How did the world
A friend recently smuggled one of Satan’s turds, otherwise known as a computer, into my house for a good purpose (something the Devil hates): to show me a most interesting and important short film, “How Did the World Get So Ugly?” by Sheehan Quirke. Quirke takes the viewer on a walking tour of London in which he compares what the Victorians built with what is being built today. The Victorians, whom we are told were much poorer than we are, built beautiful things while what we create in public spaces today is as ugly as, well, Theodor Adorno. Who, as it happens, bears much of the blame for modernity’s ugliness.
Like most major developments, the ugliness of today’s built environment has more than one cause. The infernal quest for cheapness, often and roundly denounced by Russell Kirk, is one reason. Another is that the average person, whose cultural and educational levels are far below those of the Victorians who mattered, simply can’t tell Shinola from that other stuff. But as in so many fields, cultural Marxism plays a major role, especially through the aesthetic theories of one of the key members of the Frankfurt School, Theodor Adorno.
Adorno argued that since, by Marxist definition, life under capitalism must be alienating, all arts — music, painting, design, architecture — must also be alienating to be “true.” Anyone who designs anything beautiful is a “fascist” or “Nazi.” Ironically, it is true that both Mussolini and Hitler did build beautiful buildings, far more beautiful than the Bauhaus or “international style” crap that now litters our cities. But because the arts are dominated by cultural Marxism, no beauty is allowed. And we get the ugliness Quirke describes in his short film. It is not just that ugliness is cheaper; it is also demanded by the prevailing elite ideology.
Years ago, I gave a talk on cultural Marxism to a conference in the town where I lived, a beautiful town, Alexandria, Virginia. Afterwards, an Israeli architect who still designs neo-classical buildings came up to me and asked if we could have lunch. We did, and I talked him through Adorno’s work on aesthetic theory. He said, “Now I know why, when I go to architecture conferences, they are all talking about Adorno and they call me, an Israeli Jew, a Nazi.”
The cultural Marxists are harpies. They besmirch with their own filth anything that is true, good or beautiful. Their guiding concept of “negative dialectics,” simply tearing everything down, makes them far more destructive than the old-line Marxists in Moscow (Stalin, like the Duce and Hitler, also built some beautiful buildings, his art moderne “wedding cake” skyscrapers in Moscow). So watch Mr. Quirke’s excellent film, but remember as you do so that the ugliness he points to did not just happen. It was and is intentional, a product of the ideology that now reigns in Western elites, cultural Marxism.