The Reality of Art and Civilization
And so we can see that if it were not for the arts, civilization would
never have developed. We concluded that virtual worlds of art are
more real in certain respects than the physical world. Virtual worlds
and the physical world do interact and influence each other. Real
tensions within the physical world instigate creators to reflect them
in imagined worlds. These are imagined in new and different ways
every time they and an audience interact. This is how works of art
promote perceptions and understandings of new ways of life and thus
change society. It is up to civilization to accept or deny what culture
generates. Acceptance and denial both have occurred throughout history.
Mostly, the two fight each other. Culture questions civilization.
Civilization, in turn, denies what culture brings in. Civilization fight
creations in different ways for different reasons. It punishes creators,
disseminators of art, and the audience. It stages obstacles for them
all. The first thought that comes to mind when we think of such fight
is censorship. This, in turn, makes us think of tyranny. However,
the same can be said about copyrights and other culture-restricting
laws, perceptions, and practices. Granted, there are differences in
motivation between censorship promoters and copyright promoters,
but there are hardly any differences in results. Moreover, some cultural
phenomena fall under more than one kind of restriction. For instance,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn had the bad luck of falling under
two kinds of restrictions: copyright and censorship.
Some of these restrictions are lifted when society is ready to accept a cultural phenomenon. For some that time never comes. At any rate, it is impossible to imagine and measure all the harm done by civilization to culture and, consequentially, to civilization itself due to all the mentioned and unmentioned restrictions.
