Art is dangerous to authorities
by Jon Rappoport
November 20, 2013
Art is dangerous. It makes people move out of standard-response channels.
They don’t see what they’re supposed to see anymore. They see what they’re not supposed to see.
That’s why colleges teach brain-deadening courses in art history. Every attempt is made to codify the students’ reactions.
I’m not just talking about political art. I mean anything that truly comes out of reliance on imagination.
Those who run things—and their willing dupes—want reality to look a certain way and be experienced and felt in certain ways. These limited spectra form a shared lowest common denominator.
Even so-called spiritual experience is codified. It’s called organized religion. I call it “give money to the ceiling.” You give your money and they tell you high how the ceiling of your experience is and what you’ll find when you get there.
Art has none of these limitations. It’s created by people who’ve gone beyond the shrunken catalog of emotions, thoughts, and perceptions listed by authorities.
Art, by which I mean imagination, throws caution to the winds. It invents realities that engender new reactions, never before experienced. It blows apart old rigid perception.
The hammer blows and the soft propaganda of the common culture install layers of mind control: “See things, experience things in these prescribed ways.”
Over the years, I’ve encouraged a number of people to become artists. Aside from the work they then invented, I noticed their whole approach to, and perception of, life altered radically.
Their sense of vitality, their courage, their adventurous spirit came to the foreground.
Mind control, externally applied and self-induced, is all about putting a lid on creative power. That is its real target.
The one trap an artist—which is to say anyone who lives through and by imagination—has to avoid is thinking of himself as a victim because he is “an outsider.”
Outside is good. Outside has great strength.
When an artist invents himself as a victim, he then goes on to lash out at people who have nothing to do with the fate to which he’s consigned himself.
Authorities in any society, no matter what they call themselves, are invested in systems that will maintain a status quo of perception. They are constantly producing new systems for that purpose.
Technocrats would like you to believe that hooking your brain up to some super-brain computer will fulfill your needs and desires. They seek to prove that all invention, all creation, all art, all imagination is merely a set of calculations within a closed system.
This effort betrays their own despair. They see no way they can truly create.
It is the vacuum in which all elites live. They build up a frozen dead consciousness of models and algorithms and “solutions,” and they seek to impose it, as reality, on the minds of populations.
Essentially, they’re saying, “If we have a soul-sickness, you have to have it, too.”
It’s called hatred of life.
On the other hand, individual creative power launches from a platform of freedom and rises through layer after layer of greater freedom.
From that perspective, authoritarian power looks like a sick-unto-dying charade.
Jon Rappoport
The author of two explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
Reblogged this on Jericho777's Blog.
Jon, you’re inspiring. Truly. Thank you.
“The one trap an artist—which is to say anyone who lives through and by imagination—has to avoid is thinking of himself as a victim because he is “an outsider.”
Then what am I to think, my dear fellow, if I not a victim. Then what? I heard an interesting saying, stuck in my head “Death by a thousand cuts.”
It is amazing how many people really hate artists, terms familiar to me:
“You’re opinionated”
“You live in dream”
“Are you living in a dream?”
“You’re an idealist, don’t you think it time to grow up.”
You’re talented; it’s a gift….your special” (LOL)
“Are you fuckin crazy.?”
“You are fuckin crazy!”
“Do you have emotional problems Michael?”
“Do you take medication Michael?”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Do you smoke a lot of weed Mike?”
“Ya know the whole thing is fucked up because of people like you….Artists”
And the Pièce de résistance; haven’t heard in long time. I used to get it a lot when I was a young painter in the early eighties. One of my all-time favourites… Rednecks use it a lot, I think it relieves the sphincter factor, when they learn you are a painter…….”Are you Gay!”
Forgot to say “Awesome post”
I both agree and disagree with your statement that “Even so-called spiritual experience is codified. It’s called organized religion. I call it ‘give money to the ceiling.’ You give your money and they tell you high how the ceiling of your experience is and what you’ll find when you get there.”
There are certainly organized religions that fear any spirituality that occurs outside of its own control. This leads to fake spirituality which is apparent in many main line denominations and this is what you are talking about. These are are the groups that will attack your experience.
