Artists, Scientists and Consumers

By Bryan E. Hall 1-27-94 In regard to the physics of the universe, there is only art. In knowledge, there is art and science. And in occupation, there is art, science and consumption. It is in occupation we begin to seek identity and moral purpose. The creation of art is the highest form of identity and the most capable resource of morality, inasmuch as the act of creation is art, the measurement of art is science, and the least moral is consumption and destruction. The artist must be a scientist and a consumer. The scientist need not be an artist. And all of us consume, however, many only consume. I am not referring simply to wealth as immoral but to the ultimate overwhelming temptation of wealth is to ignore any responsibility to create or contemplate creation. Many wealthy people do a measurable share of creation and contemplation, but they are often tempted after brief entrepreneurialism, to consume at an ever increasing pace, beginning to pay others to create and measure. The ultimate pastime of the wealthy is to consume services and property. The children of the wealthy are often devoid of interest or motivation. They too have a yearning to create but rarely pursue what their moral nature inspires and they fall into a life of obtuse destiny. They begin to feel useless, and indeed they are. They become angry and, having never developed the tools to create they use their only skills to consume and destroy. The poor, on the other hand, have the greatest desire to create, for they have not the means to consume unless they create or provide service to consumers. Therefore, the greatest number of creative achievements have been from the poor who were driven by desperation and love, pain and pleasure. We must then, seek to avoid or learn from pain, and realize pleasure in its purest form, art. The rich must divest themselves of the unbearable temptation of wealth, and begin to create while the poor must learn not to create for the sake of consumption but for the sake of their own salvation from a lack of existence.