Art, Eroticism... and Decay?

NemoAlia

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I'm re-reading H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine." He writes, "This has ever been the fate of [human] energy in [times of] security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay."

As a community of people who make an art out of eroticism, what do y'all think? Are we getting too comfortable in the security of our culture(s)? Are we headed for decay?

I, for one, have always thought a little social insecurity makes a person stronger. Perhaps this is also true on a broader scale. But why should the weakness that results from too much security manifest itself necessarily in art and eroticism? Is it because when people are focused on sheer survival, they don't have the time to consider these 'finer things?' I think that's often the typical answer to questions like these. However, if that's true, why is there art on the walls of ancient caves? How have we had so many new generations of humans, even during times of extreme insecurity?

I guess this isn't strictly BDSM, but I'd be interested to hear what this community thinks of such things.
 
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Way too deep for Me

I have so much going on in my worklife and personal life, I cannot think that deep! I am just trying to keep it together!

Ebony
 
That's totally understandable. You are exempt from giving a thoughtful answer. (btw -- congratulations on all your upcoming happiness!) I will confine my query to those people who have nothing better to do with their time than make me think. (Anyone?)
 
NemoAlia said:

As a community of people who make an art out of eroticism, what do y'all think? Are we getting too comfortable in the security of our culture(s)? Are we headed for decay?


Jumping in the deep end here, with eyes tightly shut ...

I am assuming that the 'we' is the BDSM community as a whole. I have also taken 'decay' to mean the eventual demise of the community ...

That said, I feel that with new people discovering the delights of BDSM everyday, (as shown by the number of new faces joining this forum, myself inclided) then 'we' are certainly not headed for decay!
Maybe the community may evolve into something different from what is know today ... but decay? Do not think that will ever happen.

(Oh dear - hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew!)

willow :rose:
 
No, willow!

Well done!

Now, brainstorming my two cents at six a.m. and without coffee....


I wonder, as BDSM becomes more mainstream, as people begin to enjoy "kink", does BDSM lose some of it's artistic quality? Is some of the eroticism lost? Is the lifestyle less special? less in keeping with traditional values as set forth many centuries ago?

IMHO: As BDSM becomes more mainstream, others begin to translate some of the philosophies and begin practicing in different arenas. Some of the tradition is lost. Eventually, does this mean that BDSM in the classic, intensely emotional and erotic manner that many of us know and enjoy it will become so watered down by "players" as to promote decay?

Evolution of a lifestyle or culture always leads to change. Change that is based upon the needs of the participants.

So, does the "watered down" version of BDSM indicate decay? I am asking.

This is just my subjective opinion and is not targetting anyone else who reads the forum. :)
 
Hmmmm....(looking at the bigger question, instead of just us)

Looking at historical examples, there was the Egyptian civilization, which lasted for an incredibly long time, even after "decay" had set in. Rome is another example, and one we have more affinity with. An expansive Republic that became an Empire, this is something that can be said to parallel the U.S. history; we started off as a few small colonies, and through deals and wars against the locals, we expanded to cover a respectable chunk of this enormous continent. Like Rome, we've lasted for quite a while as a Republic; but our citizens have, in varying degrees, become complacent and self-serving. This owes in part to the unmatched amounts of free time and money that we have here. Not to say everyone in this nation shares equally in the bounty, either. We have an ever-growing group of people well below what economists call the "Poverty Line", an arbitrary number at which they estimate a person can keep themselves cleaned, clothed and fed. My point? I don't think we're quite to the point of annointing Emperor Bush, but the constant fiddling and tinkering with civil liberties here in the name of security is indicative of the kind of culture we're headed towards.

I guess the part that deals with your question directly is the free time and money to make art and eroticism ends in and of themselves, pleasures to be indulged to fill the time that was once barely spent surviving.
 
I like the idea that Spectre is putting forward.

I think it is easy to look at previous civilizations (particularly Rome) and point to overendulgance as part of their downfall.

To me,decay has much more to do with corruption and greed than with too much art or eroticism. Like Spectre notes, if our society becomes too self-abosorbed and loses the concept of interdependence we will surely inventually implode from too many people being left behind.

I look at the art/eroticsm issue as emplematic of Lit itself. There are a lot of stories here that are well-written erotic pieces. There are a lot of folks (particularly in this forum) that are exploring their sexuality from a spiritual perspective (in my opinion).

