Cardinal: But, may I suggest,
in the manner of the Greeks.
Michelangelo: No, in my own manner!
Cardinal: True, no modern artist can
hope to equal the Greeks!
Michelangelo: Why not? Why shouldn’t we equal
them? Surpass them, if we can.
Cardinal: Really, Master Buonarroti,
I had heard you lacked modesty…
but do you claim to be
greater then the Greeks?
Michelangelo: – I claim to be different.
Cardinal: – For the sake of difference?
Michelangelo: Because I am different.
I’m a Florentine and a Christian…
painting in this century. They were
Greeks and pagans living in theirs.
Cardinal: Pagans? Christians? An artist
should be above such distinction.
Michelangelo: And a cardinal, especially one who
pretends to understand art…
should be above such foolishness.
I’ll tell you what stands
between us and the Greeks.
Two thousand years of human
suffering stands between us!
Christ on His Cross
stands between us.
Screenplay, The Agony and the Ecstasy
The Jews and the Greeks brought a constellation of ideas into being that were amplified by the Romans, producing unique cultures in Western Europe that gave birth to a civilization known as the West, a daring, ever questing civilization that is perpetually seeking to surpass itself, and which has proven simultaneously attractive and repellent to the other civilizations that inhabit the globe. Compared to the West, most other civilizations are static and seek only to replicate themselves across time and space. The West is different, and everyone knows it, whether they love it or hate it.
One thing (among many) that has struck me about the current cultural self-demolition is how absolutely wasteful it is. We have so much prosperity, so much technology and the like that can enable marvels and could even enoble us if channeled correctly, but instead we seem to spend the majority of our civilizational energy on the most banal and boring things.
I’ve recently been transcribing some chants from some medieval manuscripts, and I was amazed at just how many there are and how I can practically instantaneously access them. The monks of Solesmes during the restoration of chant had to traverse Europe and dig through archives at libraries and churches and monasteries and laboriously hand transcribe them; I can type in a chant title and find it cross referenced in dozens of manuscripts online and can then let the computer do the heavy lifting in the act of transcription. The ease and accessibility would be astounding but for the matter-of-factness that our technological capabilities give us on a regular basis. Perhaps familiarity really does breed contempt, for I find myself tempted to mindlessness and wastefulness of time far too often; those YouTube videos aren’t going to watch themselves! We wield a very sharp double-edged sword.
I think T. S. Eliot probably needs to be revised: This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a stupid.
And yet most use this technology for cat videos.