Prager: Why the Left Loathes Western Civilization
No one judges the left — neither man nor Reason.- (my addition)
Melody-free, harmony-free, atonal sounds are just as good as Beethoven’s music. And Western classical music is no better than the music of any non-Western civilization. Guatemalan poets are every bit as worthy of study as Shakespeare.
When the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Saul Bellow asked an interviewer, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” all hell broke loose on the cultural left. Bellow had implied that the greatest writers of fiction were Western.
Why such antagonism? Because if some art is really better than other art, your art may be judged inferior. The narcissism of left-wing thought does not allow for anyone to be better than you artistically or in any other way. Therefore, all art and artists must be equal.
Melody-free, harmony-free, atonal sounds are just as good as Beethoven’s music. And Western classical music is no better than the music of any non-Western civilization. Guatemalan poets are every bit as worthy of study as Shakespeare.
When the Nobel Prize-winning American novelist Saul Bellow asked an interviewer, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” all hell broke loose on the cultural left. Bellow had implied that the greatest writers of fiction were Western.
Why such antagonism? Because if some art is really better than other art, your art may be judged inferior. The narcissism of left-wing thought does not allow for anyone to be better than you artistically or in any other way. Therefore, all art and artists must be equal.
Prager and Rand are quoted as saying it is due to envy. I suggest yes but this is inadequate, there is something else.
Something like false altruism - helping the needy by sacrifice usually other people's money and there is virtue signalling, the posturing that shows superior morality. The next step is to praise the inferior even to the extent of reverence for failure.
The "antagonism" that Prager recognizes is an example of what Rand defined as envy - hatred of the good for being the good. It is such envy that is Objectivism's real enemy. Which character in Rand's novels best exemplifies such envy? Toohey?