The Decline of Art in Western Culture Parallels the Decline of Everything Else

For most of western history art was used as a way for patrons to showcase achievements or propagandize citizens or lionize individuals.  Maybe the single greatest artist in human history, Michelangelo, created his greatest works for patrons of various sorts.  David he created for the Florentine Guild of Wool, the Pieta for the French ambassador to the Holy See and the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica for popes. Art was, in one way or another an homage to something greater than its creator. 

Fast-forward about three centuries and the art world begun to change.  Art as an indulgence of artists, where they would paint whatever they wanted, with or without a desire that someone would pay for it is largely a child of the late 19^th century.  That’s when Impressionism, that distinctly unconventional, non traditional form or painting emerged.  In a very short period of time the world of art went from uber traditional world of Bouguereau to the anything but world of Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh.  Suddenly art was no longer a vehicle for vanity or the celebration of greatness or storytelling.  It was something else. 

In 1917 Marcel Duchamp, a French artist unveiled a urinal on a wooden box and called it “Fountain”.  A hundred years later art had “evolved” so much that a banana taped to a wall with duct tape (an actual banana… not plastic or paper mâché) would sell for $120,000 in 2019…

It is into this universe of art that we find what is supposed to be cutting edge and courageous, in the form of the Pietà by German designer Harald Glööckler.  The revisualization of the classic piece features a tattooed Christ and a trans Mary.  And what’s courageous about this piece?  It stands up to those vicious, hateful… Christians. 

In the cacophony of 2023, while there are other issues that are of far more import than this, this one might be a bit illustrative. 

Having the “courage” to stand up to Christians and defile Christian traditions and symbols doesn’t actually require any courage… because there’s no danger of anything bad actually happening besides some chastising words from a few of the offended.  No one is going to issue death threats against you, no one is going to put a bounty on your head, mobs of people aren’t going to start riots and kill others because of you, as was shown in 1986 with The Holy Virgin Mary by Chris Ofili and 1987 with Piss Christ, by Andres Serrano. Of course there is another religion where that’s exactly what happens if one were to criticize it or its symbols… but of course those “courageous” artists aren’t assailing that religion.

This is a symbol of the bizarro world we find ourselves living in.  Other things that are counted as courageous today include a man announcing that he’s a woman, flaunting one’s morbid obesity in public or wrapping oneself in the flag of victimization for being black or gay or some other category. 

None of those things takes courage in 2023 America where being anything but a patriotic heterosexual Christian white male accords hero worship. It doesn’t take courage to assail someone or something where there is no threat of consequences. 

Heterosexual Christian white males built most (but not all) of the world we live in today.  It’s far from perfect, but no time or place in history has been perfect.  But it’s not their DNA that somehow makes them better citizens or better people. No, it’s the culture they built.

We’re told that somehow western culture is bad because it was not crafted by a multicultural collective.  That makes no sense.  Virtually every culture in human history has been built by members of a single race.  There were not a lot of whites helping to craft the Mali Empire in Africa, there were not a lot of blacks at the center of the Chinese Middle Kingdom, not a lot of yellow people helping to build the Inca Empire and there weren’t a lot of brown people helping to build Russia or the Russian Empire. No, most of human history has been dominated by monochromatic empires, nations and cultures.

It just happens to be the case that on Earth’s competitive landscape the culture built and developed by straight, Christian white males is the one that has generated the greatest increases in freedom, technology and prosperity in human history.  And it’s not even close.  But because not everyone has shared equally in the material gains from that culture, it must be destroyed…

Because that culture largely focuses on meritocracy, accountability, individual liberty and limited government rather than coercion from above, people who have yet to achieve their desired goals have the opportunity to criticize it with impunity, something they cannot do in most other parts of the world and couldn’t have done throughout most of human history virtually everywhere. Yet without the threat of consequence they often call themselves courageous. 

