Bowden - Great Civilisation

https://youtu.be/xLgHuOskHAY

What is western civilization? Western civilization is a particular civilization which is reared in europe north south east and west which is expressed through elites and through individual moments of genius particularized in particular lives. But that can only be so because of the mass of people that these individuals are drawn from.

Why are people proud that shakespeare is an englishman? They're proud that he's an englishman whether they've opened any of his plays whatsoever at school when they were forced to do them and so on because he's felt to embody a national consciousness and he's felt to speak for many who didn't speak and who couldn't speak and people are proud that they have somebody like him in their national trajectory whether they're interested in his work or not. 

Self-pride is very emblematic of an ethnic sense of purpose and also a joy de vivre in relation to this life. If you strip that out and take it away from people they lose something they lose spirit they become morbid and depressed. Everyone needs great cultural icons whether they're interested in them or not. They are part of the fabric that gives an individual life some sort of meaning.

Increasingly many individuals in this society do not have an overall or an individual meaning that's why they live moment-to-moment and day-to-day in relation to contingency and consumption.

The point of great civilization as expressed in great art is to raise people out of that particular trough and get them if only momentarily looking upwards looking upwards towards the sky looking upwards towards higher forms looking outwards towards the prospect of archetypal forms looking outwards towards the religions of the past the present and the future looking upwards towards god or the gods or the idea that they might be there or the idea that it might be necessary that they're there even if you don't think that they are.

That's the point of great civilization that's the point of great work that's the point of great art. Most of it only exists in the past now or exists as a circular moment in time whereby these great works are reinterpreted in the present. But nothing is forever and i'm quite certain that great works are being written now are being performed now in the minds of certain individuals are being conceptualized now but they don't have an outwork at this time.

If people cannot affirm itself through great works it begins to die whether or not people have any interest in those great works themselves.

So if you have the idea that artistic individuals are insightful at a higher level than the general mass of the population it's inevitable that they will imbibe many of the energies pro and con that of fulfilling the presence and the absence of the metaphysical space.

Don't forget the religion that people were taught to believe in for the better part of one and a half to two thousand years has largely collapsed during this period western identity has largely collapsed during this period and their faith and identity go and if knowledge in what in terms of what one once was feeds through into the present which determines what what will be you can understand why many writers and artists have taken the perhaps easy consolation of despair.

Politics can only go so far in answering what life is about the tibialis one gets towards the phase of life when death begins to approach. Religion ultimately gave the conservatory answers to what life's meaning could be for most people in the 20th century religion for thinking in reasonably sensitive people has been replaced by art and it's no accident in my mind that despair has become the currency of a large amount of the creative superstructure of western thinking.

Isn't it the job of artists to enable to glorify to brill out to create structures that can be looked up to? This is why hierarchical elitism is so important because if there is nothing above you then there is nothing to look forward to there is nothing to transcend to there is nothing to abide by that is beyond and outside once often quite trivial concerns. The mass of people today live completely buried in their trivial concerns and most sports and culture are forms of entertainment.