A question of fusion

By JP Malig

GENESIS tells us that on the sixth day, God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth."

          We are unique among all living things, for as far as we know, unlike animals, we are the only sentient beings.

          Thus, it is this self-awareness which compels us to define our world primarily in terms with ourselves, and see the human individual as standing in a special relationship with the environment and creative forces that the individual sees extant in the universe.

          But where do we search in our pursuit for significance?

          We still walk the same road that our fathers walked and we confront the same obstacles, albeit in different forms. Therefore, we must continue to reassess the way we relate with nature and our fellows, in terms of both past wisdom and present knowledge. It is only through this way that we can fully determine our destiny.

          Poet Robinson Jeffers says in "The Torchbearer’s Race": "When the ancient wisdom is folded like a wine-stained cloth/And laid up in darkness and the old symbols forgotten in the glory of that your hawk’s dream/Remember that the life of mankind is like the life of a man/A flutter from darkness to darkness across the bright hair of a fire."

          The humanities and the arts – chronicles of our past and our present – are the bonfires from which torches of knowledge are lit. They keep alive the primordial fire of ancient wisdom that the earth still keeps. But in a world that that has swiftly become highly-urbanized, industrialized and technology-dependent, is there still a need for wisdom that nature and the past keeps which artists capture and reveal?

          New social values ushered in by rapid urbanization have already led to the gradual disappearance of traditional human values, which are already in danger of becoming meaningless. As I see it, there might be little space left for sensitive literature, intensely personal art or traditional religion in the human ant-hill of the future. For what meaning can the parables and poetry of the past have if there are no longer flowers in the fields and forests of trees in the mountains?

          At present, the artistically-inclined person in a predominantly highly-urbanized and technocratic society must lead a schizoid existence. And such existence has fast become the standard practice for many of us. Individuals build careers and shape their worlds in their public roles as technicians, specialists and professionals. Hey have learned to keep their artistically-creative nature to themselves as private and irrelevant pleasures.

          Creative outlets are a personal therapy within an individual’s continuous pursuit of significance in the modern world. They keep us a little more sane and resilient in this given era; but the individual rarely lets the creative self define his or her professional identity, unless he or she is particularly gifted or is in serious pursuit of being known for his or her artistic abilities.

          However, artificial and half-hearted adventures in artistic and humanist sophistication, which are all too common actions to impress peers or an audience, are viciously subversive. They allow the individual to throw off flurries of intellectual sparks, but short-circuit any deeper level of the creative personality. They teach the individual appreciative gestures, but avoid the red-hot experience of authentic creative vision that might transform his life and in doing so, set him at war-like odds with the dominant social and cultural climate.

          For many people, one poem by Robert Frost, one fugue by Johann Sebastian Bach, one painting by Francisco Jose Goya, one Buddhist sutra might be enough to show-off an intellectual and artistic façade. But such is merely an unlocking of the door; the door itself is yet to open and the individual is yet to even enter the realm of ancient wisdom passed on by the arts and the humanities.

          Where do the arts – the last voice and keeper of traditions and nature’s bonfire – stand now therefore in the highly-urbanized and technology-based world? How can we genuinely integrate the artistically-creative and professional personas of an individual and the modern world? How can we fuse ancient wisdom and modern technology?

          Elusive still the answers are to these questions

JPM/26 July 2000