Categories
Subjects
Abstract Acrylic Art Bible Bicycling Birds Calendars Caricature Cartoons Cats Christianity Commercial Art Definitions Documentary Dogs Drawing Exhibited Expressionism Free Thinker Futurist Homelessness Music Oil Paintings Oregon Painting Personal Philosophy photo Podcast Pop Portraits Publications Realism Religion Review Shows Sketching Spirituality Spring Suicide Transgender Travel Twitter Watercolor
Monthly Archives: July 2004
Oregon Impressions : My Trip to central Oregon
Santiam Pass, Oregon
My trip through central Oregon was productive if brief. Few of my paintings will make it to the web in all probability but keep looking.
The people I met when I was in Burns were wonderful and I was extremely comfortable with them. I have also seen the antisocial, anti government trend in this area too, however, a product – I suspect – of isolation. This was not true of my contacts in Burns, but I saw it in some others in Bend. People need to get a grip and stop thinking only of themselves. Then again, I spoke with fewer than 50 people during this trip so I don’t want to categorize an area with any finality. The countryside was beautiful and so were many of the people.
We have made much of the American spirit if independence. You’ve heard all that stuff about how you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and how the government shouldn’t help people because that’s not the American way … people need to do things for themselves, etcetera. This is the defining characteristic of central Oregon. Alas, it is all built on a lie.
We all drive on highways payed for by others and built by people we never knew. We read posts like this on computers assembled from parts made in many places with technology developed by diverse individuals. We spend money earned a hundred times over by someone else and the dollar that passes through our hands, someone else will call ‘mine’ very soon.
You didn’t build your house or apartment, nor did you cut the lumber for it. Your income depends on many others – your boss, your customers, the goodwill of the general public, even if you are self-employed. No, none of us is truly independent of the society that we live in. That idea of ‘fierce independence’ is a big fat myth, and sometimes it is a destructive one.
In my experience most people who cling to this philosophy with pride see it as the strength of America, not realizing that nothing in their own lives comes solely from themselves. And in truth, what they really mean – often – is “I’ve got MINE, so fuck everybody else!” Some of the towns I visited seemed to ooze this sentiment. Not all, however.
Everyone will learn how society works, but some need to learn such lessons the hard way.
Meaning and Meaningless-ness II
More paintings will be posted shortly. I’ve been thinking too much – again – and find it more difficult as a result to find meaning in my art or even care.
Everyone with an IQ above a houseplant wonders about the meaning of life at least occasionally. I’ve made a career out of it.
But having studied religion, gone to Bible college and become an “expert” in the subject, I can tell you that there are no answers that will satisfy… at least, not real answers. Lovely and wonderful fantasy answers abound.
Religion is the human way to explain instincts and give comforting answers to uncomfortable questions. That’s a very good thing as we could all use some comfort. However, it is important to remember that religion’s stories are STORIES, like Harry Potter or King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. They all come from the same place in that humans have a desire to feel like there is something more to life than the struggle for existence and to reproduce. The idea that the Bible is literally true and that, in effect, God wrote it – is a rather odd concept that only got invented in the last couple of hundred years. Before that, most people – at least most educated people – understood that the Bible was a collection of stories people wrote about their own searches for God and meaning. Most tales in the Bible were considered allegorical. Lately, though, if you are a Christian you are probably expected to believe that all that stuff really happened even though it isn’t actually important to the message itself. I guess literalism has become a shortcut to the appearance of spirituality for the terminally lazy.
***
