A Halftime We Will Gladly Forget by Robert Socha

Throughout history, musicians, artists, and architects created many captivating symphonies, paintings, sculptures, and structures that stand the test of time and transcend culture in their testimony to human creativity and the pursuit of Truth and the beautiful.

While there might be some validity to beauty in the eye of the beholder, enduring examples captivate their audience with awe and satisfaction. Our culture has clouded the ability to discern between lasting beauty and temporary titillation. Take, for example, the multi-Grammy Award-winning performer at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. The performance’s only redeeming quality was the humiliating exposure of pedophilia among the rap world’s elite. Whether that revealing has any teeth, the future will reveal. It is doubtful that audiences will be clamoring by the hundreds to see a symphony recreate his rhymes in 300 years. In comparison, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons will continue to delight and draw crowds wherever a string quartet sets up and plays its captivating melodies.

A monotone canvas displayed as art has no redeeming qualities, even if it has a white line dividing its halves. In contrast, Mona Lisa’s smile will continue to draw millions to observe DaVinci’s brilliance as long as the tempered glass protects her from overzealous climate activists whose worship of Gaia is hellbent on destroying beautiful things, especially to bring light to a manufactured crisis. What if these zealots directed their energies spent on deceiving the public toward harnessing the earth’s ability to produce those things necessary for sustenance, comfort, and leisure? How much more efficient, nourished, and comfortable could our creativity provide?

Modern strip malls slapped up in a narcissistic pursuit of filthy lucre are devoid of character and creativity, dull the senses, and create a bleak and forlorn landscape, casting an overtaxed culture into the doldrums of monotonous repetition. Contrastingly, the artistic beauty of boulevards like the Via Dei Condotti leading up to the Spanish Steps in Rome, inspires the senses and encourages walking, shopping, sipping a café au lait at a streetside bistro, and stirring conversation. Beautiful things are worth restoring, as Ford Motor Company did in transforming the decrepit Detroit Michigan Central Station, reviving its grandeur, revitalizing a neighborhood, and encouraging development.

The arts, architecture, and music all depend on the things culture values. When culture ceases to value life, pure religion, language, and character and fails to teach its children critical thinking and discerning right from wrong and the beautiful from the mundane, then apathy, lethargy, and hopelessness take root in the soul in a perpetual slide to the lowest common denominator. The opposite is also true and is rooted in a classic liberal arts education. This quest to find the definition of the beautiful and the good does not end when someone takes their diploma or degree. It is a lifelong endeavor that the graduate must continually cultivate and purposefully pursue, hopefully culminating in a devout faith so the rocks will not have to cry out in praise.