Return to Mercer Street 2003 Table of Contents

by Nathan Bredeman

Yesterday…

Election Day…

Like many virtuous and civic-minded citizens I cast my ballot—our quirky little tradition, overthrowing the government every two years—yet despite my best efforts the Republican Party swept the House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

I want to use a rude word right now.

I don’t understand Republicans, and I don’t understand their policies; this isn’t to say that I don’t understand their aims and objectives—I do. However, I cannot stomach what they stand for. I cannot stomach those who would deny women control over their bodies, deny homosexuals the right to legally recognized love. I cannot fathom those who would cut taxes on the superrich, creating Jazz Age class divisions that separate citizens with insurmountable walls of money.

But despite my disgust for most things conservatives stand for, I cannot bring myself to dismiss them. President Bush currently holds a 63 percent approval rating from the American public, and I do not choose to believe 63 percent of the citizens of my country are stupid. And despite the way I complain, I really sit down here to rant. My problem stems from the fact that everything these religious zealots hold sacred radically conflicts with every belief I hold sacred and dear.

Salman Rushdie knows a little something of religious zealotry. After the publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, the Indian novelist got a bit more than the usual outcry from the extreme religious right. Objecting to the negative portrayal of the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, and the Koran, Islam’s holy book, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on all righteous Muslims to execute the writer as well as the publisher of the book. For more than ten years, Rushdie hid from publicity and assassination, all on account of his slander of so-called “sacred” texts. It is reasonable to surmise that Rushdie has a pretty strong opinion of that which is declared sacrosanct.

In 1990, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London invited the Booker Prize-winning novelist to deliver the prestigious Herbert Reed Memorial Lecture; those protecting him decided that he should not go in person. Perhaps not being “able to re-enter [his] old life, not even for such a moment” (Rushdie 340), fueled Rushdie’s rhetoric; for whatever the cause, the occasion birthed a lecture of rage: “Is Nothing Sacred?” In this discourse, Rushdie discusses his views on the vitality and importance of literature, and whether it is, supposedly like religion, inherently sacred. He argues that to set something apart as holy, to sacralize, lends credence and authority to one particular point of view, one particular way of thinking that professes to have answers and access to higher Truth. It does not allow anyone else to be right, nor does it allow anyone else to question what is “right.” The idea of sacred is inherently conservative and reactionary because it ardently opposes this questioning and debate; as Rushdie puts it, “It seeks to turn other ideas—Uncertainty, Progress, Change—into crimes” (338). While the sacred provides answers, asserts some profound Truth to those who believe, literature, Rushdie argues, provides no answers. It only seeks them. Literature supercedes religion, because it speaks with more than one voice, discusses more than one point of view.

Religion, a cornerstone of Republican dogma, uses one voice to exact its will on the American people. Too many of our draconian laws are based on the Bible, a document written two thousand years ago at times when theRoman Empire still cut peoples’ heads off for sport. Invocations to God, the father, fueled arguments opposed to women’s suffrage. President Grover Cleveland went so far to state, “Those who seek to protect the older order of things as they relate to woman reverently appeal to the division of Divine purpose,” patronizingly implying the home and hearth as every woman’s God-ordained place (qtd. in Herz). Separate but equal flourished because many believed African-Americans inferior. After all, the Bible tells us the descendents of Ham (Africans) are cursed (Josh 9:23), right? Opposition to gay rights stems from the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 18, Verse 22, which claims that he who lies with a man is unclean and an abomination. Leviticus, by the way, also recommends stoning children who disobey their parents (Lev. 20:9) and burning those who wear synthetic cloth (Lev. 19:19). The prolific essayist Gore Vidal, in his 1992 essay “Monotheism and its Discontents,” boldly stated, “The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism” (1049). If religion and that which is sacred can speak in only one voice, then ultimately totalitarianism and fascism are the only politics that can serve religion’s higher Truth.

Rushdie tells us the quest for truth is more important than truth itself. Does this mean that truth is inconsequential? No, of course not; truth occupies the highest echelons of human thought—art seeks truth and its nature. It is not a mere by-product or afterthought. The man or woman who seeks truth, seeks it alone; thus, the truth he or she discovers is his or hers alone. Truth, therefore, is private, not public. What one man considers lies, his neighbor might consider the sweetest reality.