There are also a lot of stories that are base sex, borderline rape, debasement, etc. that really aren't art or erotic. Now I realize this will always be in the eye of the beholder but I do see a difference. Eroticism and art expands our lives, make them more interesting, fulfilling, etc. Corruption, greed, sex without art/eroticism reduce our lives/society.

I know that is rather long. But it is something I've been thinking about while spending time here. Thanks for the thread.

peace,

activesense
 
You all have some good points to make! Especially since I hadn't even considered the ramifications of this idea for the BDSM community in particular.

Hmm... I get the impression that Wells isn't blaming art and eroticism for the decay of civilization so much as blaming the decay of civilization for the rise of art and eroticism -- as if energetic people have nowhere else to turn in a declining civilization but to art and eroticism since greed and corruption, complacency and apathy have taken over the rest of the public sphere.

Do you think, then, that making art and eroticism, as SpectreT says, "ends in and of themselves," is emblematic of social decay?

Would it be a bad thing if it were?
 
In my area I've recently seen a huge shift in the type of things available for people to do.

Most of the local Museums are now free entry, a lot of people can go down to the library and rent out CD's and a lot of Video shops now rent out computer games.

The city closest to me, Cardiff, has undergone a transformation of late. The docks now house executive housing and man - made lakes...

My point is that for a lot of people, needs and wants are shifting, blending and moving. I think people expect a lot more out of life.

Anyway, I'm rambling now and may not have answered the orginal question (I've had a few drinks !), so I'll leave it here.
 
art, eroticism, and decay

Hmm, sounds like a Nine Inch Nails song...all of them, really.

Although I am currently in a small stifling internet cafe located directly above a bar from which unreasonable decibels of music are pulsing, I will attempt to give this fascinating topic a try.

Decay giving rise to art. This reminds me of something we covered just the other day, when we were learning a fraction of the history of Spain. While the worst of the civil wars were going on, art and literature reached what many call its peak in this country. I think that a large genre of art tends to thrive on instability, chaos, even despair. Which is why adolescents write so much godawful poetry.

But eroticism? This question seems to contain several smaller ones, and I am having trouble (cannot imagine why) picking them out of here. Are you asking if a society in decline turns to eroticism for solace or self-reassurance or even regrowth? It is a nice idea, I suppose, and worthy of a story if not history.

I think that the previous posts on eroticism leading to decay are more coherent than a thought of decay leading to eroticism. Yes, I can see the latter to an extent, except that eroticism would likely be bastardized and perverted into the uglier aspects of lust. I agree that I do not consider such things facets of eroticism, so that dead-ends that question to me. Admittedly, I do not know enough of human nature to predict its trends based on such basic aspects of humanity. And now I will retire to spout my incoherence elsewhere.
 
Quint: Hmm... I think the idea is that eroticism is an expression of the last traces of creative energy in a complacent society that no longer feels the need to create anything new.

While the worst of the civil wars were going on, art and literature reached what many call its peak in this country.
Interesting. To my mind, civil war exemplifies not complacency or decay (at least in the way that Wells seems to mean it) but a kind of energetic involvement in life. I think in times of such generally high energy levels, it's not surprising that art and eroticism should flourish as well as political involvement and social change.

However, I wonder about times (like the present) in which the majority of people seem no longer to involve themselves in the world. When there are such low levels of involvement, interest, and energy, it seems that the minority of people who do seek an outlet for their creative forces can turn only to art and eroticism. Wells asks: what happens when even this last spurt of energy fades?

Assuming that Wells is right about our civilization's decay manifesting itself in the rise of art and eroticism (a big assumption, and one with which I'm not yet certain I agree) should we worry? Should we work to avoid it? Or should we allow our civilization to die in order to create (hopefully) a better one later?

Or is Wells just dead wrong?
 
In the movie The Third Man, the character Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles, tells his friend :
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock ..."

I am too tired for profound thought tonight, but I figured I'd throw that quote into the mix.
 
I've been following the thoughts presented here with fascinated interest. I even had a long (and from me that's a truly frightening word, guys) diatribe i was working on in which i traced the beginnings of erotic art to the very beginnings of a settled agrarian culture - the time when humans *first* had the time to think of something beyond day-to-day survival.

I won't burden you with that beast, though; the discussion has ranged past that point.

I do not, however, cannot, agree with the notion of "our civilization's decay manifesting itself in the rise of art and eroticism". Art has been with us since the beginning - and much of that art, if it wasn't naturalistic or utilitarian, was erotic.

