https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Q_kdbcCLGN4
So one of the things you see as the biblical corpus unfolds itself symbolically is an emerging relationship between the figure of Cain, and so that’s that bitter figure who’s out for revenge, and the figure of the, what would you call it, untrammeled intellect. So for example, very rapidly after the Cain and Abel story, you have the story of the Tower of Babel. And what you see there are emperors who are competing to replace God, right? They’re building towers that are ever and ever higher, predicated on the proposition that they could build a tower all the way to heaven, so that’s like Jacob’s ladder, and thereby replace God. Then you have the Milton’s meditations on Lucifer. Lucifer is the, what, the highest angel of God’s heavenly kingdom who’s gone most wrong. And he’s a stellar example of the untrammeled intellect. And I kind of see this in the New Atheist Movement too. It’s like we’re so smart that our theories can replace the transcendent. Now, your way out of that, I think you just told me, your way out of that is your involvement on the aesthetic front with the arts, right? And that’s- I think so. Well, there are two ways. There’s also humility. I think, I come back to that point. What you’re describing is hubris, and that’s something which is common, particularly common among intelligent people, I think. Right, right, absolutely. It’s the cardinal sin of the intellect is hubris. Yes, exactly. But yes, the arts, I think, are, I suppose, our way out if they are sustained, because they satisfy that human need to understand ourselves and to explore ourselves and to interrogate our existence. It’s so important, therefore, that the arts aren’t curtailed in the way that they currently are being done. So let me ask you a question about that. I agree with that. I mean, I see that the signal power of beauty, especially manifested in music, for me, speaks of something that’s truly transcendent. So here’s a question for you. So is there a superordinate unity at which the arts aim? And is that unity not equivalent to the monotheistic spirit? I know this is a major question, right? I’m thrown out a major question. It is a major question. Something makes the arts the arts, right? It’s their movement towards beauty. What, beauty and unity, transcendence? But are the arts unified? Are they the manifestation of a unitary spirit? And I see that unitary spirit is what I think is the antithesis of power. I couldn’t profess to know. And I think a lot of people have attempted to define even what art is, and I think people have failed. I’ve always liked Zola’s definition of art as life seen through a temperament. The idea that what the artist does is attempts to present to you his view of the way that he sees the world, on the understanding that we all see the world differently. And there is something quite beautiful about that, about expressing ourselves artistically. But it’s not just variety. You know it’s not just variety, because there are qualitative distinctions between presentations of worldview. So, I mean, Dostoevsky trumps 50 shades of grey, right? Because, so there’s a hierarchy of rank, right? And the greatest artists occupy the highest rank. And that is what tilts them more towards that transcendent unity, I think. It’s something like that. Well, yeah, that’s absolutely right. Genius, isn’t it? Genius, that’s how the canon is formed. I mean, the canon is, you know, I think academics like to think that they’re the ones who select what is in the canon. The canon is formed through influence, through to what extent other great artists borrow and imitate and innovate on the back of other artists. That’s that same depth of presupposition that I was describing earlier, right? Yes. The more fundamental a text is, the more other texts depend on it. But the reason they do, the reason that artists do that is because obviously people like Michelangelo, Brahms, Dickens, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, all of these are clearly the pinnacles of human achievement. They’re achieving something that most of us simply cannot do. All we can do is look in awe at what they have achieved and other artists look in awe at that and try to come close to it, or in some cases of extreme genius, build upon it. And that is maybe satisfying something fundamental. Well, there’s a cardinal observation because the hypothesis that you just put forward is something like the purpose of art is to, what would you say, to provoke the emulation of greatness. And that’s based on the hypothesis that there is something transcendent that’s great. And that’s that unity that I think that the arts are striving toward. Yeah, well, I don’t think it’s conscious like that. I don’t think that we… I don’t think so either. And all I can say is that artists, I think, great art provokes something of the numinous in us. Right. And whether that’s religious or spiritual or godly or whatever, I don’t know. But it’s something that… Well, I think it is sort of by definition, right? I mean, you know what I mean? It’s like, well, if that’s not religious, then what is, dogma? It’s certainly religious on the experiential front. Yes, I suppose what I mean is it doesn’t point to the existence of God necessarily. It just points to the existence of something beyond ourselves that we require in order to have a satisfactory life. That sounds a lot like God. Okay, well, that would be depending on your definition. I’m not trying to be picky, you know? Well, that’s the thing, man, because it is a matter of definition. I don’t think God, this transcendent unity that I’ve been tapping towards here is something like the central animating spirit of mankind at its best. It’s something like that. Now, you might say, well, is that real? And that’s not a good question because you can’t ask that question without bringing an a priori set of presuppositions about what constitutes real to bear on the question. Like, is it the same reality as the materialist atheists claim most real? Probably not. No. But that doesn’t mean it’s not real. It just means we can’t agree on what constitutes real. Well, we can’t agree on what constitutes a woman, so that’s not surprising. Well, then let’s suggest then that, or let’s agree that the critical social justice movement is essentially godless. I think it is godless. It doesn’t have, it has no yearning after that sense of the numinous and it has no capacity to produce it. That’s why no great art has ever been produced from, can you name a single woke activist who has produced a great work of art in any medium or any genre? Because I can’t. 