This diary is very long. I apologize beforehand.
I grew up a poor city kid raised by television because my parents were always working. I was spoonfed commercials, and I celebrated all that low culture offered. Whatever slop the TV sold, I wanted it. It was a fruit loops existence. The more sugary sweet, the better.
Alongside the TV, my family had no other "cultural" outlet than loud relatives who frequently dropped by to drink lots of alcohol and to sing, much to my embarrassment and chagrin. There was no other outlet for expression save a heavy-duty religiosity that verged--occasionally--into superstition. I care not to go into this side much, but suffice it to say, I have had broken bones salved by a superstitious cellophane wrap of mushed onions and a bit of blessed spit.
My culture was religion mixed with a dose of "low culture" and I loved it.
In light of the recent diaries which discussed the right-wing attack on academia, I wanted to expand the discussion a bit into the culture at large, and the treatment of all the arts. I believe that the debasement of culture in America has opened a huge hole for the Religious Right. Our rampant materialism, combined with low-culture entertainment, has allowed the Right to insist that spiritual salvation can only be found through God. There is no other avenue for spirituality except for religion.
As I grew older, I've exposed myself more and more to so-called "high culture." (I know there's a question as to whether high and low culture even exist). The more I exposed myself to, say, "high" literature, "difficult" art, "complex" music, I noticed a gradual decline in the religiosity which formed my earliest experience (and probably still does, at some basic level). I noticed that "high culture" was now sustaining many of the spiritual needs that were addressed by God and religion. Art, for me, was becoming "a" religion.
The first time I read Kafka changed me. My encounter with Nietszche did great damage to my sense of God and religion. In my late teens, I was exposed to Henry Miller's love for life, for humankind, for his unswerving hatred of corruption, and I began developing a new spiritual outlet for myself. (Granted, I missed Miller's misogyny and misanthropy at the time, and I consider him to be a relic now, even if he's still the finest American prose stylist of the 20th century). I went on to read writers who changed me (especially Genet and Beckett) and philosophers who challenged me (I'm still grappling with Heidegger after 20 years). By comparison, I find the mystical and theoretical gropings of great theologians such as St. Augustine rather rudimentary. I don't want to dismiss him, I consider the construction of his God and his City to be quite wondrous and remarkable. But I just can't live in that city. Others can. I can't. I found that on a spiritual level, I was much more nourished by modernism and metaphysics than I ever was by religion. I saw the humanities as an antidote to religion (yes, there were a great many religious writers I considered and loved, Bernanos, Waugh, O'Connor, etc.). But for the most part, my delving into "high culture" had substituted for my base of religious belief, which actually co-existed quite nicely with "low culture" and TV slop when I was a kid.
The arts are rapidly transforming in the US. High culture is dying. Low culture has moved in, and in its wake, we've been left with a generation of children who pay absolutely no attention anymore to style and/or aesthetics. It's all about money now, or ideas, and how ideas relate to money. Our imaginations seem to cower under a wave of information. If I'm constantly dealing with the hard materiality of my ideas, my ideology, I'm missing the patterns and shape of discourse which have always provided the liberal arts with a degree of spirituality.
Where does America go for religion now? What is the artist's response to the world today? Is it still powerful? How so?
The other night in prime time, I watched an evangelical state that her entire family was waiting for the End of Time and the Rapture, and that the Middle East crisis (Israel, Iraq) was surely a sign of the Apocalypse. We've all heard the story, and I have accepted that this is core to the religious beliefs of many on the Religious Right. What surprised me, however, was the woman's matter-of-fact resignation to living on the edge of the apocalypse. She had four cute kids, lived in a nice suburban home with her husband, who had a decent job. The kids were out playing in the yard. Against this backdrop, the woman uttered the words, "Jesus couldn't come soon enough. I don't want him to tarry another minute." There it was, I thought. She's yearning for a world quite other than this one. I considered the psychic life of this woman and her family, all waiting to die and go to heaven, all yearning for it (and by extension, despising their time here on earth). And I considered that her whole relation to her country, her fellow citizens, is quite different than mine. She is not interested in building a community that doesn't implode and swallow itself in her lifetime. If I were Freud, I'd say she was death-wishing. Regardless, I started to think of how her spiritual yearning has led to what I consider such a dark vision of life, and of living. How come our culture cannot respond to her yearning in any other way except a religious vision that offers truth and salvation in the apocalypse. Granted, hoping for an apocalypse may be an extreme version of spiritual fulfillment, but the fact is I sympathized with this woman's earnest and genuine neeed for spirituality, even if that meant the death of her children. It saddened me to realize that our culture seems bereft of any options that would have fulfilled this woman otherwise. This is the hole that the Religious Right exploits.
