No New Thing

God is an Artist.

 We often don’t recognize it. We have a God in His box, confined to the realms of theological speculation. But God isn’t a theologian - He doesn’t need to be. He knows Himself perfectly; yet self-knowledge was not sufficient for Him.

 To state the argument more clearly, if God thought that what He created was good… then He must of though that it was good that He created it. And if God thinks that something which He has done is good, what is the creation that we should argue with the Creator that their creation was not necessary? But more simply, God creates because He wants to; and if He does what He wants to do; then it stands to reason that what is done is the thing which should be done; and if it were not so; God, who can do whatever He wills, would have not done it, or would have done something else.

 Yet for all that we recognize God as the Creator; we often fail to recognize that He is an Artist. We see the world in color, and artists copy it. Yet what is creation, if not art? Shape, form, substance… these we recognize in the creation. We recognize pieces of the Creation as artwork, as a model from which an image may be copied. Yet our concept of “creativity” is often divorced from the concept of God as “the Creator.” From whence does man derive his sense of creativity, if not from the Creator?

 Clearly, this is what the Creator Himself said: man was created in His own image, in the image and likeness of God. The concepts of an “image” and “likeness” are artistic terms, dealing with a similarity or comparison between the thing represented and the representation itself. Yet, the “thing represented” is the Person of the Creator… which reveals that like much of the art with which we are familiar, the Artist engages in art for the purpose of self-expression. Creation is revelatory… human nature tells us what God is like. The scenery placed in our world naturally stirs the soul of man, because it is painted from the soul of God. Our concepts of beauty, design, balance, structure, and greatness come from the person of the Creator. And the imagination of man feeds on the sustenance placed by God in the world.

 Ultimately, it is this response to beauty and greatness that drives the impetus of human nature. The majority of scientific discoveries were not found by accident - it was the nagging of an unanswered question, or a spark of creativity, that led a human being’s mind on a quest to find an answer… creativity tells a man where to look. We look at men of ancient times as “primitive,” yet discover that even living at the most basic levels of human society, their cultures were far from utilitarian… how do we explain away the aesthetic in human nature? Even among “primitives,” the presence of art, music, and dance… they still stir the soul; even the soul of the modern, 21st-century Western man. Even in societies far removed from the “hunter-gatherer” societies of earlier times of human history; we still have television channels devoted to wildlife; beasts of the field taking down their prey… and we’re supposed to be evolved, right? We’re not supposed to enjoy that, it’s gruesome, too close to “survival.” Are we to understand that it’s some latent part of a “primal brain” reacting the way it did millions of years ago? Why does the scene stimulate the imagination, arouse a latent restlessness in a “modern, civilized man,” who knows that “money is power,” not an animal instict characterized by brute strength. Yet it does nontheless arouse him; the raw power of the beast moves him, he craves action and respects the power to kill and the wildness that cannot be contained. It is the artist in him, stirring him to greatness and action, creativity.

 It is the artist who gives life to the dreams of man, the colors and surreal imaginations of sleep. It is the Creator who keeps the man awake with thoughts of unlived ambitions, worlds of adventure he would never dare to live out on his own. The artist in the man pulls him away from his false sense of security in the world; it drives him, moves him, dares him to come out and stand as his own man. The act of art is a depiction, a capturing of the essence of something; yet it also creates a change in perception. The act of creating art is an act of power, changing the nature of something as it is depicted; seizing upon the nature of nature in a moment, defining it in sharp lines, and texturing its more subtle realities in tints and shades. The artist is engaged in a work of discovering the Creator as well as the creation, and in the process expresses himself as he discovers himself.

 The artist taps into the untamed force latent in all humanity - a vestige of the self-expression of the Creator - and this is the force that moves humanity and directs the course of human history. It builds up, and tears down; creates, and destroys - active, dynamic, and always moving. It is the river that lies buried in the hearts of shallow men, the dangerous current that drives the heart into uncharted waters, deep into an undiscovered country fraught with danger… and thus, the force which drives the artist is a cause of fear. It is unpredictable, unknowable… we can dam it, try to direct it, harness its energy and use its power for safe and easily controlled purposes… but all the while we fear that it will break through the walls of our souls, will crash through like a hurricane, destroying every piece of security we have known, and forcing us to ride out the storm for which we knew we could never be prepared.

 A contradiction, yes. The force that drives the artist is both creative and destructive… but that is the nature of power: to create change. It is dynamic, active, changing, inspiring, moving. Without it, humanity would stagnate, would be crushed under its own weight. The forces of destruction serve to continue the activity of the forces of creation… and for the creator and artist; these are one in the same, pressing him and pushing him onward; so that from the shards of the disaster he will cast a world in an image more to his own liking.