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So if they bear nothing but bitter fruit, then you might think they’re worshiping the wrong God, or in your case, they’re no God. But right, that was your criticism of the woke types. I think they worship power as a God, but whatever. We’re close enough on that so we don’t have to discuss it. So let’s talk about the artistic front here, because like I see the scientists being mowed down like grass under a lawnmower by the woke activists. And that’s gonna continue, because the real scientists don’t have a political bone in their body and they have no idea what’s coming for them. But I’m particularly sickened by the bloody artists, because the only thing they have to offer is this connection to the truly numinous. And that’s true across art forms, right? They point to the numinous, and they’re willing increasingly to subordinate that to ideology, or to remain silent in the face of this onslaught, to bolster their moral self-righteousness. They’re cutting their own throats. It’s horrible to watch, it’s horrible to witness, because artistic genius can only come about by those who can think outside the box, who are not conformists, ultimately. This is a movement that demands conformity, and artists of all people are the ones who are going along with it. Now to an extent, I suppose that’s always happened though. I mean, it must have always happened, because artists have to get on with the business of living. Back in my era, the Renaissance period, the era that I studied for my doctorate, you had patrons. You had patrons of the arts in society who would effectively say to William Shakespeare, for instance, when King James patronized William Shakespeare’s company, The King’s Men, it went from being the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to The King’s Men, and he said, they were patronized, but Shakespeare could write whatever he wanted, right? The great patrons are the ones who don’t try to steer the artist in a certain way. I mean, sure, you would get, for instance, at the start of Shakespeare’s narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, you have this sort of sycophantic passage about the person to whom it is dedicated, Henry Ruthesley, the Earl, and that’s because Shakespeare also needed to live at that point, he wasn’t yet a rich man at that point. He became very, very rich ultimately, but at that point he wasn’t. So artists do require an income, and in our day and age, in order for an artist to be employed, they have to satisfy a set of demands by the gatekeepers of various industries, that’s theater, the publishing industry, the comedy industry, television, executives, commissioners, all of those kind of things. The problem is that at the moment, all of those people are entirely captured by the woke ideology, they are all its foot soldiers, or at least even in some cases, I suppose you could call them its clergy. And so they make these demands to artists, and I suppose, unless you are independently wealthy, what choice have you? In other words, what this thing does is it’s, you know, we can’t all be a Van Gogh living in complete poverty, doing whatever the hell he wanted. Well, that’s a very sympathetic account, and I have some sympathy for that account, because I’ve seen people, many, many people, who’ve faced the threat of cancellation, and are terrified by it, not least often, because they have a family to support, let’s say. But, but, so let, but let me push back on that a little bit. And you tell me if you think there’s any flaws in this. Okay, so look, as far as I can tell, your best bet in life is to play the most transcendent, iterable strategy. And, because you’re going to pay a price for what you do, no matter what you do, you’re going to pay, in fact, you’re going to pay the ultimate price no matter what you do. So you’re already screwed in the fundamental analysis. Now, and that means that you’re, the fact that you’re going to pay means that you’re always confronted with a choice, and the choice is to say what you believe to be true and take the consequences, or to fail to say what you believe to be true and take the consequences. Now, people will say, well, I don’t want to speak right now because look at the consequences. And I would say, well, that’s always why people have lied throughout history, is to avoid the consequences or to get something they don’t deserve. And so I could say, from the judgment perspective, rather than the mercy perspective, especially to artists, it’s like, I don’t give a damn about your financial need. The only thing you have to offer the world is the purity of your vision. And if you sacrifice that, well, you’re killing the goose that lays the golden eggs and you might be protected in the short term, but they’re going to come for you in the future. Maybe a lot of these creative people are thinking to themselves, I will play the game as far as I need to so that I can establish myself and then I can make my own artistic choices. That’s happening many times. Doesn’t work. That’s what the faculty did. They said over and over as they rose up the ladder from graduate student to professor, well, once I have tenure, I’ll be brave. It’s like, that isn’t how it works. You don’t get braver because you’re more pretty. Okay, so you didn’t do that. So why didn’t you do it? Look, I completely share your sense of dismay and particularly from artists. I think the world of academia is rather more careerist, I think, and so although I think it’s just as unforgivable, it’s more understandable. I think to be an artist, you have to be the kind of person whose sole fealty is to your muse. It has to be that. Otherwise you’re not really an artist in any serious sense at all.