Art
and the aesthetic mind...
An article by L. Ron
Hubbard, from the book Science of Survival
The more theta*, whether in terms of free theta or entheta, an individual has,
the more forceful will be his demonstration of all factors, both analytical
and reactive. Because individuals who are very heavily endowed with theta seek
to control enormous quantities of MEST* and other organisms, they are fought hard
by organisms exercising their own self-determinism. Thus, a person of great theta
endowment picks up more numerous and heavier locks and secondaries than persons
of smaller endowment. This is not because more theta is there to enturbulate,
but because there is more counterattack against the individual. The aesthetic
mind, according to theory, attempting to bring about art forms, uses all
the theta.
It was once thought that it was absolutely necessary for an artist to be neurotic.
Lacking the ability to do anything about neurosis, like Aesop's fox* who had no
tail and tried to persuade the other foxes to cut theirs off, old schools of mental
healing glorified what they could not prevent or cure. Silly little books on the
subject of how fortunate was the crazy person were offered in this justification
of this defeatism and helplessness.
Aesthetics and the postulate that there exists an aesthetic mind are both highly
nebulous so far as our present understanding of them is concerned. But this is
known, that any creative artist, as he descends down the Tone Scale, becomes less
and less able to execute creative impulses and at last becomes unable to contact
his creative impulses. By Dianetic processing, we take a currently successful
but heavily aberrated artist and we bring him up the Tone Scale. We can observe
that his ability to execute what he conceives and the clarity with which he conceives
it both increase very markedly. His aesthetic ideas do not become more conservative
or humdrum but may become wider and more complex. He becomes more himself and
better able to do what he can do in the field of aesthetics. The only modification
of this is that as he rises up the Tone Scale, he adopts greater scope and robustness
in his work. The art form with which he is working and his method of handling
it might have demonstrated considerable aberration, as measured by the casual
observer. His paintings might have been strange and creepy, or his music hauntingly
morbid. His art form, as he rises up the Tone Scale, evidently alters little except
to increase in force of execution and deftness of communication. The morbidity
in his music, if it did not depend on how sad he was personally with life, does
not disappear. But as he rises on the Tone Scale, he is no longer fixed at a position
where he must paint strange and creepy paintings or write morbid music.
His versatility increases. The author who can write only one book of one kind
with one tone is not, frankly, much of an author.
Almost any artist laughs himself into a very short breath over the fumblings
and mumblings of the various split schools of mental healing when they confront
aesthetics. Some of them even dare to assume that they can judge the mental state
of an author by reviewing his writings. This is somewhat on the order of a snail
giving his opinion of the Parthenon by crawling through its reliefs. As an illustration,
any able composer or author can write in many aesthetic forms and can approximate
with their work any level of the Tone Scale. No artist attempting to interpret
life is worthy of being called an artist unless he can view almost in the same
sweep both apathy and exhilaration. A good poet can cheerfully write a poem gruesome
enough to make strong men cringe, or he can write verses happy enough to make
the weeping laugh. Any able composer can write music either covert enough to make
the sadist wriggle with delight or open enough to rejoice the greatest souls.
The artist works with life and with universes. He can deal with any level of communication.
He can create any reality. He can enhance or inhibit any affinity. The aesthetics
have very much to do with the Tone Scale and with the interweaving of the various
dynamics and urges along these dynamics into harmonious patterns random enough
and artful enough to accomplish what the artist intends to accomplish. The artist
has an enormous role in the enhancement of today's and the creation of tomorrow's
reality. He operates in a rank in advance of science as to the necessities and
requirements of man. The elevation of a culture can be measured directly by the
numbers of its people working in the field of aesthetics. A society which in any
way inhibits, suppresses or regiments its artists is a society not only low on
the Tone Scale but most certainly doomed. A totalitarian state, following its
usual line of perversion of truth, talks endlessly and raucously about its subsidization
of the artist. But it subsidizes only those artists who are willing to work for
the state exactly as the state dictates. It regiments the artist and prescribes
what he will do and what he will write and what he will think. This is in direct
controversion to the function of the artist in a society. Because the artist deals
in future realities, he always seeks improvements or changes in the existing reality.
This makes the artist, inevitably and invariably, a rebel against the status quo.
The artist, day by day, by postulating the new realities of the future, accomplishes
peaceful revolution.
It happens, however, that democracies and other forms of government are prone
to overlook the role of the artist in the society. In the United States, for instance,
the artist may write one great book or make a great motion picture or compose
one great symphony and may achieve, all in a moment, the bulk of the gains of
his lifetime. His whole dedication, from childhood, might have been toward the
creation of this one great work, and yet democracy, avidly taxing its powerfully
creative individuals into nonproduction, snatches from the artist any such fruits
of victory and exacts an enormous penalty for the creation of any work of art.
