Oceans of Stupidity

Cuando navigamos en oceanos de imbecilidad, 

La inteligencia necesita el auxilio del buen gusto.

When we sail in oceans of stupidity,

Intelligence requires the aid of good taste.

-An Aphorism of Don Colacho

That tipping point is upon me.  The place where Christmas starts to lose it's charm, where my enjoyment of holiday cheer begins to give way to just wanting to get it over with already.  I found myself perusing the crankier sections of Don Colacho's aphorisms this morning, and the phrase "oceans of stupidity" grabbed my attention.  Maybe it's because I had to listen to Chris Collingsworth narrate the defeat of my Iggles at the hands of the Dallas football franchise, but I woke up this morning with a bad case of "the world is a cesspool of banality and vacuousness" blues, kind of reminds me of college.

I found myself revisiting a theme that often strikes me at this time of year, usually in relationship to the cultural saturation with yuletide sentimentality, as well as the rather disturbing level of material excess.  Why do we like the things we like?

Why is The Big Bang Theory one of the most popular shows on TV?

Why is Rocking Around the Christmas Tree even a thing?

Why is there a Michael Buble Christmas Special?

Why does every kiss begin with Kay?

Why does it matter if he went to Jared?

I get to a point where I'm just about ready to flip out.  This is that point.

"Calm down," you may say.  "People have different taste," you might also add.  "The relative horror of those things is largely just your opinion," you could finally conclude, and you would be right to a certain extent, but it's not just the things themselves that drive me up a wall, it's the whole mechanism behind those things.  It's the fact that all of those things exist because someone likes them, someone watches them, someone buys from them.  It has been figured out, by some very smart, creative people, that all those things have mass appeal, enough mass appeal to warrant spending millions of dollars producing and disseminating them.

There was a time, the cranky Don reminds me, when there was such a thing as "taste," and this taste was not defined by the unpolished cravings of the masses.  It was defined, rather, by the sensibilities of the aristocracy.  It was not without it's silliness; it gave us powdered wigs and rouged cheeks and decorative codpieces, but it also produced Mozart, Monet, and Goethe, and supported forms of arts and academics that were not quite so beholden to the almighty dollar.  In this era, an education was not simply a glorified form of career training, and a painting or a book did not have to always have commercial appeal to be appreciated.  Robert Kincaid and Nicholas Sparks would not have been able to buy a small country by hacking their way through something that vaguely resembles art...

Sorry, I'm being a snob again.

But that's another point to be made, intelligence was not considered obnoxious, and having a refined taste or appreciation of something was not viewed as effete snobbery.

We are awash in mediocrity.  No one expects anything remarkable, except when we watch sports.  Our gladiatorial contests have become the only form of entertainment where taste still reigns; we want to see the best, and we want to admire the best.  We want Peyton Manning, and Lebron James, and we will wax religiously sentimental about greatness on the field of contest.

Ask your average college student to name a contemporary sculptor or painter that they admire.  If they say Andy Warhol, smack them, he's been dead since I was a kid, he's not contemporary.  Now ask them to name an athlete that they admire... 

You may see my point.

In fact, if you repeat that experiment with almost anyone who is not the artsy sort, including me, you'll probably get a pretty blank response on the artist.  Why?

Because our cultural tastes have moved away from paintings and sculptures.  We now favor moving pictures and television for our art, but those things necessarily become beholden to mass appeal, because they're expensive, and not the produce of a lone artist wrestling with their muse.  The Ocean of Stupidity, it would appear, is here to stay.

Now, we must be on a passionate quest for things that touch the true, the beautiful and the deep.

Advent has become just such a quest.  How to filter out all the materialism and the banal sentimentality?  How to arrive at the cradle of the Christ without feeling absolutely worn out?

No answers, just the questions.