Abundance

Not that long ago, it was assumed that “India could never feed itself”. The “population bomb” would kill us all in malthusian cataclysm. Popular psychology decided that humans always want more than they have .

At least in many places, industrial “abundance” has arrived, and gives every indication of continuing and providing more – ignoring for the moment Black Swan catastrophic events – as automation and technology continue to increase .

What does an era of “abundance” mean? Surely some people are already satiated with food, clothing, shelter and even ”non-essential” stuff like status and entertainment. Their feeling of being “poor” is essentially only a comparison to others of whom they are envious. An outlook that could easily change with cultural shift .

The wealthy, of course, play games and insist that enough is never enough, as they feast on peacock tongues and build mountains of pseudo gold to awe their peers. The wealthy also want to be superior, and spend much time worrying that the poor can no longer be kept in their place. Food, clothing, shelter – my God who will ever work? Lazy bums !

I won’t live long enough to see it play out, but an abundant future, should it arrive, would certainly be interesting .

Progress

We cherish an ideal of progress. “Practice makes perfect”. The human world obviously runs on learned accomplishment. It does not matter if you are an athlete, a mathematician, or a parent. There’s always something to learn, some way to improve .

My art hobby has reached a point when it has stalled. At least in the sense of progressing to something better. Partly it’s a matter of accepting limitations. More truly, it’s a realization that choosing among various and often contradictory goals is not easy .

I don’t, for example, wish to become more realistic like a camera. Don’t want to head into absolute abstraction. Don’t want to be like any other style. Don’t actually want much of an audience .

I’ve settled for a realization that progress in this is, for me, a blending of the journey with the goal. I’m gratified to wake up enthused, to not be intimidated by a blank page, to not be discouraged if something does not work out. Like my walks, art activity is simply fun, meditative, instructive, and inspiring .

Long ago when I grew up many ordinary activities were like that. Sports, community, home, family, even work. Not improvement ad infinitum, little progress, just a happy sense of doing well and taking advantage of each moment .

Tao-Chi

Or Shitao – translations are imperfect and names often change with careers. A Chinese painter contemporary with Reubens and Rembrandt who could not be more different. I’ve never really enjoyed Rubens, but I adore Rembrandt as a free spirit. Shitao is much more modern and kin to John Marin .

Whatever visual art may be in its many forms naturally reflects on its culture. Much of the Renaissance work now seems pretty boring in light of cinema, photography, AI, and slick advertising. The “shocking” impressionists are easily imitated by ubiquitous computer programs. What is a painter to do ?

I’ve gone my own way. I accept my various handicaps as part of what makes me unique. I try to correct a few things, work on fluidity and spontaneousness, be creative but not lose touch with the real world as I experience it .

There’s a great satisfaction in that. It’s why I’ve always admired the “literati” tradition. Although often observed in the breach, the ideal was of gentlemen of means who made pictures in their spare time and did not need to sell them. With a bit of philosophy thrown in .

So periodically I pull out my library volumes and admire some nearly life-size color reproductions. It truly helps me relax and create on my own blank sheets of mulberry paper .

Certification

The aristocratic elites always have a reason for their position at the top of society. Once upon a time it was “divine will” or “blue blood”. Now it is “merit” as if each child has an equal chance to become one of the people the elite are looking for in the next generation. What they are looking for mostly is people just like them …

In any system the extremely competent or extremely lucky have a small but finite chance to rise up a class or two. Until recently much of that ladder was financial worth, another favorite tradition of aristocrats .

Meanwhile, the lesser folks also sought some means of security, however humble. Once it was guilds, or the trade your father did. Recently, much was directed at “certification” .

Certification is simply a disguised guild system. In today’s economy and information age it is largely irrelevant. But legal requirements provide a useful barrier to entry to anyone trying to break into the club. Costs and time keep the riffraff at bay almost as well as “merit” insulates the wealthy. Mostly, it services the shrinking “middle class”. Oh, it all works, it seems. Always has. Society needs to use stuff like this to accommodate individuals. But a Martian ethnologist would surely have fun observing and writing its term paper .

Alfred the Great

And now for something completely different ,,,

Periodically I get an urge to read a biography or two. I just finished a long book about William Randolph Hearst, inspired by catching a flash of Citizen Kane on cable. Fortunately, I can borrow all this stuff from the library on my Kindle. Then I had a notion to learn more about Alfred the Great .

I like French history but I have always found the English equivalent to be more disjointed. Celts Saxons Romans Danes French _ cut-offs and new starts. So I searched the library – nothing but romantic novels. Books are available, of course, at a price – an electronic download now costs as much or more as a paper book. Fortunately there is project Gutenberg, which has massive stores of old writing (out of copyright) of just about anything. So I am using a nice nearly Victorian treatment of the subject .

I haven’t learned a lot about Alfred yet. But I have learned an awful lot about disentangling legend from fact. This historian is at great pains to do so. To be fair, so was the Hearst biographer, but he had only the movie to debunk. Alfred tends to be encrusted like Arthur, or – more appropriately – Charlemagne .