We are sexual beings. ALL life on this planet is highly sexual, birds and bees and mammals and even the plants. We survive by being sexual. If in our (ahem) wisdom, our society has reached a place of comfort, a time when it's unnecessary that all of us engage in primary economic activities (hunting, fishing, agriculture) in order to feed the populace, then we should rejoice.

We are free of the yoke of essential food gathering, most of us, and free to concentrate on other forms of work - and pleasure.

I see the rise of art, erotic art included of course, over time as heralding times of prosperity for most cultures worldwide and through time. That some fell is a function of fate and a hard lesson from biology; not everything that evolves can survive over time. Extinctions happen. So it is with cultures, too.

I'm certain, though i haven't done any research around this at all (so, yes, at this point i'm essentially talking trash)(no R, i did not say white trash), that there are as many cultures that fell without getting to the "rise of art and eroticism" stage as there are examples of cultures that fell after having gotten to that point.

I do not think the rise of art and eroticism is indicative of the imminent fall of a culture. I think it's indicative of the dizzying heights of individual freedoms that culture offers its member, relative to the freedoms in neighboring cultures and compared to what has come before.

Unlike activesense, i have no shame or sorriness for the length of this post.
:p





edited for shockingly sucky spelling.
 
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Wow cymbidia! As always, a thoughtful response. Thank you. You make so many wonderful points.

I'm not yet sure where exactly I stand on this question. I would like to agree wholeheartedly with cym's optimistic outlook. Yay for a culture's emphasis on individual freedoms, and its ability to put such things into practice! However, I feel like I ought to say:

How many of us secretly smirk when we're walking down the street, or sitting at work, or whatever, thinking to ourselves, "Oh, if only these people knew what wild, wet, naughty thoughts I'm having!" or, "If only these people could comprehend the depth of the creativity in my soul!"? When we sit down and think about things reflectively, these gut reactions might not be our final answers; however, they are indicative of the popular opinion that it is our potential for erotic and artistic creativity that separates individuals from the mass of conformity and complacency.

Does this mean that there is at least a part of most of us that agrees with the idea that art and eroticism are our primary forums for the expression of our creative energy in an otherwise dull world? Or does this only apply to me?

Just because this might be true of our (my) sneaky private thoughts doesn't mean that it proves Wells' point about decay. Perhaps we ought to thank our lucky stars for having the civilization that we do. However, when I remove my rose-colored glasses, sometimes I worry that we're a little closer to crowning Emperor Bush (excuse my Americentrism) than we'd otherwise admit. Not that Imperialism is necessarily a symptom of imminent decay. It just seems that the U.S. is far from fulfilling its individualist, democratic ideals -- despite rhetoric to the contrary.

Is this true regardless of the situation of art and eroticism? Or is Wells right? Or is it not true, no way, no how?
 
cymbidia said:


I do not think the rise of art and eroticism is indicative of the imminent fall of a culture. I think it's indicative of the dizzying heights of individual freedoms that culture offers its member, relative to the freedoms in neighboring cultures and compared to what has come before.


I agree.

And if a culture falling coincides with an artful and erotic renaissance, then I'd say it's more likely because the people of that culture became too complacent about trusting matters of the government to the government.

What else are we to do? If you are allowed to vote, then vote. Vote wisely. Vote your conscience. And don't knowingly vote for gross liars. Those kinds of politicians spend more time covering their asses than doing their jobs, which is to keep us safe and healthy.
 
So, monster, you believe that although the fall of a civilization and an artistic/erotic renaissance might happen at the same time, it's just a coincidence?

The idea of a spurious relationship between the two is a logical one. After all, civilizations have risen and fallen, and always there have been art and eroticism.

However, humans' emphasis on art and eroticism as pursuits that separate us from the masses still seems to indicate (to me, at least) that creative folks feel like they have no other outlet for their energy except in their personal lives of art and sex. If our civilization were more dynamic (less complacently static), would there be more opportunities for such people to express themselves? For example, in the political arena? Or even in business, which seems these days to lack the individual geniuses of a century ago?

I'm reluctant to abandon Wells' idea entirely. I think that for me to do so would probably require willfully ignorant optimism.
 
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This has been a very interesting discussion.
I think that, as an African American, I have a bit of a different perspective from any I've read here. From my point of view, this contemporary culture we live in is just beginning to open up fully for all it's members within the last few generations, and so I believe that in the big picture, including all members of society, we do not live in such a complacent stagnant society as some see from their perspective.
I do think that there is truth to the idea that flourishing eroticism and the arts can be a symptom of a society in decline, but that doesn't mean that they only flourish in those times, does it?

