The mad genius is rarely either and never both.
Aug 122022
Religion, art, taste, and other delusions.
The mad genius is rarely either and never both.
Most artists who are supposed to have perished of drink or drugs in fact simply bored themselves to death.
Western man worships bluesmen the same way the ancient Egyptians worshipped cats.
Every photograph is fake.
Art experts concern themselves with provenance because they have no other way to spot a fake.
Without gods, religions run amok.
A civilization that values chiefly what it can measure will produce expensive ugliness, as we observe.
Where nonsense is tolerated, difficulty is banished.
Not all religions proselytize, but all secular religions do.
We defeat ourselves not with scarcity but surfeit: too much food, too much data, too much leisure, and far, far too much art.