Granted, there are a lot of people who live life without a need for a spiritual existence at all. A psychologist friend of mine relates a story of treating some well-to-do execs in the Chicago suburbs. I asked him once, "What sort of emotional problems are they having?" I was interested in the inner-life of the high-paid executive. My friend responded, "Emotional problems? They are shocked to find out that they actually have emotions!" Granted, he was exaggerating (I think) but nonetheless, not everyone leads or needs a spiritual existence.
In Europe, high culture is still alive although also under attack. Many Europeans can recite an education based in the Enlightenment, and for many it provides a moral code that leads them to discover a spirituality of another sort. Granted, constant recitations of one's learning (which may seem like boasts) can seem pretty shallow, but nonetheless a great many Euro countries had a built-in cultural apparatus that offers a spirituality based in humanism. It may seem crass, at times, but nonetheless it's there. I often marveled at how Europeans, even 18 year olds, were perfectly willing to engage in a philosophical discussion which actually cited philosophers. At times, I despised this kind of talk as elitist precisely because I found the thinking behind it to be rather uncritical. It was very often a recitation learned in school. Nonetheless, it offered many of those I met another option for the expression of their humanity.
In the US, we have so tied commercialism and materialism to our arts that there is very little room for a spiritual address. Even the relationship between our TV shows and the commercials is troubling when you consider that there is so much violence and chaos on TV precisely because the corporations like to juxtapose madness against the relative peace of a 30 second commercial in which the spill on the rug is solved by the greatest vacuum cleaner ever built. The vacuum cleaner dictates the artistic and aesthetic elements of the TV show.
While shopping this Christmas, I entered Barnes & Noble for the first time in a few years. I immediately noticed a change. The literature section is smaller, there is not a "Great New Writers" section, as there once was. B&N had long ago killed the middle and small presses by pulping new books after a month, but now I saw an attack on even the big publishers of Lit. John Updike bemoans the lack of vision among young writers, but how would he know? How would anyone know? Where are our great young writers being published?
Heck, you can't even broach an aesthetic comparison of low culture artists these days. When an artistic discussion of, say, pop music boils down into a question of relativism (my opinion is just as good as yours) it becomes difficult to establish any standard for excellence whatsoever. If I were to do a comparison between, say, Britney Spears and the band The Jam from the early 80's, I would begin now by stating that both of them were #1 on the charts. But what has changed in 20 years? Can we make aesthetic distinctions? Were we more aesthetically inclined when The Jam reached the top of the charts in 1980 than when Britney reached it a few years ago. I must admit, I would find this question pretty boring, but I have to ask it. It would seem that we had a more appreciative ear for music in the 80s than we do now (and I am not trying to suggest that The Jam was a great band while Britney is not). I'm merely trying to suggest that a band like The Jam woud not make the top of the charts in today's totally processed music scene.
Low culture has always been there for entertainment purposes. It also does a great deal to homogenize us and bring us together. But it does not fulfill spiritual needs. The liberal arts did attempt to address human spirituality, but they are dying in the US today. The Religious Right is moving in to fill that hole. We can't forget that at the turn of the century, Henry James was a best seller. A lot of people actually read him. And any serious reading would address questions of the spirit. Where or when does that happen today?
Is it any wonder that religion is the one option left for spirituality?