Art and the subversion of money-values

I am extremely fortunate to be in a city (St. Louis) where a group of dedicated civic leaders arranged for the opening of a new public charter school for the arts opened last year. It is called Grand Center Arts Academy; it has three grade levels this year--sixth through eighth grades--and it will add one grade level each year, eventually including grades six through twelve. How unusual and wonderful that one can find such a publicly-funded arts oasis at a time when so many schools are cutting their arts classes in order to concentrate on "essentials." In the September/October 2011 edition of Orion Magazine, Jay Griffiths is tired of defending the arts. Why defend them any longer, when you can use the topic of public funding of the arts to slash at the deep rotten core of the belief that money is the measure of all things? Here's an excerpt from what Griffiths has to say in his excellent short article, titled "The Exile of the Arts" (This article does not appear to be available online at this time).

Disregarding art's transcendent value, modern states ask the arts to justify themselves in commercial terms, money the only measure to calculate a simile, to price the melody of a violin, and to calibrate the value of transformation. A phoenix must write its own cost-benefit analysis. While art tells multiple stories, knows the plural values of beauty, dream, and meaning, money tells a monstrosity. Money should never be the judge of art, but its servant: funding it, supporting it, aiding it. Perhaps one of the reasons for the hostility against the arts today is precisely that they are implacable witnesses against this terrible lie of our times: that money is the measure of all. Art refutes this lie, disentangles "money" from "values," and argues with its deepest authority that there is another sky, intimate and boundless, open to all, where the poet can tow a star across the liquid river of night, like a child with a toy boat on a string.

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Elizabeth Warren’s eloquent common sense

This has been a long time coming in a candidate. Elizabeth Warren has a long track record for being hard-working, smart and incorruptible. Is there some way to clone her? Just listen to her eloquent rebuff to the Tea Party and her diagnosis of what ails us financially. Does anyone really disagree with any of this?

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Republicans and Jobs: More of the Same-Sop the Rich, Screw the Middle Class and the Working Poor

The current political climate is one fraught with conflict and controversy promulgated and continuously created by the most extreme elements of the lunatic fringes of the right and the Republican Party. The Republican Party cares “solely and exclusively about its rich contributors” in America and the Middle Class and the working poor be damned. Republicans will say anything, do anything, lie, cheat and steal about everything to protect the so-called “job creators.”  I’ve accused Republicans of puerile partisan political chicanery before but, the proof is in the charge made by a senior GOP Budget Committee staffer who quit Capitol Hill because of Republican “lunacy.” This article is the first in a series of three analyzing the evidence of Mr. Mike Lofgren who spent 28 years on the GOP staff of the US House and Senate Budget Committees, and had much, including this, to say about the Republican love affair with only the corporations, millionaires and billionaires.  Mr. Lofgren says:

The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public.

I wrote of the current tactics of the Republicans, especially in the US House of Representatives on the debt ceiling “crisis.” Mr. Lofgren continues:

Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?

Mr. Lofgren poses the best question to for Democrats to ask of his former Republican colleagues. Where are the jobs from the “job creators” among the corporations, millionaires and billionaires, Mr. US House Speaker Boehner? Eight years of George W. Bush and Republican “leadership” of the US economy led the nation into the Great Recession and the Lost Decade. The “Lost Decade” because there were only losses of private sector jobs under Bush and his tax giveaways to corporations, millionaires and billionaires. Mr. Lofgren goes on to point out additional Republican rhetorical scams. [More . . . ]

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Republican Morality

What is Republican morality? Such a provocative question! Before we get to an answer, though, what is morality? Jonathan Haidt has much to say about this in this 2008 Edge article. I have often mentioned Haidt in my posts.  I find him to be a first rate thinker and writer.   Now, back to the topic of morality. Here's how Haidt defines morality:

Morality is any system of interlocking values, practices, institutions, and psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible. It turns out that human societies have found several radically different approaches to suppressing selfishness.
The first thing he teaches, then, is that "morality" is not an "it." Rather, it is a set of (potentially conflicting) approaches that all aim for the same end: "making social life possible." Haidt sets forth the sort of society that passes as "moral" for many of us:
First, imagine society as a social contract invented for our mutual benefit. All individuals are equal, and all should be left as free as possible to move, develop talents, and form relationships as they please. The patron saint of a contractual society is John Stuart Mill, who wrote (in On Liberty) that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." Mill's vision appeals to many liberals and libertarians; a Millian society at its best would be a peaceful, open, and creative place where diverse individuals respect each other's rights and band together voluntarily (as in Obama's calls for "unity") to help those in need or to change the laws for the common good. Psychologists have done extensive research on the moral mechanisms that are presupposed in a Millian society, and there are two that appear to be partly innate. First, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to suffering and harm, particularly violent harm, and so nearly all cultures have norms or laws to protect individuals and to encourage care for the most vulnerable. Second, people in all cultures are emotionally responsive to issues of fairness and reciprocity, which often expand into notions of rights and justice. Philosophical efforts to justify liberal democracies and egalitarian social contracts invariably rely heavily on intuitions about fairness and reciprocity.
I'll call this Society #1.  Now consider a different social arrangement, Society #2: [More . . .]

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