''Man was the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that told itself stories to understand what kind of creature it was. The story was his birthright, and nobody could take it away.''-- Joseph Anton, Salman Rushdie, 2012.
As I write my blog today, the world slowly recovers from yet another cynical assault on the innocent: the attack on the Manchester concert. This has become a terror-trend of sorts--to detonate murderous hatred on gigs most popularly frequented by the (religiously/ politically disaffected) white western youth. Apart from massive concerts being soft targets of terror, where there is a huge gathering of crowd, out to have fun ( hence, relaxed, with their guards down, unlike when you are at a sensitive airport, plus the huge attendance maximizes the potential for damage and casualty ) these centres of modern urban entertainment serve as a symbolic locale for the display of spectacular violence.
What Rushdie refers to as 'stories' are the very first, rudimentary attempts of mankind to find a realm of meaning outside his immediate, fleshly existence. This is the root of primordial art, and also the birth of wisdom and philosophy; of science, of progress, of the cure for the deadliest diseases to discover the alchemy of immortality. When the first, pre-lingistic hunting-gathering tribe, assembled in the evening around the communal bon-fire, recounted the story of the chase and capture of the beasts they brought for dinner, through the etched graphic narratives on the cave-wall, it was humanity's defining quest for power and glory that would set him apart from the animals he had to overpower, in order to ensure his own survival and sustenance. This is the beginning of 'the story' that set every thing else into motion, including religion itself.
In these troubled times, it is important to understand this deeply ambiguous relation between religion and art, and art's most problematic involvement in religious politics almost everywhere in the secular world. Today, when the grip of organized religion is rapidly loosening in the liberal west, art has increasingly come to replace it as a new source of meaning, coherence and legitimacy; the artists are our new 'gurus' who help us unravel and interpret the complexities of a globalized, technocratic and atomized world, an unprecedented world, since the middle ages. These are the New Worlds that have opened up as a consequence of digital revolution, and in the dawn of this technological Renaissance, humanity stands on the brink of the old world again, in awe with itself .
And this is where the insecurities of organized religion is revealed. Just as it came into conflict with the new discourse of progress that challenged its stability in the early modern world--i.e science, the lives of Galileo and Bruno are illustrative of this mortal abrasion--in a post -Renaissance culture, it has to define itself against the new, legitimizing force of art; now more than ever, when art has decoupled itself from its old master, religion, and is an alternative meta-narrative, displacing that of religion. As a meta-narrative it gives life its meaning and organizing principle: e.g rock music becomes the new religion of the secular youth.
As a result of Reformation, Enlightenment and Capitalism in the last few centuries, we saw the fragmentation of traditional societies everywhere and the rise of the radically lonely individual, stripped of the certitudes of collective existence. Religion is the representative of that old, communal collectivity, where as art speaks for the solitary individual, the marginalized individual, the anxious, neurotic man of Edvard Munch, terrified to confront the core of his own insignificance and mortality. Religion was originally meant to be a cure for this condition, but over the years of crisis of its legitimacy, it has given rise to a few neuroses of its own; namely, the rage-filled, fundamentalist terror world-wide.
The rivalry between religion and art is essentially a conflict of principles: art is intensely individualistic, hence, subversive, perpetually undermining the inherited values and moralities of the community where as religion, its antithetical, conservative force tries to preserve and uphold them to guarantee the perpetuation of the old status quo. Art, as a consequence, is unpredictable, provocative, and being so, it is revolutionary; artists, everywhere the eccentric, outspoken and alienated representatives of individual conscience, against the homogenizing pressures of religion and state.
Religion, as the bastion of conservatism, hardly tolerates dissent, individual quirk or non- conformism, which are fertilizing ingredients for art. Religion coaxes us to 'fit in', art encourages us to 'drop out' , so that it can inspire us to look for new ways of integration and social coherence.
Artists are essentially irreligious. They are spiritual instead: the way Rumi is spiritual, or for that matter, Dylan, Lennon, or Kurosawa is; Tagore, Shakespeare or the Romantics are; Beethoven is spiritual where as Bach religious. These troubled, alienated and amoral individuals--some of whom had stirred up the most infamous personal scandals in their times-- are the prophets of modern man's anguished condition which religion can hardly fathom with its outmoded and simplifying tools. And, the more it fails in its task of giving the baffling, new world the explanation it impatiently asks for, the angrier and more frustrated it grows with the world, unleashing waves of punitive violence upon it.