Oh, Caroline is peaking over my shoulder and adds that if you talk about HG Wells you should remember his context as a person of the Victorian Age. I think this is a good point. I recall a little bit about his theories of history from college days and if my memory doesn't fail me, his ideas were pretty Euro-centric and judged the whole world by his British standards. It was pretty common for the European colonialists to justify their oppresion of other peoples by claiming that Indians, Africans, etc, were morally beneath them. So the idea that certain cultures are in decline for whatever reason was to some extent self serving, since it justified "the white mans burden" of controlling their colonial peoples.
 
The Context of the Quote--long post warning

Politics and business don't lack the dynamic geniuses of a century ago, it's pure nostalgia of the most toxic sort to think so. For every Henry Ford of yesterday, there's a Bill Gates of today. (Incidentally, Henry Ford was one of the most virulent racists of his day--a proud Klan member and sponsor of eugenics studies in several major universities.) We can claim that nobody's made anything as earth-shattering as the telegraph line or the steam locomotive, even as we type such nonsense into our personal computers and send it out along the worldwide digital communication trail. Dale Carnegie, meet H.Ross Perot. Andrew Jackson (the first white trash president), meet Bill Clinton. Not to mention the huge social changes--like desegregation, female voting rights, and near-universal literacy. Let's have a little perspective before we start decrying the shallowness and lack of achievement in our own time, shall we?

I personally think Wells was speaking from the position of nostalgia--longing for the "good old days" when things weren't (to his mind) so shockingly explicit, and the U.S. audience for his novel was all primed to agree. It's rather like the old jokes about "in my day..." and how easy "you young people today" have it. Nostalgia asks us to forget how the past really was in favor of its airbrushed Rockwell image. His is a typical complaint, one bandied around by politicians all the time--the myth that at some time in the nebulous past, people were clean, chaste, and focused, and the world was a better place. It's a complete fabrication, and based on a total fiction, a desire to return to the past that never was.

Look at the text from which it's drawn: The Time Machine is explicitly about wanting to turn back the clock and return to a mythical time of pastoral splendor, clearly delineated class, gender, and implied racial segregation. Failing that, he'll try to make it happen in the future--where, after all, does the protagonist wash up in his adventures? The dystopia of the novel isn't the slave society that's been created, but the fact that such clearly defined roles don't exist in the Wells' (and his character's) own world. He has to escape back to his own era, but not because the people of the "inferior" class/race have been pushed underground and society's become grossly undemocratic, but because the damned hermit criminals steal his technology and render him impotent above-ground. The real threat of the future he sees isn't that society has turned so ugly, but that those oppressed by it have become so dangerous to those "above-ground."

Written at a time of tremendous anxiety about the social changes of turn-of-the-century life, it's also a product of its moment; the 1890s saw the robber-barons making fortunes while others starved; the emerging middle class was still taking shape and finding its political voice--and there was tremendous anxiety about what to do with them. On one end, consumerism was just getting rolling, and the middling classes are the best consumers available--not so rich as to decry ready-made and manufactured products, but not so poor that they can't afford to spend often and heavily. On the other end, many of the very-wealthy saw their "old Europe" aristocratic pretensions threatened by the emergence of the "nouveau riche"--new money among the social rabble of immigrants, artists, and others typically under the patronage of the paternal elite. Cities (particularly midwest industrial centers and coastal port-cities) were growing at unsupportable rates, generating squalor, poverty and homelessness of the most visible sort; immigrants, displaced southerners and politically voiceless minorities were competing for limited jobs as industrialization cut the work-force at the same time that productivity skyrocketed; workers were starting to unionize, driving some of the most brutal labor struggles in history--rioting on grand scale. It's a story about Victorians (those so eager to repress all forms of sexual expression) losing control of the social fabric. And it continues to stoke those same fires, those same fears about social change.

It came back in a big way in WWII; the forties were a time when white middle class U.S. citizens were convinced their world was being torn apart from within. Japanese Americans were rounded up and put in ghettos, Jews were seen as a threat even in the U.S., and (especially in the South), black/white race tensions were already heating up toward the mass conflict of the sixties. In less than a decade after the war, the federal government was purging homosexuals and other "deviants" from the employee rosters, convinced that they were prime targets to be made subversives or double agents. The "pink scare" cost thousands of jobs, and ran simulataneously with the start of the biggest "Red Scare," that directed by Herr McCarthy. At the same time, the repressive Hayes Code in Hollywood censored all potentially "subversive" content--anything overtly sexual, suggestive of extra-marital or non-hetero normative relations, or anti-religious was being systematically stifled, lest it should destroy all of culture. The idea of social collapse was very popular with a public whose government worked hard to suggest that anything but striving and earning pasty-white heteros was subversive and dangerous. Wells' book looked to many, once again, like prophesy.

