Saturday, January 17, 2015

How art and creativity validate conservative philosophy


Is high art refined low art/folk art, or is low art simplified high art? High art seems to be a superstructure built over the structure of folk art.

What we appear to do is assimilate the new, the unfamiliar, with the old material of our experience, this seems to be where creativity comes from, new patterns formed between old material and new material.

We don't see something in the outer world and declare that new thing alone as a new thing, it has to first harmonize and adapt with our inner world.

Was there a time when high and low art were one art? When did they become unconnected? Natural hierarchies form and develop their own values. And also the homogenizing and globalization of human cultures had something to do with these changes.

Even the Church did this sort of thing when they built the pagan values of wisdom, courage, temperance and justice on to the Christian virtues of faith, hope, charity and love.

I suppose in ideal cultures both high and low art exist, with low art as a less refined version of high art, which makes for a more harmonizing, assimilating culture of various classes of people who generally affirm the same values.

This natural dynamic of assimilating the new, the unfamiliar, with the old material of our experience, validates the conservative philosophy in creativity.

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