Connecting people

The notion that the Internet connects people is a dreadful error. Only great art, carrying universal truth across the ages, is capable of that. When a culture no longer has the strength for universal aesthetics, it seeks refuge in the niche. Society divides itself into segments. People withdraw into zones: small cliques of apparently like-minded individuals, continually splintering into ever smaller sections, and becoming more and more alienated from one another, until finally the world is made up of segments, each containing only one totally disconnected self. The Internet is just another agent of this disintegration process, this - democratization.

Democracy is the great leveller. It makes every generation start from scratch, because it wants to give equal opportunity to all, but in sabotaging inheritance, effectively stifling tradition, it merely succeeds in depriving the truly great of the means to make significant cultural contributions. Perhaps this is its hidden purpose. How successfully this purpose is being achieved! By now, the very word tradition is frowned upon.

But the value of a work of art can be directly measured by the degree to which it adheres to tradition. An artist's duty is to pick up the strands of culture and carry them onwards, into the future, with no regard for himself. Today's artists, apart from making highly personal art, always need some personal utility to justify their creative efforts; unless it brings personal rewards, such as money, fame, therapy, why bother?

Who will remember us a thousand years from now? Who will still tell of our Barrat homes, fast food, supermarkets, four wheel drives, televisions and mobile phones? Who will listen to our music? Who will care we were alive?