Trumpty-Dumpty

Trumpty-Dumpty built a great wall.
Trumpty-Dumpty made it so tall
that no one could get in or out.
Said Trumpty, "That's what America's all about!"

The Day of the Dead in Mexico

Cultural festivities for  the Day of the Dead (Dia de Los Muertos) in Mexico should emphasize the spiritual over the commercial. Much of the activity I’m seeing around San Miguel de Allende is much more commercial than it should be, and this seems to be the result of too much media attention in the US. Caterinas, painted skulls, and skeletons abound. Is this respectful to the sacred tradition of the holiday? Families get together to make flowers and use them to adorn altars, they gather at home or at el cementerio to remember their departed loved ones, they DO NOT dance around with someone dressed up as a Catrina, and to multiply these Catrina figures (a skeleton dolled up as a tawdry female, for those who don’t know) does a terrible disservice to the spiritual beliefs of the occasion. You might even go as far as to call it sacrilegious. As a cultural festival in honor of the day, it is all rather tasteless. This is just another example of how the US mass media have commercialized and corrupted the traditions and cultures of North America.

The Nobel Prize Has Lost Its Prestige

I’ve always liked Bob Dylan’s music. He’s written some amazing songs. But I don’t think he deserves the Nobel Prize in Literature. Maybe in songwriting, but that category doesn't exist. And now he says he will not attend the awards ceremony, which shows extreme disrespect and is further prove that he doesn't deserve the award. There are many little-known authors who should be recognized and given global attention by that high honor.  Was there no one else to whom they could have given such a prestigious prize? If not, then it should have been withheld for this year. The Literature Prize has now been cheapened, and it has lost much of its value by this one act of disregard for the highest possible standards of literary art.

Too Many Books

Too many books are being published today, placing too great a demand on the modern reader’s time. Why does humanity need so many? The truth is that we don’t really need 90% of them. If far fewer books were published then we could focus on the ones that really matter. In the prologue to the second part of Don Quixote Cervantes writes: “For I know very well what the temptations of the Devil are, and one of his greatest is to put it into a man’s head that he can write and print a book, and gain both money and fame but it . . .”  He goes on to say that “bad books are harder than rocks.” We might say today that it is not the devil who puts the idea of writing a book for money and fame into someone’s head, but rather it is a kind of madness. That madness has overtaken many well-intentioned people who, like Don Quixote himself, are afflicted by a delusion, the delusion that they can write a book of importance which should be published.

What's Wrong with Western Culture?

What’s wrong with Western culture? We try to systematize and explain too much. We use too many words to express our ideas and feelings, and we have lost what the Chinese American writer Lin Yutang calls “humanized thinking.” We spend too much effort trying to categorize and classify ideas, and we have lost sight of the integrated wholeness of life. We have lost the spirit of being reasonable, and those who spend time arguing a point, which is what most of our news and social commentators do in the media, are wasting their efforts trying to prove who is right and who is wrong. To hell with trying to prove rightness and wrongness. Better to have compassion for human suffering then try to explain why suffering happens with pure logic. Pure logic is devoid of compassion, and those who are logicians have forgotten how to be generous of spirit. Descartes declared “I think therefore I am,” and Walt Whitman said, “I am sufficient as I am.” I prefer Whitman’s belief because it is more human. And like Whitman, our culture needs to be less concerned with correctness – political or otherwise – and more willing to accept human diversity and to look with humility at the mystery and grandeur of life.

America's Cultural Golden Age Is Over

American culture has had its fifty-year Golden Age (1920-1970) and now it is in a rapid decline. Market values have opened the sluice to a flood of mediocrity that  gushes forth with a reckless ferocity. Beauty and truth are being shoved aside by the banal, the freakish and the vulgar. This is nothing less than cultural bullying in the name of progress. There are no longer any criteria for judging what is worthwhile and what isn’t. All that matters is what sells. There are no values for separating good art from trash art, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down.

Each artist creates to his/her own taste, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm all for freedom of expression, and the more people who make art for their own enjoyment, the better. The problem is the spirit in which most mainstream art has been made since the 1970s. It's no longer being done in the spirit of play, purely for spontaneous pleasure, or for serious artistic reasons that satisfy and uplift the soul in its search for truth, but rather Hollywood movies, bestselling books and pop music are churned out in staggering numbers in order to make a buck. Commercialism is the dominant spirit of the art world today. Market values rule. And that's very bad for the culture.

The Last Great American Playwright

The last of America’s truly great playwrights has died. Edward Albee, author of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and A Delicate Balance, among other plays, showed us American society’s false   values and gave us characters who were emotionally damaged by their own inability to face the truth.  Who is writing with such depth and putting such complex ideas on the stage today? No one that I can think of. American theater no produces playwrights of the caliber of Albee, Miller, Williams, and O’Neill. Why? I think the blame lies in the culture, which has lost its hunger for the truth and rewards authors for works of escapism and entertainment. Audiences today no longer want to search for the truth. Contemporary culture has lost its soul and its humanity and younger playwrights of the post-internet age are unwilling to hold a mirror to society and show people how shallow and deluded they truly are.