One of the greatest single moves which could be made to advance and vitalize a
culture such as America would be to free, completely, the artist from all taxes
and similar oppressions, and thus attract into the arts the most ambitious and
able and invite them to pursue unchecked the creation of all the beauty and glory
on which any culture depends if it would have material wealth. The artist injects
the theta into the culture, and without that theta the culture becomes reactive.
This dissertation on the function of the artist is given at this place partly
because it should be said and partly because the auditor should understand that
the impulse to create and construct surmounts the merely rational and reactive
fields of reason. Further, the auditor may occasionally have to defend Dianetics
against the strange neurosis to the effect that when an artist becomes less neurotic
he becomes less able. Some artists, regrettably, have been educated to this belief
and so, by this very education, seek to act in their private and public lives
in an intensely aberrated fashion in order to prove that they are artists. The
education to this effect is such that the auditor can commonly discover some young
girl in the field of the arts living like a prostitute in order to convince herself
and her friends that she is truly artistic. In the early days of Rome, art was
fairly good. The Christian revolted against Roman disregard for human life and
slaves. When the Christian revolted he did the reactive computation that he was
revolting against Romans. He condemned everything that was Roman as bad, and for
fifteen hundred years it was an evil thing to take a bath, because the Romans
had bathed. Unfortunately, although the Catholic church recovered early and began
to appreciate the artist, this was not true of some of the early religions which
came to America. These were still in full revolt against anything that was Roman.
They revolted against pleasure, against beauty, against cleanliness and against
many other desirable things which are in themselves the glory of man. The artist
then revolted against this declared unreasonableness and went on a course as thoroughly
reactive as had been the course of Puritanism and Calvinism. Being artistic was
commonly identified with being loose-moraled, wicked, idle and drunken, and the
artist, to be recognized, tried to live up to this role. This feeling persists
to this day and low-tone people often embrace the arts solely as an excuse to
be promiscuous, unconventional and loose in morals....
The whole field of arts is thus enturbulated, and the artistry of a culture
is thereby greatly reduced. The rehabilitation of that art-ability of a culture
is a tremendously valid undertaking, and will repay a culture a thousand times
over for any effort made in that direction. A culture is only as great as its
dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.
Aesop's fox: a reference to the fox in the fable The
Fox Without a Tail, written by legendary Greek author, Aesop. The fable tells
of a fox who gets caught in a trap. Unable to get out, he resolves to bite off
his tail to free himself. Shortly thereafter, realizing how odd he looks without
a tail, he decides to convince the other foxes of the virtues of being tailless
and persuade them to get rid of their own. The other foxes see through this and
his plan fails.
Theta: thought, potentially independent
of a material vessel or medium. Life force. Èlan vital.
MEST: matter, energy, space and time. The physical universe.
Click
here to order Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard.
|
What
do you want to know about people?
How honest they are, how truthful, their courage level, their ability to handle
responsibility? You want to know when someone says, I love you, whether
or not they mean it. Theres a lot you need to know about people.
Your success tomorrow is as good as you can predict another's Tone Level and
human behavior today. And when you read Science of Survival, by L. Ron
Hubbard, youll know it.
In Science of Survival, youre gaining the greatest discoveries
on human behavior ever written. The fantastic workability of Dianetics made possible
the breakthroughs in this book. Written the year following the release of Dianetics:
The Modern Science of Mental Health, L. Ron Hubbard urgently began writing
the second book of Dianetics because so many more advances were being discovered.
Theyre all here in Science of Survival.
The core essence of these breakthroughs are instantly available to you in the
columns of the famous Hubbard Chart of Human Evaluation. A copy of the chart comes
with the book, and nowhere else will you find as much useful information as on
this chart. As Mr. Hubbard said himself about the chart:
"This chart can also be used in employing people or in choosing partners.
It is an accurate index of what to expect and gives you a chance to predict what
people will do before you have any great experience with them." L.
Ron Hubbard
Science of Survival will change the way you look at life and the world
around you. Here are the natural laws that predetermine how long and how well
a person will survive. Understand these and you will understand people at a level
you never thought possible. And that can enrich your life immeasurably.
And, for the first time, you can purchase the Science of Survival package,
including the hardcover book, four lectures and a home study course! All for a
30% discount off the retail price (normally $105.00, you can purchase it now
for $75.00)!
Don't wait to really understand people and accurately predict what they'll
do. Get
your Science of Survival package now!
|
|