Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to re: Only genius survives.

Not only the morons are shocked.
Mary Anne — (archived)

The shock is widespread. I hesitate to group all the people shocked by vulgar artistic expressions as morons, and only partly because I include myself in the former group, but not in the latter. :)

Some shocks are appropriate shocks. Gauguin shocked the world with his sensual depictions of Polynesian women. Yet I doubt that people viewing his paintings today would call them depraved. Cubism, as a school, rocked the art world. Yet looking at it now, wasn't it a prophetic artistic expression of the fluid nature of the physical world, at a time when physics was beginning to discern precisely how much space there is in the seemingly solid world we perceive with our limited senses?

Shock can be good, because it forces people to look, and then to think. If it rocks someone's world enough, that shock can hit the outrage button pretty fast. The question is, is the shock the result of some finely-honed new insight into the nature of reality, or an important statement about human relationship to the world, or is it merely an attempt to get noticed by acting out?

Thank you for a thoughtful post.

Regards--
Mary Anne

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