This is a guest post from H.B., he states that he is just a normal guy looking to explain and fight the cultural decay that he sees around him. He is from France and has interests in writing articles, history, and philosophy. If you want to get in touch with H.B. you can reach him at 1173gaz (at) gmail (d0t) com. Enjoy!
I think many people are becoming aware of the importance of what they put in their body and the effects it has on their own mental and physical health. There is a lot of content out there about how to get your diet right, how to exercise or meditate (oftentimes these two are combined with diet) and about how to get free from numbing agents like alcohol, medication or street drugs. But I rarely saw people talking about the uttermost importance of the « mental and spiritual food » that you give to your mind through what you watch, what you read, and what you listen to everyday.
It seems safe to say that these three domains are the three pillars of your mental and spiritual food. I have thought about that topic a lot lately and even though to the Westerner (who I am, by the way) it may seem trivial it appears to me that we are living in a world where our imagery, our language as well as our music is being constantly attacked and polluted. In my opinion it comes both from above (the elite always controls the narrative ; imagery, language and music are what creates a narrative) and from below (the masses are pushed into darkness by their « modern », meaningless way of life) but this would be a whole other topic.
So let us go back to our three pillars : imagery (what you watch), language (what you read) and music (what you listen to). Now granted you can also listen to words that are not sung and read poems as well so the last two categories overlap, but the human mind likes compartmentalization, which is why I chose to divide the mental and spiritual food into three categories for simplicity’s sake, and also because three is a symbolic number.
What you watch, read, and listen to is art, and it has an impact
Now where am I going with this ? You may think that again this is trivial but the three pillars basically constitute what we call art. And art is always linked to a narrative. Therefore art tells a lot about a culture, how that culture sees itself and life in general. When the culture degenerates, the art does too. Both go hand in hand.
For those who are interested, a quick look at history can show you how for example when the Roman Empire fell, during and after that fall the pieces of art largely decreased in quality and beauty. A good telling instance of this is the world renowned Colosseum amphitheater which can still be visited in Rome, Italy, being abandoned and used by local peasants as a stone quarry.
Architecture is often the most easy part of imagery to analyze, because buildings are what a civilization shows to the world. The first thing you see when you enter a city are its buildings. I strongly believe that just like the Romans and many other cultures before us, we have been noticing a degeneration of art since at least the 1860s, that is, a first gradual but then very fast (and happening faster as years go by) decrease in the quality of imagery, language and music. I chose the date of 1860 because this is roughly when « modern art » started to grow in Europe in then in the United States.
The effects of « modern » art on the mind
Standards of beauty and « normality » in arts have even completely changed during the last few decades, with a noticeable acceleration since the 1970s. A good example of that is again to be found in architecture with the switch from classical and often local materials (like wood and stone) to the modern concrete-steel-glass triplice as the main building materials, which notably led to the abominations of soviet architecture. If you search for « 1970s towers » in every other part of the world you will see the same thing. Now search for « neo classical building » and you would be stricken by the difference.
Modern architecture has a « shapeless – placeless » vibe : by reducing any estheticism that is not purely utilitarian (understand : everything that has not a productive use is discarded as being « useless ornament ») and using mass produced materials, it produces spiritless buildings that could be seen in any city of the world.
To put it plain and simple, modern architecture is ugly and ugly doesn’t make you feel good.
Our art is polluted and pollutes our mind
Among other examples, I would like you to consider the rise of the following : pornography, video games and horror movies (imagery), slang and fearmongering news articles (language) and « dark », « punk » or « underground » music. I am not here to attack randomly some music tastes as I have been a big listener of these types of music myself.
But these all contribute to what I would call a polluting of art through violence (porn and horror movies), grossness (slang, rap music and so on) and nihilism (« dark » music). There is a general wallowing in degeneracy on a global level.
To put it bluntly, the effect of all of this is that it makes you feel like shit. Being surrounded by ugly things, watching, reading and listening to them makes you feel like shit.
I was surprised the other day when I saw a random commercial for a car of the 1970s and how « innocent » and « colourful » it was. This was when modern art had already infested the galleries, but had not yet spread to every other aspect of art. Which it has succeeded now in the 2020 decade.
But let’s go back to our subject. When you watch violence everyday, listen to « dark stuff » everyday and read badly written fearmongering news everyday, there is no way this doesn’t have an impact on you. Take even the brightest and happiest person you know, and expose them to these everyday without any other source of imagery, language, and music for long enough and unless they have an extremely solid spirit they will themselves become a violent, gross and dark person. Whatever how strong we think we are, we are shaped by what is around us.
This is insidious at first but quickly becomes obvious. Just like the substances and food you put in your body, the things you put in your mind will change your behaviour and way of feeling. Hence it is of utmost importance to have good « mental food ». If you do everything else right, let’s say you eat healthy, you exercise, you have a comfortable income and good people in your life, but you let yourself be absorbed by the general tendencies in art, your mental and spiritual health (and then physical health) will be affected. You can’t be healthy if what you watch, read and listen to isn’t.
Filter carefully what you watch, read and listen to
So what is there to do ? For starters, stop watching too much porn and Saw-style horror movies (some horror movies that have an actual moral to it can be good even though not to be abused), be careful of the amount of time you spend reading the news, and stop listening to dark music.
It may sound like common sense but if you take a look at most people around you, you will see that they take no care of filtering what they watch, read and listen to. And then these very things shape their view of the world. And, in my opinion, this is the decisive factor in the decadence of Modern people that so many authors have observed.
Don’t be like them. Feed your mind with good movies, good books and good music (basically, things that are embedded in a higher meaning and values and are not just made for junk consumerism) and you will have taken a major step towards becoming a happier person (I don’t mean becoming « disney happy », rather, becoming content with your life).
This is especially true if you have a history of or are currently suffering from a mental illness, which is sadly the case of more and more people due to our unnatural way of life. No-one can heal from a depression while being bombarded everyday by « dark stuff », the « news » and looking at the ugly 100 meters high glass and iron tower they see through their window when they wake up.
As a last word, just let me tell you that changing your mental food is maybe even harder than switching diets. We are creatures of habit and at some point we become attached or even addicted to what we have been raised to believe is normal even when it harms us. You may very well know how hard it can be for a porn addict to quit or for a news addict to stop watching the news every few hours for fear of « missing information ».
But it is worth it. If you suffer mentally / spiritually from the absence of meaning in your life, this is a good step.