Interestingly, the first film version of the story came out right at the cusp of desegregation struggles in 1960. The remake came out last year, right as hysteria about "enemies within" hit a fever pitch. What version of "social decay" are we really talking about in Wells' words?

But, ignoring the thinly veiled political agenda of The Time Machine, I still think Wells was full of hooey. The idea that civilizations end in a predictable pattern wasn't new even in Wells' time, but it was popularized in the forties by structural anthropologists like Levi-Strauss, and culminated in work like The Rise and Fall of Civilization: An Inquiry into the Relationship Between Economic Development and Civilization by Shepard B. Clough, an influential book that traced the similar patterns of development, peak and decay for several allegedly discreet and ended civilizations--including Chinese Civilization, which he claimed was dead! Very popular for its moment, it started losing favor in the late seventies when post-structual critique started questioning the stakes of basing all determinations about a society's viability and decay on its economic structure and development--a clearly pro-capital bent, to say the least.

Civilizations and societies don't tend to decay or disappear in quite the way we seem to think. Political regimes rise and fall, but the people who live under them rarely, if ever, just cease to exist. Even in the case of the most common example of a regime which got big, went corrupt and then fell apart, the Romans, their echoes are heard even today. And thanks to all that sex that nobody was having, their blood continues to flow through our veins.

BTW, Sam: you and Caroline are dead-on. Anxiety about change are often a front for fear of "losing control" that we should be aware of it by now, shouldn't we? The fact that we're not tells me a lot about how much the "white man's burden" idea still informs our world.
 
Thank you, Risia, you said what I was thinking much better than I did.
If you are interested in the issue you raised about inventors then and now, and the ways the place of inventors has changed in our society, may I recommend a book I just read, The Last Lone Inventor by Evan I. Schwartz? It is about Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, and speaks directly to this issue of the transition from the age of the independent inventor to the rise of the corporate research lab.
 
Thanks for the recommend, Sam. It sounds like an interesting read; I'll have to look for it. As usual, you bring a lot to the discussion. :rose:
 
RisiaSkye said:
Thanks for the recommend, Sam. It sounds like an interesting read; I'll have to look for it. As usual, you bring a lot to the discussion. :rose:

Thanks again, Risia. I have enjoyed this discussion very much.
 
Did I use the word coincidence? I didn't think so. To me, coincide has a very different meaning than coincidence, in that things coinciding occupy the same space and time and may or may not be related otherwise; coincidental things are things that also occupy the same time and space but are otherwise unrelated, or accidental occurences.

Civilizations fall for a variety of reasons. Some might fall for economic or political reasons. Some might fall into the Atlantic. Some may fall because of corruption, as I indicated in my last post.

The fact that someone has to make shoes and someone has to farm before someone else can pursue art and eroticism full time in order to have a viable society is evident. So it stands to reason that an entire society can't be consumed by eroticism and art and remain viable.

I don't, however, subscribe to the notion that the rise of art and eroticism within a culture is necessarily a sign of a corrupt society, and that fall is imminent.

While I think H.G. Wells was at least near genius and a entertaining writer, I am not ready to canonize him. He was also a crackpot. Alfred Hitchcock was also a clever, entertaining writer. Civilizations have risen and fallen, and there have always been birds. Coincidence? Most likely.

And I don't feel our civilization is so complacently static. It doesn't seem that way to me at all, unless I look at a very small span of time.


NemoAlia said:
So, monster, you believe that although the fall of a civilization and an artistic/erotic renaissance might happen at the same time, it's just a coincidence?

The idea of a spurious relationship between the two is a logical one. After all, civilizations have risen and fallen, and always there has been art and eroticism.

However, humans' emphasis on art and eroticism as pursuits that separate us from the masses still seems to indicate (to me, at least) that creative folks feel like they have no other outlet for their energy except in their personal lives of art and sex. If our civilization were more dynamic (less complacently static), would there be more opportunities for such people to express themselves? For example, in the political arena? Or even in business, which seems these days to lack the individual geniuses of a century ago?

I'm reluctant to abandon Wells' idea entirely. I think that for me to do so would probably require willfully ignorant optimism.
 