Western civilization, the driver of said unprecedented levels of freedom and prosperity and opportunity in all of human history, today finds itself under attack by those who have migrated to it, have invaded it or whose ancestors were brought to it, because they’ve not achieved their desired goals. This, despite the fact that conditions back wherever they or their ancestors left from are likely far worse than they are anywhere in the west.  But no matter.  These “protesters” use the freedoms accorded by western culture to attack it.  That’s a problem. No culture can survive if there are no shared values.  No culture can survive if citizens don’t have at least a common appreciation for the nations’ fundamental culture and assume it to be a good thing.   

Here at home, if those criticizing America were just a few outliers there would be no problem.  A strong nation can withstand critique, even from within, and that’s why we have a 1^st Amendment.  The problem in 2023 however is that fully half of the country has been brainwashed into believing that the bedrock principles upon which America is based are somehow evil, corrupt or illegitimate.  They got that way because one of the two main political parties has proffered that lie for decades and enlisted its fellow fabulists in the media, academia and the government to reinforce it.

That is simply not sustainable. Like the movement of art from the classical style of Botticelli, Da Vinci, Rembrandt and Rubins to the self important renderings of Basquiat, Mark Rothco, Robert Mapplethorpe and Glööckler, the transition from the a nation built on universal God given fundamental rights to one based on balkanization and subjective grievances based on “equity” and victimization promises to replace something great with something absurd.  What’s more, that absurd subjective culture cannot long stand.  Just as we’ve seen with the Democrat party since the beginning of the war in Gaza, at some point groups joined by victim status can and will splinter as their various victim classes turn against one another based on the current hierarchy of victim status. 

As we march towards what will be the most consequential presidential election in American history, we might want to start suggesting to those who seek to destroy what “white heterosexual Christian males” have built that they take a look around. They’ll not find a better combination of opportunity, freedom and real equality anywhere on earth or in history, particularly as it relates to protecting minorities.  They should, unlike the Gays for Gaza buffoons we see in the streets, consider what happens to them if they actually get what they wish for. 

Western Civilization Hangs in the Balance, and it's Not Looking Good

When he embarked on his journey to discover a path to India Christopher Columbus’ lead ship was the Santa Maria. Built in 1460 it measured 62 ft with a crew of just 40, the Santa Maria would take Columbus to the New World and would change the course of human history.

Half a century earlier there was another man who sailed ships who didn’t change the course of human history. His name was Zheng He and he commanded the Chinese navy during the early 15^th century. His Treasure Ships were not only larger than the Santa Maria, they were more than six times the size, measuring 440 feet long with a crew of 600. And Zheng had an armada of them at his disposal during his seven Treasure Journeys between 1405 and 1433 that took him as far away as the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa.

Zheng’s navy was by far the most powerful the world had ever seen and he used it to explore and initiate trade and tribute routes. And what did the Chinese do with this extraordinary power? Nothing. After Zheng’s death the Treasure Journeys stopped. The Chinese had traditionally been an inward looking society and after Zheng’s 30 year exploration aberration, the old tradition returned.

Why are we not speaking Chinese today? Why didn’t the Chinese conquer the world (or at least try) when they had a navy exponentially superior to anything else in the world? Why did the kingdom that gave us paper and gunpowder not go on to dominate the world of commerce or ideas? Because the Chinese had very little competition in the area of said ideas. Ruled by an emperor who was all powerful, competition in the realm of ideas was rarely tolerated in China for most of its history, nevermind flourish. What the emperor said was gospel. And the emperor said we stay home.

Similar kingdoms held dominion over wide swaths of land yet had a very limited impact on the world beyond. The Mongol empire comes to mind, which was the largest contiguous empire in human history or the countless Muslim empires, up to and including the Ottoman empire. Robust competition of ideas did not exist in those empires any more than it did in China, and indeed most of us are not speaking Mongol nor Arabic nor Turkish.

