Why is it so hard to find or develop conservative artists? (from the archive)

There is something gracious, Burkean, in Robert Lurie  (Chronicles) letting Bob Dylan off the hook for Dylan's 1960's legacy of decadent radical songs, but I can't quite do it. Lurie points to the eight years of, sort of, conservative songs and retreads of traditional songs ("Nashville Skyline", "New Morning", etc), as well as Dylan's years of trying, sort of, to have a traditional home-life and marriage. It seems sad and pathetic to see the hoops that conservative's have to jump through to try to find viable conservative artists who might actually appeal to the people, even to the point of squeezing Dylan into that format.

Why is it so hard to find or develop conservative artists? I think the fault lies in the basic and essential rejection of materialism at the heart of Christianity and traditional religions---even given the valiant efforts of great religious philosophers like Aquinas who laboriously tried to salvage a place for real life, real living, within the otherwise deeply ascetic and monastic ethos of true Christianity. This anti-real-life-materialism has had more to do with the decline of religion and the absence of conservative artists than anything else.

Great art does affirm the sacred, that is a positive mantra on this blog, but it is nearly impossible to affirm anti-living and an exclusive inward life, especially for creative young people. It was easier for Christianity, and for art to affirm Christianity, in the days before science, which can be seen in the great art of that pre-modern period. The Ancient Greeks did not have that great spiritual blockade to work against and their life-affirming art shows it.

What we speak of here, and with theological materialism, is the Inward Path to the Father Within of traditional religion transformed (not rejected) in the Outward Path of material/supermaterial evolution to real Godhood, the God first only symbolically experienced in the Inward Path. This transformation can then help provide a way out of this conundrum for conservative artists. The Great Spiritual Blockade has drained the life out of modern conservative art---and religion as well.  But more deeply it has blocked the sacred material evolution of life to Godhood.

Dylan didn’t show us the way out of the decadent 1960's, which is what he would have had to do to absolve himself of the lefty damage he did, even if many of his lyrics were pure gibberish. He is now back to endlessly touring and partying like a rock star, sporting the almost ridiculous persona of an old white blues singer.