and the bottom liners can't put it out (Egypt) - the beat needs a whole lot more players, yes? (Sadly, too, I know what you mean about the liberal movement doing even more damage.)
ReplyDelete