“Art”. A refreshing word for most. When uttered, the term brings to mind beautiful paintings, glorious sculptures, favorite songs, interesting writings and photography. All this with an undertone of limitless creativity and artistic freedom.

In a restrictive world like this, why do you suppose art still exists? How could it?

We could go on and on about the positive reasons why. Most commonly it is said that art is what unites us all as humans, it is the essence of humanity, it shows that we all have a common thread of emotion and spirit that pierces all of our hearts as one.

Sure, I guess. But that’s boring and we’ve heard it all before.

Let me explore the negative side.

Nothing in this world is a staple of society unless those in power say so. Perhaps not even art.

What if the ones who are cold and corrupt simply deal with art’s presence for one reason only: to enslave our minds and to keep us complacent.

You will say, “But….Doesn’t that go against what we thought art was? Didn’t we say it gives us freedom and forces us to feel?”

But think about this. Popular art today embraces our lacking values as truth, or else blurs them a lot so that we can feel like we have escaped our undesirable truth.
Either way, modern arts can cause a bit of complacency with what is happening in reality. After all, art reflects culture, and our collective culture is lacking in America. Even so called protest artists are backing off and accepting defeat, portraying depression and weakness as the primary emotion of their work. Realistic? Yes. Effective? Not so much. It simply aids one in drowning in the despair that is our seemingly unchangeable system.

And when someone comes out with something “radical”, which is hard to do because we falsely believe that we are so very accepting of all ways of thinking, we so easily brush it off to be a “cry for attention” or a “way to make money”.

Even if it were one of those things, how could you blame the artist? He or she would simply be following the old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, just pretend to hate them so people will give you money”.

That is how it goes, right?