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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31776 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Vandalism is morally reprehensible. I think that's a universal enough maxim to be natural law even.

I mean the fifth commandment is right there. Destroying the legacy of the dead for temporal power might be popular but I think it's ridiculous to argue that there is no principle proscribing such behavior.

I don't think "destroying artistic representations of people in public is always wrong in any circumstance" is a moral standard in any culture, let alone all. And if we are to use them Commandments as a guide, the only one that specifically addresses sculptures and artwork says

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

, and that was followed by quite a lot of divinely-approved "vandalism".

For the sake of fairness, I'll point out that what has happened here is, strictly speaking, not vandalism (or at least not yet), although it really isn't much better.

(If news reports are to be believed, the monument will be moved to the park of a new local museum dedicated to the memory of the Moskal yoke, purportedly as an object of scorn and ridicule.)

That does change my opinion of this actually.

From evil to just mildly embarrassing.

That does change my opinion of this actually.

From evil to just mildly embarrassing.

Do you see any removal of statue as "evil", do you think that any statue anyone put anywhere must stay there undisturbed for perpetuity?

Was this an act of evil?

Was this also evil?

To clarify I see art destruction specifically as evil.

Symbolic combat is stupid but if you have the humility to not destroy that which has been made on ideological grounds I can at least shrug it off. Like that tacky statue of a girl in front of the WS bull.

And yes the fall of the Soviet union did destroy some things it shouldn't have in my opinion.

One might object that tacky giant statues of dictators don't deserve to exist. But I find that I would mourn the loss of Mount Rushmore if communist revolutionaries blew it up as they do in some alt history scenarios.

This poses the question of what qualifies for this protection, through the definition of art.

I genuinely believe that we should preserve some if not all propaganda.

For as Orwell points out, all art is propaganda but not all propaganda is art

Vandalism is morally reprehensible.

Well, Ukrainians are irritated about (among other things) that Russia is vandalising Ukraine, including Odessa specifically.

Vandalism is morally reprehensible

"Vandalism" of a recently erected statue? If they were destroying old art then I'd also denounce the vandalism. But pulling down some post-Soviet statue is not that.

What's the inverse statute of limitations on desecrating art in your opinion? Ten years? A century? Five minutes?

I don't think time enters into it really so much as intent. This is just the same symbolic warfare people always engage in which is inherently ruinous to our common legacy.

I opposed even communist statues being destroyed on principle. If you hate Catherine the Great or Robert E. Lee or Buddha so much make a museum out of it, otherwise stop destroying art for petty squabbles.

There is very real warfare going on in Ukraine, I'll remind you.

There was real warfare going on in Rome in 455, or in Athens in 1941. But I see no change in the moral calculus.

These are all petty squabbles in the grand scheme of things, from the idiotic riots of modern America to the great world war two.

You were entrusted with a world and with it the duty to preserve it for those that shall come after you. Whatever events are current always seem totally important. But they are not compared to this duty and to history.

Surely this is not as grave as other examples. But it is still vandalism and morally reprehensible as such.

Vandalism is morally reprehensible.

When I had learned this, it was in the context of "a bunch of antisocials destroying things the larger society likes and makes use of". It does not translate well to "destroying a symbol of an empire whose inheritor is kind of literally invading you and destroying things you like, with part of their justification being exactly that some chick of theirs founded the city you live in".

Then you don't know the ethymology.

The Vandals are an ancient Germanic people that sacked Rome in 455, and as part of it intentionally destroyed statues, much to the dismay of Enlightenment thinkers much later who loved Rome very much.

The term Vandalisme was originally coined in French by Bishop Henri Grégoire to describe the destruction of artwork following the French Revolution and comparing it to the sack of Rome in an attempt to appeal to the sensibilities of his time against the "rude northern race" and for Romans.

The word's literal meaning is the destruction of art and legacy in service of the political ideology of the day.

It's second meaning as the destruction or defacing of private property only came later, by analogy.

That's cool but it doesn't win you a war.

One could say the same about slavery, or censorship, or plenty of other and more beneficial crimes the Ukrainians are currently engaging in.

Winning wars has never been an excuse for evil acts.

Besides, if we must be ruthless consequentialists, symbolic gestures sound more like a waste of time and ressources than anything.

If you made weapons out of the statue I'd at least respect the gesture as art or competent propaganda in itself, but petty destruction is evil. Always is.

Of all questionable acts Ukrainians have been engaging in, I count removing a piece of bronze among the least questionable. I don't think we'll find any agreement on whether it's good to fetishize the past to this extent.

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