I see things differently from the way you see them.

That is not to say that I see different things than you do; we both see the visible, see the same dance of light as it pirouettes and rebounds off an apple, for instance. Yet, as soon as our eyes perceive the fruit, our minds begin extraordinary and highly individualized chemical processes, bathing both our brains in showers of meaning. So where I see a delicious and highly nutritious nosh, your stomach might churn at the memory of a particularly revolting slice of pie. My perception resonates with me, as does yours with you. Your truth is not truer than mine, but might surely be different.

The Republicans are not right, and the Democrats, not wrong. Unfortunately, it also works the other way around.

This is the gift literature brings—ideas meant to challenge accepted belief, meant to spark new debate, meant to lead us one step closer to our own truths. This is why Rushdie’s sacralization of literature is a notion as bizarre as it is irrelevant. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Guy Montag, a former book burner converted to literature’s cause with the fervent passion of the Christian right, feels confused when his mentor, Faber, dismisses the sacralization of books. The books, Faber claims, are not important. It is the ideas contained therein that are vital and important (Bradbury 87). Art provides these great ideas, sometimes provides many of these great ideas, which challenge those who read them to think different and look closer. Even abstraction, which eschews meaning in favor of aesthetics, invites the viewer to ponder the elevation of aesthetics over meaning. In her essay “Individualism: Art for Art’s Sake or Art for Society’s Sake,” critic Suzi Gablik claims that, while abstraction in art aspires to be “devoid of communication” (266), the movement began as an “unconscious protest against materialism” (264). Abstraction’s roots lay in questioning, debate, and the seeking of higher truth; if it responds to formalist art, then abstraction indeed has a message, even if that message reads, “There is no message at all.” Art, good art, provides ideas whether intended or not. The ideas art provides are not uniform either—as I said, you and I see things differently. Wendell Phillips said truth is filtered through the mood, the blood, the disposition of the spectator. This filtration keeps us vital.

Stagnation. Noun. The process of doing nothing. Of seeing and feeling nothing new. Of reliving and reviving the old and tired, the tried and true. Stagnation is conservative, and conservatism leads to death. It is, after all, in death that time freezes and the status quo remains constant. To stop is to die. To live, we must move. Progress. Change. We must live in Darwin’s moment, adapt or die. Stagnation is evil and ennui is death—to continue to live we must constantly exist in a state of permanent revolution. Great men assert the fundamental right of truth—to live is to quest for it.

To answer is to stagnate.

To answer is irrelevant.

To question keeps us alive.

Yet…

If a man or woman constantly confronts new ideas, if the quest for truth never ceases, then surely truth never ceases either. Truth is not a star in the firmament, not permanent at all—Truth is not a marble bust on a cool, white pedestal. If the question supercedes the answer, if to answer is to stagnate…

…then Truth is both personal…

…and brief.

Does this mean we shall never have the Truth, but will instead have only some pale, weak, runt of truth, a quest after questions? No. But the only truth we will find is truth that resonates with us individually—even if only for a moment. As Kahlil Gibran advises in The Prophet, “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’” Thus, the truth art leads to constantly shifts; it never remains. It is never permanent. Not that surprising since art is never permanent itself. Playwright Samuel Beckett said no art is finished; it is only abandoned. Rushdie supports this point: “Nothing so inexact, so easily and frequently misconceived, deserves the protection of being declared sacrosanct.” Thus Rushdie pounds the final nail into the coffin of his argument, places the final brick in Fortunato’s tomb. Since the sacred presumes eternal, unchangeable truth, permanence is sacred; that which is permanent is sacred. So the answer to Rushdie’s question—“Is Nothing Sacred?”—is simple. No. Nothing is sacred.

Nothing is sacred because nothing can be sacred; our permanent revolution has always existed without our notice, since, as the saying goes, the only thing permanent is change. Empires crumble, libraries of knowledge lie forgotten, art shatters, history fades to legend, fades to myth, fades to nothing. No matter how fervent, belief fades. No one currently worships Dionysus, yet thousands of years ago his cult raped and pillaged out of the sheer power and fervor of their belief. It faded.