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Re: The Context of the Quote--long post warning

Risia,

omg, what a mind you have. I cut out nearly all your post because, well, there was nothing I wanted to single out. Clear purpose, clear thought, clear structure, informative and beautifully woven. You can mind-fuck me anyday!

Oh, and I agree!

RisiaSkye said:
 
You all make very important points about the context of Wells' work. It's true that he wrote from a prejudiced, colonialist standpoint. And more than likely, most of the people who have expressed similar opinions throughout history have stood in similar positions.

Are our ideas dependent upon our situations in life?

Last night I watched Fellini's "Satyricon." I have also read Petronius' original text. The written words didn't strike me quite as strongly as the film did; perhaps because it takes me nearly five minutes to read a single sentence of the text. Anyway, in the movie, Fellini makes a big deal about showing how interchangeable the characters are. Throughout the film, situations of gender, life or death, wealth, servitude, and immortality are described basically as accidents. If anything in the rules of the current structure changes, the characters slip out of their current roles and into new ones. However, they remain the many incarnations of the same idea. Their individual thoughts depend entirely on the accident of their current situations.

It disturbs me to consider how close this is to 'real' life.

Now, to switch to another part of the discussion:

I suppose I've avoided a whole lot of personal revelation in this thread. However, I think it might be important to describe where I'm coming from.

I'm a violinist. I started performing professionally when I was 10 years old, in and around the northeastern U.S. Currently, my primary jobs are in three symphonies and a mariachi band. My whole family are musicians. They looked at me like I was nuts when I announced that I would be double-majoring in English when I came to college. However, both of these pursuits fall into the 'art' category. Add to them my abiding interest in sex, and I'm a personification of full-time art and eroticism. However, I don't particularly see myself as a symptom of cultural decay. However, I do sometimes see myself (and folks who pursue the same goals as myself) as a sort of (and now I'm exaggerating a bit) 'last bastion' of creative energy. (Yes, a little self-centered, but whose life would be worth living if he/she didn't think he/she was living in the best possible way, for the best possible reasons?)

Although I might be stepping on people's toes, my point is that although there are optimistic exceptions to every rule, the rules cannot be ignored while we're talking about their exceptions. Although as Risia points out, "Politics and business don't lack the dynamic geniuses of a century ago," the social/cultural/corporate trend has changed. Whereas in Carnegie's time the emphasis was on individual creativity and business acumen (that's what people expected to see), now our emphasis is on the group. Although there are individuals who rise to the top on the strength of their own work, the idea of a "corporate research lab" is our most normal expectation.

Although we could chalk this up to the actualization of the ideal of brotherly love, I see our culture as having come to adopt a certain group mentality that I don't consider to be an example of anything so positive. Instead, we've come to expect people (as a whole) deliberately to frustrate any individual's attempt to express him/herself creatively -- kinda like crawfish in a bucket. Society is beginning to feel (to many of us) not as a group of people with similar positive goals for the human race, but as a bunch of mindless shmucks who stand in our way. Most of us feel that the only avenues for self-expression lie in areas that are not yet within the realm of 'the group,' (i.e., art and eroticism). Is this feeling of individuals' having nowhere else to turn without being squelched by the establishment a sign of an unhealthy society?

What happens if even art and eroticism were to become dictated by faceless norms? Then, I think, we would all agree that our civilization was in decline, or even lost altogether.

Maybe not everyone thinks that the majority of their everyday, public life is dictated by faceless norms. However, I would be surprised if the people on the BDSM board didn't feel that way occasionally.
 
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Oh, monster -- I forgot to add: I see "coincide" and "coincidence" as the verb and noun forms, respectively, of the same word with the same denotation. I mean "coincidence" in the way that you define "coincide." Do you have a different definition for "coincidence?"

Also, yes truly no civilization can survive if everyone's bent on pursuing art and eroticism 24/7. However, that's not quite what I mean by art and eroticism being symptoms of the possible decay of a civilization. I don't mean to imply that people's pursuing these things full-time ought to warn us that our civilization is falling. I mean that if people have begun to feel that art and eroticism are the only ways that creative people can express themselves, our society must be failing somewhere.

Although I agree with Sam that Wells was writing at least partially out of fear that 'inferior' classes and races might be taking over the world, I think that his idea can still be valid when it is removed from the close-minded insecurity of its context. Regardless of race, creed, or social situation, if people feel that they cannot express their creative energy in the public sphere without facing massive apathy (caused, perhaps, by a general complacency or by a reluctance to listen to new ideas in favor of maintaining the old ones), their society is not the best that it could be.
 
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