Something is wrong with the world.– So exclaims the eternal gadfly of those two most impertinent career-seminarists, the classical philosopher and the modern artist. What creator is not driven by the insatiable perception of an existence gone off-kilter, of a world in need of improvement? (Perhaps it is only the blinding vision of the priestly class which exceeds the candour of the creators of systems and the diamond-chislers of insight in their passion for edification.) These visionaries – and it is indeed their inflated sense of vision which impels them – have been graced with an endless reserve of stamina, allowing them to dip more frequently than most into the blather of criticism and unfulfilled desires that ceaselessly rages below the banal language of every-day living, as fodder for a system of impressive manoeuvres.
Perhaps, one could say, there are some who attempt to capture and reflect the wonderful things in life, the most harmonious of concordances or the most accidental of beauties, and put this positivity into the world, as a monument. Ha! Artists no longer, mere craftsmen, condemned to languish in the factory-houses of "decorative arts." The successful modern artist has become as much of a system builder as the classical philosopher, both hanging their perceptions in the esoteric veil of principles. Creation has become nothing but an edifying flourish, an inside joke, dependent for its success upon the prestige of those who "get it." A recourse to prestige; what statement of knowledge is not undermined by its own backwards movement? A backwards movement made all the more insidious by the very fact that the trumpets which accompany it blare the endless ditty of edification - even if the goal is no longer moral cohesion or "happiness" but merely awareness.