And still, religion remains the anodyne of the herd in most parts of the world; with its high, wide road straight and clearly visible from its beginning to the end, it demands a lot less, internally, out of its follower, because it is a set of externally imposed rules that are rigid, formalistic and uniform. Salvation is more or less guaranteed if you stick to the tenets. For some, it could be staying away from certain kinds of meats; for others, praying for so many times a day.
The spiritual road, on the contrary, winding, narrow and filled with tortuous bends and turns, can throw you off course altogether. It is an internal, subjective process--evolving, growing, sometimes dialectically--within each individual. There is no promise of redemption on this road; personal enlightenment, if you are tenacious and lucky, is the most that might come to you. Art is the flickering torch that illuminates this treacherous trajectory, at rare, blessed moments. Religion as a system is so self-sufficient that it does not need anything other than itself. Naturally, it reacts with intolerance when individuals or groups ignore its magnificent power and defect to the other side, seduced by the enemy's beauty.
So every time a rock stadium is bombed in England or France, a Charlie Hebdo office is ripped by cynical violence, a Salman Rushdie or M.F Hussain has to live in self-imposed exile to escape assassination attempts at home, theatre screens are burned to stall the release of films that the religious establishment disapproves of, when the media forums are ablaze with debate over responsibility, it would be judicious to remember the root of the crisis in the field of dicourse, rather than practice; it would be foolish to see them as failures of intelligence and security, of governance and political appeasement in general, because the assault is symbolic, just as the warfare itself is more symbolic than literal.
Socrates drank poison to defend the legitimacy of his personal conviction, refusing to compromise with the dominant power that attempted to neutralize the firepower of his radical thinking. That legacy gave us the Renaissance and eventually, Modernity, a couple of millennia later.
We are not heroes, true, but we too are humans, not very far from Socrates' all too human rebellion against ignorance and compromise. Not surrendering to insane violence is important.
As I write my blog today, the world slowly recovers from yet another cynical assault on the innocent: the attack on the Manchester concert. This has become a terror-trend of sorts--to detonate murderous hatred on gigs most popularly frequented by the (religiously/ politically disaffected) white western youth. Apart from massive concerts being soft targets of terror, where there is a huge gathering of crowd, out to have fun ( hence, relaxed, with their guards down, unlike when you are at a sensitive airport, plus the huge attendance maximizes the potential for damage and casualty ) these centres of modern urban entertainment serve as a symbolic locale for the display of spectacular violence.
What Rushdie refers to as 'stories' are the very first, rudimentary attempts of mankind to find a realm of meaning outside his immediate, fleshly existence. This is the root of primordial art, and also the birth of wisdom and philosophy; of science, of progress, of the cure for the deadliest diseases to discover the alchemy of immortality. When the first, pre-lingistic hunting-gathering tribe, assembled in the evening around the communal bon-fire, recounted the story of the chase and capture of the beasts they brought for dinner, through the etched graphic narratives on the cave-wall, it was humanity's defining quest for power and glory that would set him apart from the animals he had to overpower, in order to ensure his own survival and sustenance. This is the beginning of 'the story' that set every thing else into motion, including religion itself.
In these troubled times, it is important to understand this deeply ambiguous relation between religion and art, and art's most problematic involvement in religious politics almost everywhere in the secular world. Today, when the grip of organized religion is rapidly loosening in the liberal west, art has increasingly come to replace it as a new source of meaning, coherence and legitimacy; the artists are our new 'gurus' who help us unravel and interpret the complexities of a globalized, technocratic and atomized world, an unprecedented world, since the middle ages. These are the New Worlds that have opened up as a consequence of digital revolution, and in the dawn of this technological Renaissance, humanity stands on the brink of the old world again, in awe with itself .
And this is where the insecurities of organized religion is revealed. Just as it came into conflict with the new discourse of progress that challenged its stability in the early modern world--i.e science, the lives of Galileo and Bruno are illustrative of this mortal abrasion--in a post -Renaissance culture, it has to define itself against the new, legitimizing force of art; now more than ever, when art has decoupled itself from its old master, religion, and is an alternative meta-narrative, displacing that of religion. As a meta-narrative it gives life its meaning and organizing principle: e.g rock music becomes the new religion of the secular youth.