When for the sake of our own survival we adapt to certain exigencies of life in ways which contradict the established mythos by which we have defined our personalities, we often attribute the causes of those adaptations to a perceived weakness, frailty or fickleness in human nature. On the contrary, such adaptations (although often vehemently denied) testify to the indomitable resilience of the human spirit.

Several ideas are implied here:

1. That we do adapt to changes and events in life, creating visible changes to our personalities and changing the way we process information. This itself leads to the question of whether or not certain aspects of the personality have been latent, and are forced to the surface under extreme circumstances, whether the changes are actually brought about by external influences, or whether it is a combination of these two working together.

2. Our perception of our personality can be different than our true personality… i.e. we think that we think one way, when in reality, we think in some way different. This comes from a lack of contemplation, so that we do not “know ourselves,” and also an innate desire for self-deception. In the end, we believe about ourselves what we want to believe about ourselves, since it is easier than facing the truth.

3. Personality then becomes a myth that we create for ourselves, and then thrust upon the world, expecting others to believe it.

4. Since we think in a particular way, (for the sake of example, we’ll call it M[β], mode beta, being the secondary overlay we assume is primary; when in reality, we operate under M[α], (mode alpha, our actual primary human nature); we have a tendency to expect that we would react in a way consistent with M[β] (we will designate this reaction as R[β].) In actuality, when the moment of crises comes, out of instinct, we react in a way consistent with M[α.] R[α] thus comes as a surprise, even a deviation from our expected patterns of “normal” human behavior.

5. The reaction (R[α]) is based on the most basic instincts in human nature, and is motivated by survival, be it in the physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual sense. The reaction is itself an adaptation to the environment, although it can include “fight-or-flight” responses (which deal with leaving a hostile environment or changing aspects of that environment by removing potential threats or open hostility on the part of an aggressor, which itself is a forcing of the environment to adapt to the nature of the prey.)

6. In complex societies, M[α] human instincts which were designed to protect human beings can become a source of fear, since instinctive protective reactions / adaptation (IPR/A) are often perceived as acts of aggression by individuals functioning as active or passive participants in a social structure/system (S3) perceived by an individual (designated Human X (H[X])) to be repressive or threatening. Since the repressive force of the social system is either exerted passively, subtly, unintentionally, or at a rate which falls under the level of conscious threat detection by the vast majority of human beings; it is entirely possible that different human beings with different levels of perception, different areas of knowledge, and varying degrees of proximity to areas of S3 would perceive the level of personal threat in different ways. Consequently, an unintentional IPR/A would come as a surprise not only to H[X], but to S3 as well, and could easily be punished as an unprovoked act of aggression; although the provocation was only recognized by H[X].

7. Given the external psychological forces on H[X] which, internalized, created the M[β] overlay; it is conceivable that:

a. M[α] instincts would naturally be suppressed
b. IPR/A actions would be avoided for the damage they could cause to S3
c. H[X] could, even after committing an IPR/A offence, find himself deserving of the censure and/or punishment stipulated by S3.

In seeking to rationalize the source of his behavior, which he cannot understand; if H[X] cannot exonerate S3 from any culpability; he will seek to blame either an individual’s behavior (i.e. the behavior of an individual in S3 or his own,) a defect in his own thought processes (i.e. mental illness or associated disorders,) or the entirety of human nature.

8. This third assumption was the focus of the post: if the guilt of the system cannot be excused, and it cannot be blamed on another individual, and the human cannot shoulder its burden himself, then the perceived “fault” must be attributed to the entire whole of humanity as a form of weakness or capriciousness, a susceptibility to sudden and irrational change.

9. In actuality, the conclusion that the human nature does have the capacity for sudden change is not far from reality; however, the domination dynamic that S3 exerts over H[X] demands that this universal human quality of adaptability must be viewed as a weakness instead of a strength.

Several years ago, I became involved in a project with a friend in college, who was writing a selection of music in order to sketch some ideas for a computer game he hoped to write. The game never materialized, but the music and its associated epic mythos took on a life of its own. After several months of composition, I began to notice a pattern. I found that since writing music was often an activity done during my “down time,” often after intense study or class time; and thus became a form of releasing tension while under stress. Since I was often writing in times of mental-psychological-emotional stress; the music itself had an dark emotive quality; however, since it was often preceded by periods of intense mental activity, certain aspects of the composition process touched on areas of “genius” in a very literal sense, almost as if partially inspired by some otherworldly force.

 While the heroic name of Hrothgar, borrowed from Beowulf, I am assuming will now e a “household word” following the new movie; in 2004, it was only a part of ancient British literature. And I highly doubt if the villain Vulsana has ever taken his rightful place as the Dark Lord. However, I did find that while the story was very sketchy, the music was making progress, until paradoxically, I ran out of information. The genius stopped, in a sense, and I began to struggle.