On the other hand, there are many denominations that do not attempt to control or censor spirituality. The see your experience as just that, yours and yours alone. The problem is that there are those types who love to take control and tell others what to believe and how to live. They will infiltrate and attempt to take over a group just for the love of power and control. These are the ones that demand money and label spirituality with dollar signs. They fear artists and other visionaries because they cannot control them.
The free spirit is not feared by those who have had real spiritual experiences. There is a difference between these types of people, and it should be recognized.
Otherwise thank you for a thought provoking post.
What is, actually isn’t. What isn’t, actually is.
Humanity lives almost entirely in self-induced mechanisms of fraud because those mechanisms of fraud provide known ways from which to derive and accumulate personal cutie-pie points. That those mechanisms are bogus in the extreme is irrelevant, what IS important is whatever amount of personal cutie-pie points that can be accumulated.
TPTB know this and lead the general public around by the nose by pandering to the need of the general public for personal cutie-pie points.
And, of course, TPTB don’t want anyone coming along and upsetting their little applecart of phony-baloneyness and manipulation. And the general public usually doesn’t like someone coming along and exposing the fraud for what it is because then they’ll lose their known ways from which to derive and accumulate personal cutie-pie points.
Those people who have the ability to perceive reality for what it is really is usually aren’t regarded with the warmest feelings by either TPTB or the general public.
For an artist to depict and capture a transcendental moment is one the topmost accomplishments of human life.
A Wonderful Blessing..
Death of Bhishma
Medusa
Medusa somewhere in a stormfront
Over Ohio incited by HAARP bastards
The suspense of what might happen
Next is killing off the herd and soothing
The membranes of those at the levers
Who (I ask Thee) is to Tellus otherwise
That the snakes sprouting from that
Divine head might not be the apples
Of Apollo beckoning us to interweave
Our souls deep into chthonic clarity
There was is and always will be a
Nondual flowering of recognition that
Awaits those willing to disrobe from
The sanctimonious false façade and
Simply shimmer in the presence of ….
11.20.2013
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Why did “God” think it was so important to ban art that “he” made it the “second commandment”?
Obviously, it’s the ultimate control.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
— Exodus 20:4-6 (KJV)
Jon, I will be talking about this on my radio program! Excellent as always. Another indictment of the attack on individual thought and inspiration. You are exactly correct about this in its relationship to tyranny. I’d love to have you on the program to talk about this and more. How can you be reached?
[…] by Jon Rappoport, NoMoreFakeNews: […]
DADA, in the form of Francis Picabia, observed that the art called Cubism sold well.
Dearer than sausages, dearer than women, dearer than anything. Then some years later we learn that Abstract Expressionism sold well due to help from the CIA. So maybe we find art is not that but simply another commodity bought and sold. All in all a reminder that men make art and the art is sometimes merely made for pecuniary gain. With Usura as Pound might say, we have a counterfit form of the human spirit.
Great Post! It reminds me of theoretical physicist, David Bohm’s call for a “new order of creative surge”
In the following excerpt from his 1987 book: Science, Order, and Creativity, Bohm describes “societal degeneration” is as a physical process in Nature.
[Comments in brackets are mine]
“How do societies of appreciable complexity begin to decay? A basic reason may be that as new knowledge and institutional structures accumulate, they tend to become ever more rigidly fixed [Religious, scientific and political dogma]. Eventually it seems as if the whole order of society and the security of each individual would be endangered if these structures were to be seriously questioned or changed. In order to hold things fixed, therefore, the culture feels itself forced to react in ways that are basically false, for example, by becoming fragmented [polarization of the people].
This fragmentation is part of a broader process in which society and culture “defend them-selves” against acknowledging the actual facts [loss of liberty] that call for change. Thus, the [“consensus trance”] of society is then caught up in the general process of “playing false” in order to create illusion and delusion. This leads society into collusions [war on terror, on drugs, on guns, on conspiracy theorists, etc.] in order to defend the illusions and delusions. This attitude has also been called “bad faith.”
