Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Taking Time to
Stomp the Flowers
At London’s National Gallery last week two unhappy young
persons, one styling herself “Ziggy Stardyke,” vandalized one of Van Gogh’s
sunflower paintings by sloshing it with tomato soup. Both were costumed in tee-shirts proclaiming,
“JUST STOP OIL.” The purple-haired Miss Ziggy then yelled, “What is worth more,
art or life? Is it worth more than food?”
The art was on the wall, and then the food was too; Miss
Ziggy and her sullen comrade are the ones lacking a life.
Another reality is that the possibility of you or I having
an intelligent, source-based give-and-take exchange of ideas with someone
styling herself Ziggy Stardyke is remote.
Two topics obtain in the recent adventures of Ziggy
Stardyke and her sour-faced little Renfield. The first one is the matter of
fossil fuels, including oil, coal, and natural gas. Without these sources of energy we would all
be dead. There is not enough wood on the planet to replace them, and solar and
wind are still laboratory projects. Nuclear, which would also work, is mostly
forbidden because some lazybones at Three Mile Island chose to ignore the layers
of warnings and then the safety protocols.
The other topic is civilization. To paraphrase a character in an episode of Northern
Exposure, we are not monkeys with car keys. We are humans, sons and
daughters of Adam and Eve, as C. S. Lewis reminds us. We think. We build. We
speak. We write. We draw. We paint. We sculpt. We identify and solve problems. We
recognize Creation and our part in it. We deal with the complexities of
creation through science, math, art, and poetry. As the Greek philosophers
teach us, life is about questing for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Any utilitarian structure confirms this: a bridge over,
say, the Houston Ship Channel is good because it provides enhanced freedom of
movement and the exchange of goods and services for people going about the
business of life. A bridge is also true because its engineering and
construction work together in physical harmony through the applications of
engineering, geometry, metallurgy, hydrology, and the other sciences. Finally,
a bridge is beautiful because its functions and proportions personify the human
spirit. The suspension cables, the towers of steel, and all of the works of
human minds and hands that make a bridge a bridge are aesthetically pleasing.
Ziggy Stardyke and her Renfield have looked upon the
good, the true, and the beautiful, upon at least 10,000 years of civilization,
and have found them wanting. Therefore, exactly like Nazis, Communists, Talibannies,
and some of their own English ancestors [Puritan Iconoclasm in the
English Civil War | Reviews in History], they censor them. They who have
life only because of the wise use of fossil fuels condemn the use of fossil
fuels, and express their condemnation by censorship, by attempting to destroy a
work of art, one of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings, which has no connection
with fossil fuels except that we would need to take a London Transport bus to go
see it.
These two childish individuals are purportedly educated
women, but so far have demonstrated no knowledge of either the sciences or the fuzzy
studies, and in their invincible puerile ignorance angrily destroy things of
beauty while shrieking illogical demands at the rest us.
In the autumn of 1945 the Western world surely did not
imagine that civilization would fall again into book banning, book burning, the
censorship of movies, newspapers, and broadcasts, the destruction of art, and
mobs chanting slogans of hate in the streets, but here we are.
A sunflower is heliocentric – it turns to the light. Poor
Ziggy Stardyke and her Grima Wormtongue turn to the darkness.
-30-
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