Out of love and concern for the truth, and with the object of eliciting it, the following theses will be put forth for public discussion:
Thesis XXI
The cult of freedom. Freedom from your fathers. Freedom from your children. Freedom from gravity. Freedom from responsibility. The imposing, obnoxious, unlimited freedom of expression, consequences to culture, community and society be damned.
Thesis XXII
The cult of reason. The attempted materialization of an imagined, simplified, rational world of pure order. A rejection of the infinite variety clearly evident at the subatomic level, among ourselves as human beings, extending to the scale of galaxies and the universe itself.
Thesis XXIII
The cult of separation. Endless contrast. The failure to distinguish harmony from monotony. Unending rejection. The inability to recognize any measure of continuity as anything but repetition.
Thesis XXIV
The cult of genius. The deification of the individual. Unique expression of personal vision is held as the unassailable ideal even in the face of detriment to the civic good.
Thesis XXV
The cult of the future. Perpetual novelty. The obsession with striving for tomorrow. A future where human interests, desires and needs of living will be nothing like they are today.
Thesis XXVI
The cult of reflection. The obsession with mirroring what is perceived as the spirit of our times: fear, displacement, lust, shock and uncertainty. An abandonment of exercising the moral responsibility to encourage, comfort and uplift.
Thesis XXVII
The cult of technology. An unfounded yet intractable belief that widespread implementation of technology will continue to improve human lives. Faith in technology extends to the belief that the present social, ecological and health crises directly attributable to technology will be solved with future technologies.
Thesis XXVIII
The cult of ugliness. The wholesale rejection of beauty as an universal ideal. Individual taste is all that remains, subjective and relative, abdication from any aesthetic accountability whatsoever.
Thesis XXIX
The cult of patricide. No generation has ever portrayed their forefathers so ignorant, unenlightened, and unevolved as our modern one. Not only is it acclaimed that there is nothing of value to be learned from them, any such attempt would only taint, contaminate and distract from the current enlightened viewpoint.
Thesis XXX
The cult of intellect. The private universe of the Modernist mind creates its own rules, structure and narrative. Anyone who does not understand and appreciate the results is condescended as uninitiated, ignorant or mentally deficient.
Interested in more content on a Philosophy of Craft?
Please visit my YouTube channel: A Craftsman's Philosophy
Contributed by Patrick Webb
Uh oh - you've gone off the finishes and straight on to the finish.
ReplyDeleteSome very interesting talking points there, Patrick. Certainly contentious, some of them, but that's why they're good.
ReplyDeleteSome very interesting talking points there, Patrick. Certainly contentious, some of them, but that's why they're good.
ReplyDeleteThey read like a manifesto that anyone could agree with; respect for tradition and history, and a rejection of the negativity, falseness and dissipation of modern living. But it'd take a longer conversation to figure out where you'd have us take this.
ReplyDelete