Legend has its place – Shakespeare used it to create immortal literature. But sometimes it is refreshing to sift into dry facts with a historian trying to carefully separate fact from fiction. We could use more of that with our current news .

Modern Whigs

In the 1850s, the powerful Whig party of America broke up into factions and disappeared forever. The main cause was slavery, aggravated by regionalism and leaders who were unable to cope with the divisions .

I’m not sure which party will break up and vanish this time, maybe both. The formal cause will be work and wealth. There are wealthy people who work very little, and – as always – poor people who work very hard. But increasingly not only will working harder not make you wealthier, but the divisions between the classes grow sharper simply in the normal course of events as capital concentrates.

I await the equivalent of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to crystallize inchoate feelings into actions. But both parties seem very Whiggish, unable to formulate exactly what they are for, trying to tie together things that resist unity. It’s quite likely we emerge into an unrecognizable new era, hopefully without a destructive war .

The main battle cry on one side will probably be “security and opportunity”. On the other “liberty and merit”. The new plantation owners against the almost but not quite comfortable proletariat. And machine intelligence throwing monkey wrenches everywhere – like the telegraph, railroad, and repeating rifles in the earlier conflict .

Nobody seems to want war except for a few firebrands on each side. Each singing the same songs and nearly identical slogans .

Tithes

In feudal Europe, everyone had to pay taxes to the lords above them. Protection money. But almost everyone had to also belong to the Catholic Church, which required an annual tithe of 10%, variously from “income” (paid in kind) or property .

The church tithe was actually the social tax. Kings could not be bothered with caring for the aged, sick, or poor. They and their underlings were too busy fighting huns, infidels, invaders, neighbors and each other. Or trying to collect taxes …

The church took care of everything else, at least in theory and in line with what could be done in those “dark” times. Frequent failures were at least backed up by the guarantee that the righteous would be well rewarded after death .

Today mega churches continue the practice and take care of their own flock, like the ancient church – taking good care of the priests first. They resist the idea that the state should do anything more than fight against the enemies of the moment .

Most of us are less sure the righteous will be rewarded. But we share the common idea of the peasants of that time that taxes (and tithes) are too high .

Dystopia

Historic philosophic religions tended to be of only two types. Either things had always been and always would be the same, or the world has once been much better than it is now. Sometimes there would be an apocalyptic cycle, when all would begin again .

Like many human thoughts, these were based on natural observation. The sun comes up every day. People live, decay, die – as does all life. Such can easily be extrapolated to cosmic visions .

Some of the “golden age” believers went further and extrapolated decline into horrors and dystopia. Some preached that we could hold it back for a while with moral reform. And there was always an audience to listen to how bad things could be, maybe because that made the present more endurable .

Now we seem to be in a golden age of dystopian predictions. Following a brief reversion to “progress”, civilization has returned to the old attitudes. The only question is which of the dueling dystopias will happen. Novelists all assume that we are in the golden age, and the future looks bleak indeed .

But the plain fact remains that life mostly goes on, dreamtime as always, one day after another, endlessly the same, eternally different. The certainty of individual mortal journey is, after all, always bleak .

Martyr

A martyr is useful to any cause. Religions are known for them. Joan of Arc saved France by dying – which she never could have done had she lived. The republicans now manufacture them by the bushel load – every victim of a crime becomes canonized in their political arena . The democrats not far behind.

The current champion of martyrdom is, of course, our president, who has managed to pull off the feat of becoming one while still alive. Instead of being seen as a shady lawbreaker with petulant grievances against anyone who opposed him, he has become the persecuted spearhead of a movement. In his mind, of course, it remains a movement of one .

Most martyrs die for a cause. A true martyr KNOWS they are dying for a cause. Historic tales of martyrs are usually gruesome. Joan, after all, was burned at the stake .

These “gentle” and affluent times require no such effort among the elite. If you are wealthy enough, you can designate yourself a martyr merely by having someone say something against you. And for the rich, such a designation has become an emblem of honor, proving that they are on the side of the angels.

Completely sane people have rarely been true martyrs. At least that hasn’t changed

Bernard DeVoto

Historians weave bygone “facts” into various narratives, depending on their own outlook and goals. Most intelligent readers know there are many valid aspects to such interpretation. I enjoy the American trilogy of Bernard DeVoto _ tracking the European overrunning of the North American continent .

Unlike many modern writers, DeVoto was able to be both brutally critical and empathetically understanding of some of the horrors and gallantry of the topic. He did not mind stating his opinion, always clearly as an opinion, but with a certain judgment often missing in the more shallow morality tales which treat the same subject today .

Brilliantly evocative, as I read – say – “The Course Of Empire” – I can nearly gasp at some of the appraisals of figures and cultures, which seem whitewashed in later treatments of the same subject. So much now forbidden language, so many prejudicial statements, so blunt a panorama of suffering, heroism, evil, stupidity, and progress .

Years ago I bought print books of these works. I often worry that in the future an Orwellian AI culture existing mostly electronically will hide, erase, or cancel anything like this by whim or accident .

In the meantime, I reread it all periodically as a treasure of my heritage .