Now compare that to the west. At one point the British Empire covered a quarter of the world’s landmass and a quarter of her people. Today more people speak English than any other language on the planet. There may be a billion people speaking Chinese, but 95% of them live in China while 95% of the English speakers don’t live in England. Similarly half a billion people speak Spanish and less than 10% of them live in Spain.

Beyond that, almost every aspect of life for most people today is the result of western ideas. Cars, phones, planes, elevators, televisions, cameras, computers, MRI machines, DNA testing, heart transplants, nuclear power, space travel, fracking, movies, advanced agriculture and much much more. For all intents and purposes, the west developed the modern world. And for all of its current deprivation, it is extraordinary.

So what accounts for the difference of the impact between what the Chinese accomplished over the last thousand years and what Europe did? Simple. Competition. And, in particular, the competition of ideas.

Competition, more than any single thing, is responsible for the advances of the west. Between countries there’s been competition. Within countries there’s been competition. Within religions there’s been competition which sometimes split sides across countries and between them. And the competition was relentless, frequently resulting in bloodshed and oftentimes in war, sometimes lots of both. In addition, alliances shifted regularly between countries and within them. There was rivalry, there was espionage and of course there was betrayal and treachery.

The real competition that helped to create the world we live in evolved in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman empire. What we know of today as France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Britain didn’t exist then. They formed over hundreds of years of competing tribes, towns and estates that evolved into domains and then into kingdoms.

Initially chieftains would compete with one another for the loyalty of local peasants in an effort to increase their power and holdings using such incentives as more food in exchange for their labor or fealty. Those chieftains would eventually evolve into local nobility and continue to expand their lands. Later, particularly in times of more instability dukes or kings would compete for the allegiance of local nobility by offering lower taxes or more freedom than their opponents.

The reality of this can be seen in the evolution of European nations, particularly France, Italy and Germany. The ebb and flow of borders over the 1500 years since the fall of Rome has been nothing less than stunning. And each of those nations, plus Britain and Spain were the core drivers of the evolution of civilization over the last 500 years.

All of that evolution came about because of competition, whether driven by ideas, religion, or simple power. At different times over that span the French were fighting against the British, the Spanish, the Papal States, Austria, the Prussians, the Russians and more. At other times they were fighting alongside those same nations. Britain and Italy and Germany and the rest of Europe have similarly chaotic histories.

And it wasn’t just external fighting. France, like most western countries, saw vast amounts of internal strive as the landed gentry and various regions fought one another for dominance or liberation. The same holds true for religion. While Christianity dominated Europe, the reality is that it battled with Islam for dominance for centuries and at one point in the 8^th century only being stopped at Poitiers in France and 900 years later at the gates of Vienna, Austria. Simultaneously Christianity battled itself bloody for the 500 years following the Reformation.

As if all of that chaos wasn’t enough, sometimes power and religion made for strange bedfellows such as when Francis I of France partnered with the Muslim Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Great in the 16^th century to fight their fellow Christians the Hapsburgs who controlled much of Europe beyond France at the time.

The most obvious outcome of all of this fighting and the shifting of alliances was a competition of ideas for everything from developing improved weapons of war to advances in art and architecture to science and math. Whether it resulted in competition to build the largest cathedral or the most luxurious palace, the most accurate painting style or the most efficient gun barrel, such advances were the fertilizer that fed modern civilization. It’s no wonder that this is where the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and advances such as flight, DNA, computers, cellphones and the Internet originated. So too freedom of the press, speech, religion and free markets, resulting in widespread prosperity and freedoms never before seen in human history.

All of that hangs in the balance as western nations face the catastrophic amalgamation of the woefully uninformed left, the rapidly increasing anti-freedom Muslim populations and increasingly despotic governments willing to abandon fundamental western principles in their pursuit of power. The $64,000 question is, how do we maintain those principles while increasingly those among us detest them and technology makes it easier than ever to target and marginalize those willing to stand up for them…