[extropy-chat] CULTURE: Did Romans ruin Greek Culture?

[Mike Lorrey]

--- "natashavita at earthlink.net" <natashavita at earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> It seems that the Romans were interested in "realitiy."  And mostly
> interested in portraiture and making statues that really looked like
> a particular person, and usually a "famous" person.  The Greeks
seemed
> to be more interested in "ideals" and "beautiful man" or "athletic"
> man.
> 
> However, these chapters from _The Decline of the West_ make it look
> like Romans were a "civilization" and Greeks were a "culture" and
> civilization is the end, the death of culture.
> 
> Any thoughts?

Culture is art, civilization is engineering. The author of The Decline
of the West sounds like one more arts snob decrying the fact that
rationalists always decry the emperor not wearing any clothes that the
artist charged vast sums to 'design'.

It is a rather typical charge, one which was disproven by Feynman, who,
in addition to being a Nobel physicist, was a painter and musician who
conducted the ultimate artist vs engineer experiment himself, being
taught to be an artist by an artist, while the artist proved incapable
of learning science.

This is why art always precedes engineering and not the reverse. The
artist creates beauty, which the engineer comes along and figures out
how to scientifically reproduce at will via engineering (and even
figure out a use for it). The artist cannot happen upon a work of
engineering and reproduce it such that it will function.

The artist sees what the engineer has done with his creation and hates
him for it, and plots the engineers downfall, and the ultimate downfall
of the engineered civilization, by the creation or introduction of
unscientific clods (barbarians, or public school graduates) for the
artist to be lauded by and worshipped and followed in tearing down the
civilization, in order to create a new flowering of art in the wilderness.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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