Philosopher Stephen Hicks offers three hypotheses on school shooters here: https://www.stephenhicks.org/2022/05/27/school-shooters-three-hypotheses/
Hicks makes two interesting observations: “The school shooters are near-but not-quite total nihilists who feel empty except for despair and hate …” and in their minds “the destruction of the individuals involved is generic and impersonal.”
With those thoughts lets think about postmodern art. For a century postmodern art has bombarded us (with the help of the CIA) in spewing nihilism, despair, hate, and abstraction (non-humanist art). Examples are Martin Creed’s nihilistic empty space, Marcel Duchamp’s bitter cynicism and hatred of art of The Fountain (Urinal), and Jackson Pollock’s mindlessly and non perceptual abstract drip paintings.
Few people understand how powerful figurative art is, perhaps the most powerful way, in shaping a flourishing mindset for individual human beings. The opposite is how psychologically destructive postmodern art is. Figurative art reminds us that the unique individual matters, that they are real and not abstractions, and that joy (Aristotle’s eudaemonia) is the goal and an end in itself.
Michael, Idyllwild, May 28, 2022
Frame of References:
Barcio, Phillip. IdeelArt, November 24, 2017. How CIA Funded Abstract Art Became a Cold War Weapon. https://www.ideelart.com/magazine/cia-funded-art
Dasal, Jennifer. September 24, 2020. How MoMA and the CIA Conspired to Use Unwitting Artists to Promote American Propaganda During the Cold War, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artcurious-cia-art-excerpt-1909623
Hicks, Stephen R. C. Art topics on his site. https://www.stephenhicks.org/?s=Art
Newberry, Michael. Pandora’s Box and Other Essays (includes two essays on the CIA’s promotion of postmodern art (abstract art is a subset of it). https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B18QYZXY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0
Saunders, Frances Stonor. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Cold-War-World-Letters-ebook/dp/B00C4GTDBU/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1653752260&sr=1-1
Saunders, Frances Stonor. October 22, 1995. Modern Art Was CIA “Weapon”. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html
Sooke, Alastair. BBC, October 4, 2016. Was modern art a weapon of the CIA? https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia
Troy, Thomas M. Jr. PDF, Studies in Intelligence Vol. 46 No. 1 (2002). Official CIA review of Saunders’s book above. https://www.cia.gov/static/79f632b1778cb8189328b7f9c4682bf3/The-Cultural-Cold-War.pdf
Michael Newberry 