From: Platt Holden (pholden@sc.rr.com)
Date: Thu Dec 04 2003 - 15:27:36 GMT
Hi Mark,
> Mark 04-12-03: All i ever wanted was to have the necessities of life
> given freely to all - water, food, heating and friendship. If that makes
> me a restrictor of freedom then i need to do some serious thinking.
The necessities of life for humans (unlike for animals) must be
produced by thought and work. I guess we all wish that such a blunt
fact were not so, that instead we could live in a land of the Big Rock
Candy Mountain, "where the cops have wooden legs, the bulldogs all have
rubber teeth, and the hens lay soft-boiled eggs." So long as thought
and work are necessary to produce the necessities of life, an economic
system that rewards creators, inventors and producers makes sense. Such
is the system championed by the U.S. with the result that the people in
the country enjoy the highest standard of living in the world. When
producers are penalized by non-productive governments through excessive
regulation, taxation and redistribution of income, the result can be
seen in socialist countries where static patterns and fights between
competing groups for government handouts and privileges prevail. (A
well-tested technique for garnering special government treatment is to
identify yourself with a "'victim" group.)
What's especially galling to me is to see artists lining up to suck off
the government nipple under the guise of promoting "cultural diversity"
or some such appellation. Have you ever seen or heard about a
government-sponsored artwork that was worth a damn? But I digress.
The curious thing is that while "there ain't no free lunch" it's within
an environment of individual liberty and freedom from government
interference that the most lunches are available to everyone. That to
me is most aesthetically satisfying. Not that capitalism is perfect by
any means. But while artists reach for perfection, they never fully
attain it. A painting, a composition, and economic system can fall
short of perfection and yet fulfill our highest aesthetic
sensibilities. As Edgar Allen Poe wrote:
"An immortal instinct, deep within the human spirit, is a sense of the
beautiful. This is what administers our delight in life. But there is
still something in the distance which we know of, but are unable to
fully attain.
"This thirst belongs to our immortality, a consequence and indication
of our perennial existence. It is no mere appreciation of the beauty
before us, but a wild effort to reach the beauty above, to attain a
portion of that loveliness whose very elements appertain to eternity
alone.
"When we find ourselves near the point of tears in apprehending beauty,
we weep not through an excess of pleasure, but through a certain
petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here
on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys of
which, in rare moments, we attain a brief and indeterminate glimpse.
"The artist struggles to create such supernal beauty, to make one hear
or see with shivering delight and sound or sight which cannot have been
unfamiliar to angels."
Though we may disagree on some things, Mark, it's a personal delight
for me to find someone who shares my belief in the central role
aesthetics in all our doings. :-)
Best regards,
Platt
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