For the sake of description, I should state for the record that much of the music was harmonically based, with melodies and countermelodies superimposed over the harmonies. Repetition was a watermark of the compositions, but it often served to glamorize any new piece of musical information, a new melody, reharmonization, or change in instrumentation. It also made cut-and-paste techniques an easy may to build tension in already-existing themes. But I found myself in a “harmonic rut,” if you will, a place where I had so developed melodies around certain harmonies that my mind could not “hear” any variations of those harmonies. One chord would lead to the next, and the next, and would resolve in predictable ways. Even if the harmonies I could hear were “unpredictable,” I found that the “surprises” and unpredictablities in one piece would become standard order in the next, and that I was in dire need of change and a sense of having new information to stimulate the auditory sensibilities of the listener, yet without deviating from the sense of “theme” and cohesive I had tried so diligently to create.

In the long run, I took a hiatus for several years, during which I listened to a lot of music from a variety of genres; and when I came back to it, found that I did have some new sources of information. In so doing, I left a worn path; but the “harmonic rut” has been shallowed and widened, which is good. Hindsight being what is, 20-20, I have been thinking through a new way of thematic development, some of which I used before unintentionally, but now intend to use with a greater sense of purpose.

 While the harmonic roots can be very similar, certain resolutions in harmonies can be used for different characters. At the very least, multiple melodies. Having more than one musical theme allows there to be much more room for interweaving those themes into more complex compositions. There should be a certain cycle to it - state, reharmonize, then take the new harmony and remelodize. In so doing, produce new information by introducing subtle changes to existing information. Basically, extract a small piece of a melody, and build around it. Take its harmonic structure; build a new melody around it. Take the new melody, reharmonize - mix with something else, then do it again: blend, change.

In a creative process, subtlety is key: endless permutations and combinations of existing information. Surprisingly, the concept is the same in genetics: certain harmonic “strains” are found in different pieces of music in a similar way that certain traits run in extended families. Certain melodic lines can skip generation, only being carried in a seminal form in certain harmonies, only to appear later in a different or expanded form. An analysis of the problem of the “harmonic rut” may have been an issue of trying to produce new compositions with significant deviations from the parent compositions, without any intervening generations of musical development and without the addition of any new musical source material. In genetics, inbreeding can lead to mutations… and with music; too much cross-composition can lead to musical ruts, including sterile compositions incapable of reproducing anything remotely like themselves.

 So maybe it’s just a lesson in diversity and change. No musical theme can survive while remaining in its present form: its continued existence depends on its interaction with substantially different musical data, which can produce new strains of musical information acting as carriers for the original creative thought.

Metagenesis… “beyond Genesis.” Ironically, I thought about titling the whole blog “Metagenesis,” but thought better of it, given the similarity to the term “Mutagenesis,” as used by molecular biologists as well as Jason Louv in the book “Generation Hex” (published by the Disinformation Company Ltd. in 2006.) Consequently, I labelled this blog as “No New Thing,” an allusion to the statement of King Solomon that there is “no new thing under the sun”                  (עין כל-חדש תחת השמים) (Ecclesiastes 1:9.) I don’t expect to state anything new, or discover any thing that has not been thought of before. On the other hand, an alternative point of view would suggest that new things are happening every day, and that all information is in a constant state of flux, ever changing, rearranging itself in new combinations all the time. Thus, this page is meant to be a documentation of my own personal discovery: a synthesis of information gleaned from multiple sources, catalyzed by my own thoughts and experiences.

 This in itself leads to the central idea which I am pursuing; a theory of sorts which I am mulling over, refining, and developing: that although Genesis is the point of Origin for human history, the creative process is continuing, by virtue of the fact that the Creator cast man in His Own Image. My endeavor here is to engage in a process of observation and speculation into the depth of the human spirit. While I cannot take credit for the term “sacred humanism,” as it has already been coined by Larry Standley to describe the religion of atheists who view themselves as “secular,” yet exercise faith in humanity (http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml8403.htm); I am coming at the term from a theistic perspective: that humanity and human achievement touch on the realm of the sacred as the soul of man attempts to reach out and express the boundless and infinite capabilities endowed to him by the Creator.

Throughout human history, both the religious and secular aspects of society have aspired to achieve a measure of transcendence. While one may wonder what limitations may be placed upon humanity in this attempt, and religions may at times be opposed to the attempt on the grounds that we may be attempting to “play God” in matters of His domain; an honest evaluation of history would indicate that humanity has been relentless in this pursuit, and that any attempt to stop it, no matter how brutal, has been doomed to failure. Consequently, if the development of technology and pursuit of transcendence toward the enhancement of the human condition is inevitable, the responsibility to guide the progress of human achievement falls upon all humanity, theist and atheist alike; to direct that achievement in ways that are universally moral, ethical, and unmistakably “human.”