Clearly this process is a breaking down of the basic generative order of the society [Liberty to create solutions]. Those [Liberty movement] who see this will call for a fundamental and revolutionary change. But this provokes only fear and hatred because so many people believe that society cannot function in any other way and, for many other reasons as well, do not wish for change. Even in those cases where change is able to take place, it is limited by the very factors [unjust laws and excessive regulation] that lie behind the original decay in the generative order in the first place. People now become disillusioned by the ultimate and deep failure of their efforts to change. They are lost in despair, or else they entertain false hopes which are essentially based on fantasy [tax and spend our way out]. This leads to a further stage in the breaking up of the generative order in which those in authority attempt to establish more and more rigid control [more regulation and police state measures] in order to prevent further deterioration. But rigidity is ultimately the very source of this deterioration, so things can only get worse in the long run. Indeed, the whole process of breakdown is sustained and constantly extended, because all the proposed remedies are actually different forms of the same illness that they aim to cure.
The breakdown in the generative order of society is more than mere decay, which might be regarded as the opposite side to a natural process of growth, in the generative order of society. Rather, the rigidity in the generative order constitutes extremely pervasive and far-reaching blockage of free play of the mind, and this makes for the constant spread of false play and prevents creativity that could adequately meet this situation. Indeed, as with the individual, to the extent to which society is no longer creative in its basic generative order, it becomes destructive to itself and to everything that it touches. Thus both with regard to human beings and society as a whole, the basic distinction in the generative order is not between growth and decay, but rather between creativity [Liberty] and destructiveness [Tyranny].
Becoming caught up in the false processes of a destructive generative order, as described above, has been the ultimate fate of all known civilizations. But is this inevitable? If so, the outlook for the human race is very grim indeed. For the means of destruction are now global and almost total, and no part can be isolated from the rest of the world.
Need this cataclysmic failure of the human race necessarily take place? Can it be avoided by a creative approach to all areas of life? What is needed is not simply a new creative surge but a new order of creative surge….“
Yeah, art is a way because it reaches out …
THE AMERICAN DREAM IS ACTUALLY A GERMAN DREAM
What makes you feeling awake, being alive ? The other, contact with the other, your neighbor, your second self, the one who send you back your image, like a mirror but an active mirror, not matter the quality nor the quantity of others, basically, as long as they accept to share some time with you, some words, some understanding. A smile does the trick, from far away for the desperate.
But before friends, brothers, children, family or relatives comes the partner, the all in all elusive partner, the one you find or don’t but the one you dream of in the deepest of your heart. She or he may not be that star your mind has created, that perfect being everyone has wished in vain for years but like before with relatives, a simple person, like yourself, in the end, perfectly fits. You may be deceived, you may still dream of your hidden idol but the one who will appear one day to be the possible reality will do the trick, if you’re not a fool.
This second self, as different as he or she could be won’t come out of your dreams. You got to get out of your cave to find him, her. He, let’s stay with ‘he’, will not be an image on the wall of your mind but a real being, bringing his self in the picture, his particular identity, his own message in a living bottle. No perfect glass but no transparency, a spark of life, good and bad, bad and good. In the same way you’ll have to reach out to him as he will have to cross the river too for an encounter.
Check. Sunny day, fog, we’re there. I is dead. “I” was living one’s death in life. “I” is no more, that’s “we”, that’s life. Whatever, good or bad, high or down, that’s together, not me myself. Check. We are. Are we ? It was not up to you when being alone, to be alone. Now it is, up to you, to be together. What a change man ! I had no choice and I now have one. And more, I still can dream but the dream comes after the reality instead of being that very reality. What’s best ? Your choice.
Not only … Your ability to accept your fall. What fall ? The fall from a dream. Big deal ! Go on YouTube, Ray Charles for instance. Read the comments. They’re bright, all of them. No bashing. No jerk. We’re together, all different but all in the line, the line of being together. That’s life, sharing. That’s what we need, where we are, alive. Sharing. No other way except dreams, sorry dreams, living death. But YouTube is virtual, YouTube is a golden cage that fits the illusion of being together.