If art supports and sparks debate, then it is art that should be held most dear to a democracy; debate, questions, these form the foundation of democracy. The right to question, the right to choose—these are the things democracies and art celebrate and symbolize. Religion and sacralization stand in disgusting opposition to that noble cause, for they don’t understand democracy and art’s underlying meaning, that truth is both personal and brief. That is why the founders did not write the Constitution as a permanent (i.e. sacred) document; they realized that truth is brief, so the Constitution can change. They realized truth is personal, so the very first thing tacked on to that Supreme Rag was a note reminding everyone that religion has no place in the government, and, oh, by the way, we don’t have to speak in one voice—we can say whatever we want.

Art and democracy are one and the same because their goals are one and the same: each seeks to prevent stagnation and raise the level of culture and debate. Thus democracy needs art to flourish, and art shall flourish under democracy. Under this symbiosis, democracy dies like a phoenix in flames, and rises again—no longer a simple republic, but a civilization. It is no accident the age of Athenian democracy was also the age of Socrates, Plato, Sophocles, and Thespis, that the republic of Rome fostered the speeches of Cicero and the poetry of Virgil—under a culture of questions, a culture of debate, art grows, solidifying into a pillar of society. So as much as I complain about the Republicans I thank the bottomless core of my being for their existence because partisan politics ensures continual debate and protection of minority opinion. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., theorized that politics revolves in a cycle: every twenty years or so, liberal becomes conservative and back again—truth is both personal and brief. So, in essence, my politics now do not matter, nor my beef with Republicans, nor what I hold sacred or not, for tomorrow I could fervently transmogrify into a terrifying conservative, filled with nothing but reactionary loathing for my former liberal self. If truth is both personal and brief, it is with a sardonic grin that the Bard can uniquely summarize American politics—“it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

If tinges of doubt still exist in the corners of my mind, one man puts them at ease. Vaclav Havel engineered the Czech revolution, organizing millions and overthrowing the Soviet-supported Communist government running his country; he helped build the CzechRepublic. Vaclav Havel is a playwright. His revolution started in the plays he wrote which lampooned Soviet policy and practices. The Czech Revolution began in Prague playhouses, spread outward like streams of water, and culminated in Havel’s election as the first president of the Czech Republic. Art and democracy have the same goal, and those who don’t believe so are fooling themselves. Clifford Odets’ play Waiting for Lefty inspired taxi strikes in New York which culminated in living wage increases. Tony Kushner’s Angels in America brought national attention to the plight and inherent humanity of a group many wanted to overlook. Al Gore’s advisors forced him to watch Saturday Night Live’s satire of his first debate with George W. Bush, sparking changes in debate strategy. And yet the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts, the agency that supports American art and artists, is only $117 million, $45 million less than seven years ago, and only .03 percent of the defense budget.

If truth is both personal and brief then what I say here means something only to me, and probably not for very long.

If we, as a country, continue to speak in one voice we are headed down the road to stagnation. Art is primal to a democracy, and at the risk of confusing myself further one thing more must be said—

Vote.

Works Cited

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine Books, 1995.

Gablik, Suzi. “Individualism: Art for Art’s Sake, or Art for Society’s Sake?” Writing the Essay: Art and the World. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Pat C. Hoy II and Randy Martin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 263-78.

Herz, Nicole. “Opposition to Female Suffrage in the United States.” The Concord Review. 1992. <http://www.tcr.org/advpl_9.html>.

Rushdie, Salman. “Is Nothing Sacred?” Writing the Essay: Art and the World. Ed. Darlene A. Forrest, Pat C. Hoy II and Randy Martin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002. 337-52.

Oxford Study Bible. Ed. M. Jack Suggs, et al. New York: Oxford UP, 1992.

Vidal, Gore. “Monotheism and its Discontents.” United States: Essays 1952-1992. New York: Random, 1993. 1048-54.

Return to Mercer Street 2003 Table of Contents