Art and Civilization

The Murder of George Floyd, the ensuing protests, and the passing of John Lewis and C.T. Vivian, have caused me to reflect. I’ve spent time with activist groups, marched, performed protest music, appeared on podcasts, spoken at events, and read the works of critical race theorists and abolitionists. I’ve also revisited the ideas of Black nationalists, Conservative thinkers, psychologists, and economists. I have even explored some of the writings of genocidal white nationalists. And in the midst of all of this work, I have taken time in daily meditation and spiritual contemplation, trying to understand what my part is in making the world better, in continuing the project of civilization toward the affirmative.

I think civilization is a precious gift. Despite all of our legitimate issues with society as it is, it’s always good to sit back and appreciate that we have organized systems that feed, clothe, and shelter us. At times, society has given us a vision of a hopeful, or at least stable, future. Even better, it allows us to make beautiful things that evoke a sense of transcendence. And yet, all of it is actually quite fragile, as the written histories, or silent stone monuments of past civilizations inform us.

It occurs to me to concern myself with civilization. I have that luxury, that privilege, and maybe that responsibility. I grew up as an intellectually precocious child in a functional upper middle class home. In addition, I have led a charmed life as an artist, absent of major medical concerns or disabling personal tragedy, and full of world travel, elite education, interesting, talented, and successful friends, and some personal victories. I mention this only to say that I have the freedom to think about civilization and humanity, not out of superiority, but because I feel like this kind of conversation is one of the few places where I can be useful. For many artists and intellectuals are otherwise positively useless: incompetent, disorganized, moody, weak, overspecialized, detached, sanctimonious, manipulative, content free, and self-aggrandizing. One of my greatest fears is that I will be remembered in such a way after I’m gone.

So I assert that it is part of my charge in life to contribute to the large scale question about civilization and human potential, a lofty standard that I feel simultaneously unworthy of and responsible for. But the nice thing is that civilization is a collaborative effort built on the contribution of its members. And given the scale of crises we find ourselves in, I figure I can at least show myself willing to collaborate and contribute.

I grew up as a Black boy in Western civilization, American in particular. And I live as a well-travelled Black Man in Harlem. Thus, I am holding an American, and Western perspective. And it is American, and Western Civilization that I feel compelled to contribute to simply because I know no other and can not speak with any experience, intelligence, or authentic feeling about any other. This is disconcerting because Western Civilization has had a complicated relationship with my ancestors, and so I have a complicated relationship with it.

Here are some of the complexities. Western Civilization has at times proclaimed that people who look like me to be less than human, and segments of it still do. Europe financed much of its enlightenment by the forced and brutal labor of those who looked like me via the sale of our bodies and the sugar trade. The United States financed itself similarly, adding tobacco and cotton to the list of staple crops. Europe colonized and exploited the lands of my ancestors, committing genocide and establishing disruptive economic and political regimes. Yet, Europe’s classical heritage was influenced by Egyptians who looked like me at the time of influence, an oft overlooked fact. Europe’s god, in the form of Jesus Christ, was described as looking like me in a brief passage in the Book of Revelation. Some of Western Civilization’s foundational figures looked like me, and still for the past 500 years the relationship between Western Civilization and my ancestors has been marked by cruelty, rape, murder, exploitation, and disregard.

Yet, having been born here, I benefit from all that this civilization has to offer, particularly because my personal experience has not been marked with comparable harshness. Intellectually, as a student of mathematics and physics, I have no choice but to study the ideas of much maligned “dead white men” like Newton, Maxwell, Fourier, Gauss, Euler, Poincare, Reimann, and Einstein. And I genuinely love doing it. As a musician, the works of Bach, Beethoven, Ravel, Chopin, and Rachmaninoff are an endless fount of delight. As a student of people and the world we inhabit, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Poe, Nietzsche, Milton, Kant, Marx, Jung, Rousseau, and Locke all expand me in spirit and orient me in the world built around their works. I consider this cannon a blessing, because its ideas strike me as beautiful in their richness and functional truth. They invite me to become a better version of myself.

