Thought for the Day: On the Arts

From the wonderful book The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine by Robert Bly and Marion Woodman. This bit from Marion:

…the arts are becoming frills in the eyes not only of the government but of many citizens as well. As budgets are being balanced, the arts suffer because so many tutors [status quo protectors] are so far away from the soul they simply don’t care…Their head is separated from their heart. What these pathetic tutors who pass these laws do not realize is that young people do start out with imagination, with enthusiasm. Take away their disciplined outlets and they are birds without wings. Moreover, their frustration at not being able to soar results in rage, which they have no idea how to contain. Any one of the arts can give them a container strong enough to hold their natural frustrations until it distills into paint, or dance, or song. Any teacher knows how much energy is required to teach a student how to hold the container solid enough until the emotion has time to resolve itself into an art form. That is what culture is. Our tutors are passing laws that will destroy what has taken centuries to build — a civilization that can contain its own vision. Without the arts, the principal is shot in his office instead of Julius Caesar being massacred with yardsticks in the classroom. Raw instinct runs rampant in the streets, imagination is ciphered into primitive behavior, spiritual and moral values cease to exist, and the millions that are saved are spent in building boot camps to try to contain thugs.

We are building a nation of reactionary soldiers, who are so repressed and angry that they are willing to kill, whose emotional maturity and self-awareness is such that they will kill as instructed, as their heart-strings, no longer attached to viable, meaningful relationship with the world, are jerked at the bidding of those who wish the killing done, but at the same time wish to lament such violent acts while washing their own hands clean of the blood.