What moves the world is in the street. Meeting is in the real world, the outside but that is difficult, that is not usual for mental slavery, mental loneliness. What the powers that lead are afraid of is the street, meeting in the street, being together for real, taking one’s dining table out on the pavement and inviting one’s neighbour, the bystander, you and me. That’s the way to change. Dining in the street, talking, sharing, getting out of the dream and make life happen, for real, for once, for ever.
Escaping the dream, with strengh, with will, with empathy, with good and bad, but with patience, with love.
What is the American dream ? The opposite. Individuality. Closed doors. A house … closed. A car … closed. A mentality … closed. A dog … on a leash. A soul … in private. Everyone should be happy … alone, behind one’s own door. Madness, folie. A house, a car, a woman, children, inside, in private. Outside ? Nothing, appearance, being polite. In Israel, for instance, people always complain that people are not polite toward one another. Israelis dream of Europe where people seem to be careful of you, where they say please, forgive me, thank you …
Theater. No one cares. F**k you, with a bright smile. Dream. American dream, oh, no my brother, German dream. Teutonic dream. Hell’s dream. You’re my ghost, my lovable ghost. I don’t have anything to do with you except for a purpose, except if you’re of my club, my hell angel’s club, my Lucifer’s spirit. Leave me alone. Don’t sit too close. I don’t know you. I’m armed, beware. Don’t you see ? Do you want a proof ? Alas, there have been, there are so many proves that I prefer you dead than sharing my meal, aren’t they ?
No trespassing, don’t thread on me. You’re a danger, you’re a stranger. To me. Me myself. Me my dream.
Stop being your dream. Stop being a living dead. Quit your American, your German dream, your Devil’s dream. Set your table in the street, meet your neighbour, share with him, be a human – being, grow a life, your life, our life, God’s life. Move out of your illusions since illusions are not yours but the masters’, illusions are a false reality, illusions are implanted by those who benefit of everyone’s loneliness, loneliness between you and me. No illusion, no dream. Life is here, for all of us, in the outside, in the reality, in the street. Love is waiting, all the time, like dogs who wait for their walk, children waiting for a hugging, women who wait for a word from your heart, men who wait for … For what ?
A weapon ? A punch ? A beer ? A football game ? To feel a “man” ? Prehistory was a paradise, yeah man ! We’ve stepped into hell. But the remedy is still there, as long as the illusion has not overwhealmed all humanity, as long as some people, here and there feel for others, in the street. For how long ? Horrible thought, frightening feeling. Got beer ? Drugs ?
There is a “Change” we, yes, We must believe in … Outside. This is the only thing that frighten the tyrants. Not the guillotine. THE STREET, and US, Together, Happy TOGETHER.
Best ! Love U !! See you outside …
NB: Don’t put it upside down ! Family is the center, the unit, the only basis of mankind, but family is not the goal, in itself. The goal is the people, all of us.
NB2: Don’t mix up too ! The individual is the corner stone of family & humanity, but not only a strong individual who cares for himself and his property but an individual who cares for his world, at large, who does not restrict his love to chosen closed circles, an individual who dreams of a better life in the outside and not in front of his TV stars.
PS: The German dream is a leading class isolation taken to the slaves in order to have them isolated from one another them by their own ‘will’. It is not especially German in the root but Germany is the perfect example of that.
[…] out this blog post for a great perspective on why art is dangerous! Really enjoyed reading this post and thinking about what we’ve tried to do with the […]
A reblogué ceci sur Gawronski Rafzen's Blog.
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Oh, Jon, how very much I agree with the beauty & freeing power of living an imaginative life!!! At 70 I feel so much enthusiasm for each new day, as my imagination creates a quality of life that continues to amaze & inspire me. I also believe it is responsible for my great health & well-being for which I am indeed grateful…
[…] Art is dangerous to authorities […]
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[…] is dangerous “Art is dangerous,” writes the journalist John Rappoport. “[I]magination…throws caution to the winds. It invents […]
Synchronicity over languages and continents? – “Art – a menace to imaginary authorities”
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Is the pope catholic? 😉
Great words, Jon…