Although I believe that human ideas are a variety of natural resource, I find myself more limiting in the form of its expression. If one affirms the existence of two states of life - order and disorder, one must expect easily discernible differences. Perhaps due to entropy, the status of "order" is always threatened. I believe that the consequences of entropy are so undesirable that it should be counterattacked, whenever obvious.
For this reason, and separated from esthetics, per se, I find myself opposed to ideas which are expressed in verbal filth. A statue by Praxiteles may be a perfectly executed human figure, but, if it is spray-painted garish colors and smeared with feces, its inherent perfection is not apparent. One might state that a well-conceived idea - a natural resource - has been annihilated by the expression of hate, ugliness and revolt against "everything that piece of sculpture stands for" by an opposition made contemptible by the means by which they execute their viewpoint. The idea that destruction and violence are legitimate forms of argument is alien to me. Instead, it is a form of war, which occurs after all arguments have ended. Devil take the hind part.
In today's world it is easy to find oneself recalling the poem of William Butler Yeats, THE SECOND COMING, and its lines, "...Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,...The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."
Where there is no common ground, a legitimate government locks, and anarchy and tribalism arise in the streets as a caricature of government - or perhaps its antithesis.
In trying to execute a defense against what is perceived to be a threat, people may begin to mutilate things otherwise thought sacred. This was done by presumably (but not necessarily) well-meaning people. As an example, some people began to agitate against certain parts of the Bible, as within it there existed a scattering of carnal episodes, such as Lot sleeping with his daughters. This whole tendency to mutilate something sacred was often justified by references to "innocent children" and to pious Christians, which episodes might threaten their mortal soul.
This mutilation process had its origins in Great Britain, apparently, where one Thomas Bowdler became disturbed by certain passages from William Shakespeare's dramas and published an expurgated version of Shakespeare's plays. He also cleaned up a few other books, and his sister also took up the work of literary purgatory.
This tidying up literature did not go unnoticed in America. Being a properly moral people according to "the Book," the Bowdlerising of Holy Scripture commenced. Once people of a tidy nature begin to prune, nothing is sacred.
I see this tendency being manifest today in the zany attacks on statues of Confederate soldiers and other monuments and mementos of antebellum South. Here, one can see the spray-painting, flinging of feces-urine balloons, and startling attacks with "blunt-force" instruments upon statues - even after they've been pulled down. Also, tarps have been used to hide the artwork involving a person or symbol of the Confederacy -- or even the Antebellum South.
That this is the Bowdlerising of history I have no doubt.
Oddly, there has been a simultaneous, very visible immersion in African-American slave culture by instruments of the Establishment. It is so fulsome that it might be described as "reverse-Bowdlerisation." For the American Establishment this remarkable dispensation from usual requirements for meritorious rewards might well be construed as a form of national reparations. The federal government has built with the advice and consent of leading African-American experts & personalities an African-American Museum on the Mall, in which slavery is a central feature. Perhaps with an eye to its neighbor museum to its southeast (Holocaust Museum), this new museum is essentially a series of movie sets arranged to spike emotions and reinforce a sense of racial victimization.
Never have a people decried slavery so much, while making it the central focus of their culture. It is their "mother" and every generation rebels against it yet ultimately returns to it.