Furthermore, until COVID-19, life was predictable and functional. My life in western civilization is filled with advanced technology, basic freedom, an economy that delivers on the essentials, opportunity for recreation, personal growth, and leisure. It is true that America has an appallingly poor national vision when it comes to taking care of its people and which gives rise to several points of systemic dysfunction, but when I look at my own admittedly peculiar life -- in comparison to the what I read about the lives of men in South Sudan, or Yemen, or Palestine, or Soviet Russia, or even more bleak, the lives of women in these places -- I am humbled and grateful.

And so my position is that Western Civilization should be improved and developed, a process that requires building, maintaining, and cleaning. And there are many messes to clean up. Among other things, Western Civilization carries an enormous moral balance from its genocide of the First Nations in America, excursions into Africa and overall treatment of darker people here in America and around the world, a balance that is not settled simply by the benefits it has offered in ideas of science, economic, and political thought. If it is not paid, Western Civilization will destroy itself in the following way. Much of the Western Promise has relied on the notions of individual rights, justice, and rule by the people. Yet, for too long, it has neither upheld, nor appeared to strive for the establishment of such values for all of its inhabitants. The hypocrisy kills morale and makes an affirmative vision for the future impossible, as there is no gesture toward integrity around the past.

To wit, Black Slavery in the USA ended 157 years ago, but the political unwillingness on the part of government leadership, the intellectual elite, and the business community to honor, in letter and spirit, the full rights and privileges of Black people has created disastrous political distortions, from then till now, that foment rot and stagnation in parts of the body politic seemingly unrelated to race. Generally, these distortions induce people to strain the logic of their own foundational values beyond recognition and usefulness and induce others to become skeptical of full participation. Our best leaders have shown themselves incapable of bridging this divide at scale and our worst widen the chasm for personal gain. Thus the national attitude is characterized by moral cynicism, selfishness, and litigiousness as axiom, an environment in which no one is incentivized to be of service to anyone else in line with the principles supposed to constitute us.

I would guess that very few Americans have a reference point for what a morally dynamic political environment feels like. And as such, it’s hard for us to see the basic project of civilization as worth our effort, beyond the obvious needs of self preservation. We underinvest in the education and infrastructure, incentivize short-term profit over long term value, live for pleasure and entertainment, and have no spiritual center. These may all be symptoms of a deep-seated belief that a hypocritical civilization is ultimately not worth preserving. It’s not worth the sacrifice and the work of making something truly valuable and offering it to the world. It’s easier to simply consume. It’s more just to let the whole thing collapse. It’s more fun to be seduced by the call of the void and see what happens when we burn it all down.

I don’t think that’s the way forward, but I don’t have a solution that matches the scale of the problem. I can only suggest an attitude that I think inoculates me spiritually against such despair. I think that on a metaphysical level, we all have a transcendent divinity. I think that the most beautiful products of any civilization give us access to that divinity. For me the music of the west and of my ancestors arouses it, as does mathematics. But it can be aroused by literature, or art, or dance, or drama, or film, or scientific investigation. I take on my responsibility as an artist and thinker to work toward arousing that transcendent divinity through my art, as opposed to making art that is merely clever, or marketable, or expressive. I think the degree to which we strive to be sensitive to the transcendent divine through meditation, or ritual, or prayer, or devotion and then carry that spirit into all our endeavors influences the likelihood that we find workable solutions to the soul level crisis of civilization.

I believe that we, the artists and the thinkers and the healers, can change civilization for the better by giving people music and language and ideas and communion that make life worth living; That incite the divine in people; That encourage us to believe that we don’t have to simply lurch toward an absurd and unremarkable death. I think this civilization is worth healing, and I am honored to be part of the work of inspiring us to live up to our ideals and honor the sacrifice of those before us. As a Black Man, I come from a proud and worthy people who have and will continue to contribute a great deal to the project of civilization. I believe that this deep worth is patent and really needs no justification. And I believe that one step that Western Civilization can take toward saving itself is to fully acknowledge, honor, and integrate into its soul, with love, the remarkable gift of Black Genius.