Thursday, May 30, 2013

To the Further Side

Perspectives on the transcendental and the sublime in common currency invariably prove to be as superficial as they are reflexive, even among the educated.


This is simply another form of the shallow nescience of scientific materialism everywhere on display, with its concomitant concrete thinking.  That such a viewpoint contributes to attachments, fixations, self-absorption, and a host of anxieties, passions and neuroses far too numerous to detail here is well-documented in the literature of diverse scientific and academic fields-- and it must be noted that it is not the integrity of science that is dubious, but that of those for whom it is the ne plus ultra of human understanding.

In the arts especially this attitude of mind is manifested in bland predictability and sociopolitical displays of doubtful merit, and most particularly those brought forth in the guise of the avant-garde.  

If nothing else, the pursuit of the transcendent and the sublime tends in the direction of detachment from mediocre thinking.  When this quest involves the arts, expressions of music and sound design demonstrate, rarely but lucidly, the potential to engage the moral reason and the senses in ways that surpass the narrow range of the mundane, and ultimately heighten consciousness.