“When art becomes so abstract that it is irrelevant, it provokes efforts to develop socially useful art; conversely when art becomes so worldly that everything seems to be art, strategies to create critical distance begin to emerge. The history of art in this century can be understood as the dialectical interplay of these two contrasting tendencies.”
So, once again it comes back to tension. Conflict and tension. Apparently it is the very thing we run on—we need it to create, to motivate, to inspire, to move. Without it we are bored, lethargic, gluttonous, lazy, passive and cruel. This must somehow be hard wired into us, right with the impulse to bite that first apple.
We aren’t self-starters after all.
“The Fall”, as we put it, wasn’t a surprise to God. But it is to us.
And not to credit God with the creation of Evil or anything so extreme, but it seems to me that he knows how he built this crazy, complex existence with far more intricacy than we could possibly ever realize.
*as part of an assignment/educational experiment, I am blogging my way through the required reading for one of my courses this quarter. If you wish to read all the posts that I write for this class click on the label TC 500, below. I will also be tweeting some thoughts as well. Check them out at @nickybarger, they're labeled with #tc500
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