As a result of Reformation, Enlightenment and Capitalism in the last few centuries, we saw the fragmentation of traditional societies everywhere and the rise of the radically lonely individual, stripped of the certitudes of collective existence. Religion is the representative of that old, communal collectivity, where as art speaks for the solitary individual, the marginalized individual, the anxious, neurotic man of Edvard Munch, terrified to confront the core of his own insignificance and mortality. Religion was originally meant to be a cure for this condition, but over the years of crisis of its legitimacy, it has given rise to a few neuroses of its own; namely, the rage-filled, fundamentalist terror world-wide.
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| The Sceam,1893, Edvard Munch: Man Staring at His Own Nothingness http://theartist.me/collection/oil-painting/der-schrei-der-natur-the-scream-of-nature/ |
The rivalry between religion and art is essentially a conflict of principles: art is intensely individualistic, hence, subversive, perpetually undermining the inherited values and moralities of the community where as religion, its antithetical, conservative force tries to preserve and uphold them to guarantee the perpetuation of the old status quo. Art, as a consequence, is unpredictable, provocative, and being so, it is revolutionary; artists, everywhere the eccentric, outspoken and alienated representatives of individual conscience, against the homogenizing pressures of religion and state.
Religion, as the bastion of conservatism, hardly tolerates dissent, individual quirk or non- conformism, which are fertilizing ingredients for art. Religion coaxes us to 'fit in', art encourages us to 'drop out' , so that it can inspire us to look for new ways of integration and social coherence.
Artists are essentially irreligious. They are spiritual instead: the way Rumi is spiritual, or for that matter, Dylan, Lennon, or Kurosawa is; Tagore, Shakespeare or the Romantics are; Beethoven is spiritual where as Bach religious. These troubled, alienated and amoral individuals--some of whom had stirred up the most infamous personal scandals in their times-- are the prophets of modern man's anguished condition which religion can hardly fathom with its outmoded and simplifying tools. And, the more it fails in its task of giving the baffling, new world the explanation it impatiently asks for, the angrier and more frustrated it grows with the world, unleashing waves of punitive violence upon it.
And still, religion remains the anodyne of the herd in most parts of the world; with its high, wide road straight and clearly visible from its beginning to the end, it demands a lot less, internally, out of its follower, because it is a set of externally imposed rules that are rigid, formalistic and uniform. Salvation is more or less guaranteed if you stick to the tenets. For some, it could be staying away from certain kinds of meats; for others, praying for so many times a day.
The spiritual road, on the contrary, winding, narrow and filled with tortuous bends and turns, can throw you off course altogether. It is an internal, subjective process--evolving, growing, sometimes dialectically--within each individual. There is no promise of redemption on this road; personal enlightenment, if you are tenacious and lucky, is the most that might come to you. Art is the flickering torch that illuminates this treacherous trajectory, at rare, blessed moments. Religion as a system is so self-sufficient that it does not need anything other than itself. Naturally, it reacts with intolerance when individuals or groups ignore its magnificent power and defect to the other side, seduced by the enemy's beauty.
So every time a rock stadium is bombed in England or France, a Charlie Hebdo office is ripped by cynical violence, a Salman Rushdie or M.F Hussain has to live in self-imposed exile to escape assassination attempts at home, theatre screens are burned to stall the release of films that the religious establishment disapproves of, when the media forums are ablaze with debate over responsibility, it would be judicious to remember the root of the crisis in the field of dicourse, rather than practice; it would be foolish to see them as failures of intelligence and security, of governance and political appeasement in general, because the assault is symbolic, just as the warfare itself is more symbolic than literal.
Socrates drank poison to defend the legitimacy of his personal conviction, refusing to compromise with the dominant power that attempted to neutralize the firepower of his radical thinking. That legacy gave us the Renaissance and eventually, Modernity, a couple of millennia later.
We are not heroes, true, but we too are humans, not very far from Socrates' all too human rebellion against ignorance and compromise. Not surrendering to insane violence is important.
