What is art an antidote to??

Viewing the world through a beauty-seeking lens can be medicine for the following effects of the current pervading global culture:

 monism, difference anxiety, and inability to hold multiple truths.

There is an omnipresent motive underlying western thought and society of conversion and assimilation- and with that comes discomfort with personal and cultural differences. Philosopher Rajiv Malhotra coined this as ‘difference anxiety’. Simply put, we believe  similarities are  morally superior to differences.

moral decay  and symbolic poverty

In Man and his Symbols, Jung describes a moral decay that happens when ‘primitive’ cultures are introduced to modern society. The main effect is the loss of our ability to assimilate anything instinctive or unconscious. Both Jung and ML Von Franz refer to modern religions as anemic, deficient of their numinosity. The pursuit of rationalism has brought us to an imbalance, and the pendulum must swing back. The only way to combat what I’ve seen referred to as ‘symbolic poverty” is to create new mythologies, drawing on ancient ones.

“Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism” (which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated, and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and dissociation”

apathy, or lack of interest

As humanity’s consciousness has evolved, we’ve reached a place of ultimate intelligence and separateness. This individualism has helped us develop egos and personalities that ancient people did not have. But it has also brought loneliness, materialism, and anti-social forces. We must make conscious efforts to connect with each other if we are to survive this late-stage capitalism, and that starts with having interest in others, which can be quite difficult. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference and disinterest. 

“Apathy separates us from the world, while interest unites us with it. The world loses us through our apathy: in this direction we become immoral. Thus, we see that apathy and lack of interest in the world are morally evil in the highest degree” -Rudolf Steiner

ahrimanic technocracy

In my belief that our divinity lies in our art-making, that we are created in the image of the creator, that we are the creator, I rebuke artificial intelligence. AI is a furthering of the tyrannical, white supremacist forces and the work of Ahriman. (In anthroposophy, ahriman is the being we must find balance with in opposition to lucifer. Ahriman wishes to united humanity with matter in a calcification process, separating our intellectual capacities from our soul and heart forces.)