It is not easy building a world-class art and performance center, especially on the 11th, 12th and 13th floors of a city as densely packed as Jakarta, but I'm determined to do it because, damn it, creating and promoting beauty and harmony is the only way to beat the bastards.
I've gone on at length in this column about art and how it is like garlic to vampires when it comes to the PowersThatNeedTheirToastButtered (PTNTTB). Educating and elevating humanity is/will be the key to winning the Culture Wars.
Pick a random film from the 50s and another from this past year. Doesn't matter the genre or plot, and listen to the words. Runing them again and watch the pictures. Notice anything? The portrayal of humanity is ever coursening. People talk course, act course, think course. Dress has gone downhill. Manners have all but vanished. And this is how the PTNTTB expects us to act because animals are much easier to train when they are broken.
They don't want us to have high culture and art. They don't want us to elevate our minds and spirits. They just want unthinking animals that can push buttons and pull levers.
How do Warhol, Lichtenstein and Pollock compare to Rembrandt, Titian or Monet? How do Pearl Jam, Tin Idiots and Sex Pistols compare with Chopin, Handel or Mendelssohn? They are really trying to kill us spiritually by continually rubbing our souls in filth and denying us the ability to rise above baseness. They want to save god-like status for themselves while the rest of us happily serve their every whim (see Star Trek TOS: Plato's Stepchildren).
Speaking of art and Star Trek, have you noticed that it's kind of like the Bible? You can find an episode to illustrate just about any point you care to make.
Where was I? Oh, right...
It stands to reason that if the PTNTTB are so desperate to reduce humanity to little more than lap dogs, then the best/only way to fight back is to create beauty and educate ourselves. Right here in Indonesia, the PTNTTB are so paranoid and afraid of folks getting smart and out of hand that last year they cancelled all art and history classes in the public schools so they could stuff more religion down everyone's throats. And next year, since the public schools are determined to turn out idiots, then by golly all the private schools need to get rid of their language and computer classes so everyone is equally squalid and subservient.
Sad but true.
It's a real good sign of fascism when society (such as it is) is geared specifically to create one-trick ponies who are just smart enough to punch buttons, but could never challenge the folks in the board rooms.
Only problem is that whatever the rest of the world is becoming, so are the breeding products of the slimy PTNTTB. The...children for lack of a better term...of those useless blood-sucking would-be masters are just as slimy, dreary and vacuous as their "parents". More so. Look at Paris Hilton.
We're on our own. We have to read, to listen to fine music, to ponder philosophy, to appreciate good art, and to control to the greatest extent possible the quality of information that enters our souls.
Not only are the PTNTTB in terminal decline and soon unable to rescue even themselves, we are certainly not on their list of priorities.
If you are one of the few with the self-awareness to not only determine whether you have a mind and soul, but able to define and develop them, then run...don't walk...to the nearest gutenberg.org terminal and start packing your head with real, uplifting information.
You owe it to the future of the human race.
