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X. Debasing the Moral Currency.
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Again, George Eliot observes something we've all experienced, and sets out to dissect the negative.
" ... I observe that even now much nonsense and bad taste win admiring acceptance solely by virtue of the French language, and one may fairly desire that what seems a just discrimination should profit by the fashionable prejudice in favour of La Bruyhre's idiom. But I wish he had added that the habit of dragging the ludicrous into topics where the chief interest is of a different or even opposite kind is a sign not of endowment, but of deficiency. The art of spoiling is within reach of the dullest faculty: the coarsest clown with a hammer in his hand might chip the nose off every statue and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning at the effect of his work."
But here she could have stopped a moment, to pay a little attention to what she wrote, and consider it "every statue and bust in the Vatican". Obviously those are considered holy, by their association with the place, by those that worship it. They do not realise the contradictions therein, of indulging, in what amounts to idol worship, whether of the statues or of the place, while they disparage such practices elsewhere.
It has been, moreover, monotheistic conversionism that caused most damage around the world, invading and colonising, looting, besmirching and attempting to destroy cultures other than ones own, and giving them names that aren't bad to begin with but begin to seem so after the contempt and horror heaped on them. Words and phrases such as idol, idol worship, pagan, even the word grotesque, belong to this category.
But why do abrahmic get to define them? After all, erecting any statue, or putting up a poster with an image, is no different from idol; and worship cannot be defined by flowers and incense alone, it's in the reverence that accompanies such putting up if statues and posters. For that matter, calling a book or a male holy, and indulging in mayhem taking lives when there's an act by anyone ridiculing either, isn't that idol worship? If an image in matter is merely matter, a book after is all is merely squiggles on treated wood pulp, or on stone; a name is merely a sound, one amongst others.
But Cortez destroying exquisite emerald statues wasn't seen as a horror by the "faithful" of Europe, any more than destruction of temples in India was, or robbing the world by all these invaders colonizing and enslaving others. Why is destruction of statues in Vatican the only example George Eliot could come up with as an example of such horror?
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" ... Because wit is an exquisite product of high powers, we are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of the monotonous jester that he is establishing his superiority over every less facetious person, and over every topic on which he is ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as a joking apparatus. ... "
Indeed! And how often have we observed those that considered themselves above, indulging at cost of those considered below? And the coterie around, in between, enjoying laughter in chorus?
" ... Some high authority is needed to give many worthy and timid persons the freedom of muscular repose under the growing demand on them to laugh when they have no other reason than the peril of being taken for dullards; still more to inspire them with the courage to say that they object to the theatrical spoiling for themselves and their children of all affecting themes, all the grander deeds and aims of men, by burlesque associations adapted to the taste of rich fishmongers in the stalls and their assistants in the gallery. ... "
Again, indeed!
"I have been amazed to find that some artists whose own works have the ideal stamp, are quite insensible to the damaging tendency of the burlesquing spirit which ranges to and fro and up and down on the earth, seeing no reason (except a precarious censorship) why it should not appropriate every sacred, heroic, and pathetic theme which serves to make up the treasure of human admiration, hope, and love. One would have thought that their own half-despairing efforts to invest in worthy outward shape the vague inward impressions of sublimity, and the consciousness of an implicit ideal in the commonest scenes, might have made them susceptible of some disgust or alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions no better than a dissolving view, where every noble form is seen melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined of the unhappy medieval Jews that they parodied Calvary by crucifying dogs; if they had been guilty they would at least have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecution. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have no other excuse than the reckless search after fodder for degraded appetites—after the pay to be earned by pasturing Circe's herd where they may defile every monument of that growing life which should have kept them human?"
That applies, to every disparagement, of everything outside Europe and West Asia, by every conquistadors and all their spreaders of their own faiths, from Arabs and Cortez to Macaulay and more. wreaking havoc through the world.
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September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021.
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