An interesting opinion piece by Alain de Botton on why Art Museums have become Pointless and what they should learn from Christianity. Here’s how it opens:
“You often hear it said that "museums of art are our new churches." In other words, in a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.
It's an intriguing idea - part of the broader ambition that culture should replace scripture - but in practice art museums often abdicate much of their potential to function as new churches (places of consolation, meaning, sanctuary, redemption) through the way they handle the collections entrusted to them. While exposing us to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem unable to frame them in a way that links them powerfully to our inner needs.
The problem is that modern museums of art fail to tell people directly why art matters, because Modernist aesthetics (in which curators are trained) is so deeply suspicious of any hint of an instrumental approach to culture. To have an answer anyone could grasp as to the question of why art matters is too quickly viewed as "reductive"…”
Read the rest of his reflection here, plus questions and answers provoked by his book Religion for Atheists, and posed by an imaginary interlocutor:
Here’s a couple of the questions excerpted:
“You have argued that living without God is dangerous, can you explain why? What are the dangers?
In my book I argue that believing in God is, for me as for many others, simply not possible. At the same time, I want to suggest that if you remove this belief, there are particular dangers that open up - we don't need to fall into these dangers, but they are there and we should be aware of them. For a start, there is the danger of individualism: of placing the human being at the centre stage of everything. Secondly, there is the danger of technological perfectionism; of believing that science and technology can overcome all human problems, that it is just a matter of time before scientists have cured us of the human condition. Thirdly, without God, it is easier to lose perspective: to see our own times as everything, to forget the brevity of the present moment and to cease to appreciate (in a good way) the miniscule nature of our own achievements. And lastly, without God, there can be a danger that the need for empathy and ethical behaviour can be overlooked.
Now, it is important to stress that it is quite possible to believe in nothing and remember all these vital lessons (just as one can be a deep believer and a monster). I am simply wanting to draw attention to some of the gaps, some of what is missing, when we dismiss God too brusquely. By all means, we can dismiss him, but with great sympathy, nostalgia, care and thought ...
Is it possible to be a good person without religion?
The problem of the man without religion is that he forgets. We all know in theory what we should do to be good. The problem is that, in practice, we forget. And we forget because the modern secular world always thinks that it is enough to tell someone something once (be good, remember the poor, and so on). But all religions know better: they insist that if anyone is to stand a chance of remembering anything, they need reminders on a daily, perhaps even hourly basis…”
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