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Sarkozy’s plans to dodge new 75% French tax rate by moving to London Connecticut: Bridgeport Versus Greenwich Only the rich can afford to work? Is there progress in art? Of course not. Just changes in fashion. The Lost Wolves of New England We…

It all depends upon one’s premises. But humans are inclined to always choose the path in front of them, which they believe to be right, when examining examples.

“When you argue that there is no way to identify any culture as ‘better’, you argue from a preposterous contention,”

No. I never argued that. I am not arguing that one cannot identify a better/worse culture as you say. I am discussing a culture’s art. That is a totally separate item and argument.

Art is interpretive and is driven by the culture that creates it. Art is a cultural fingerprint and as such is neither good nor bad per se (it may be put to good or bad purposes, but that’s a different discussion than the one we’re having here). You might decry Islamic Sharia culture (and with good reason) but that doesn’t mean that the art it produces is deficient simply because it is non-figurative and non-illusionistic. It is responding to a different set of cultural mores than in the West. Your argument (and smockpuppet’s) requires the determinaion that it is deficient just because it is non-illusionistic and “our” art is better because we know how to produce illusionistic art. Non-sense.

Your inability to make that distinction renders your argument the same kind of straw-man argument we consistently from the left on socio-cultural issues—“my art is better because I am more evolved. Your art is deficient, retrograde and evil because it doesn’t agree with mine.” Who’s arguing from a preposterous contention?

That a previous era had no need of something, because they’d never seen the utility in it, means naught. The utility is still there, their cultural limitations notwithstanding.

When you argue that there is no way to identify any culture as “better”, you argue from a preposterous contention, to wit — that any culture which does not provide vastly more choices, more options, to individual humans is not better or worse than a culture which prides itself on providing those choices and on the eternal search for more of them.

One can always not make a choice where one is available. But one can never make a choice where one is not.

The human spirit ALWAYS chafes at boundaries, at limits… at any LACK of CHOICES. The only humans who ever complain about having “too many choices” are people who’ve never suffered a paucity of them.

American-Western culture is the current pinnacle of human existence. Flawed thought it is, it offers far more freedom of choice than any other society in history — both in the volume of choices but also in the depth and breadth of choices.

I have read and re-read your posts. There is so much that I should respond to that any response would be quite lengthy indeed. I’m sorry to say it would have no purpose because we have reached the point where it is obvious that we are discussing two separate things; we are debating past one another.

By example consider the equation that 2 + 2 = 5. I am arguing that 2 + 2 does not equal five (a fundamentally flawed premise); you are arguing for the validity of “5” apart from the premise itself.

There can be no resolution in our two discussions because, as I said, they focus on two different things. The only alternative I see is to allow our respective points to stand as we have presented them and let any readers who are still following this thread take from them what they find of value.

I’ve also found that ignorance on the internet isn’t curable, and thus is of little importance to me personally.