Shaw's ideas, as he presents them here, seem a combination of vacuity,
truisms, meager intelligence, and notion so vaguely expressed (fuzzily!) as to
be
useless.
One fleetingly senses Shaw may have some thoughts of at least minor interest,
but if he does, then, despite the confident gait of his writing style, he is
so poor at conveying what's on his mind he strikes me as a waste of time.
But in truth I judge he is not just inarticulate, his thinking is genuinely
muddled.
Vacuity: I found nothing whatever here that is illuminating or informative,
nothing that made me feel I now "know" or "understand" something I hadn't
before.
Truisms: Shaw writes: " The fact which brings Art into existence is the fact
that in addition to
individual nerve-patterns we have group nerve-patterns." It's impossible to
divine what idea Shaw had here that he felt needed expression. The nearest I
can imagine that would justify it is this: "For a would-be artist to have a
nerve "pattern" that does not to some extent match the "group nerve pattern"
of
his audience would as useless as his writing all his poems in his own secret
code-language, a language forever unintelligible to anyone around him."
This truistic interpretation ignores all the fatuous/sloppy lingo in Shaw's
line. He can't, I hope, really believe that the "fact" cited ("in addition
tob&"
etc) all by itself "brings Art into existence."
Low intelligence: Chris is right when he says, " The problem, of course, is
connecting those billions of nerves with the
billions of feelings that we have." Shaw here gives no evidence that he
realizes this is the challenge he has put to himself.
Some of what Shaw says is flatly false:
"Muscle-fatigue we can usually check or control,
because we ourselves decide what muscles we shall exercise and for how long."
Any cardiologist would be glad -- and surprised -- to hear this. An internist
could draw up a list of other autonomically muscles in our body. This isn't a
mere "Gotcha!" Maybe Shaw's "usually" should be read to say "some of the
time." In which case his next statement is essentially false:
"Nerve fatigue, on the other hand, we usually can not check or control
because it is determined from outside of us." We often either stop a noise
in the
house, or remove ourselves from a constant din. We shut our eyes to give them
a rest. We come in out of the cold.
Shaw writes:
"This creates a situation which is vastly more important than we
realize-namely
that man, in every hour, day or year of his existence is forever in a certain
condition of unbalance, disharmony, exasperation. His nerves, instead of
having tired more or less concurrently and together, have tired, on the
contrary, with very considerable lack of concurrence."
This portentous line is a useless truism. I already knew I can feel thirsty
while not sexually aroused, hungry while not sleepy.
Shaw writes:
" Art on this Earth-on this particular microcosm of the universe-defines
itself as that which tends to feed the nerve-hungers of men of the
Earth-pattern
and tends to rest the nerve fatigues of men of the Earth- pattern.
"Is there any one quality or thing which performs both these functions; which
simultaneously feeds nerve-hungers and rests nerve fatigues? I believe there
is-namely sensations rarely experienced on Earth, Earth-Rareness."
Yes -- here's one such "quality or thing": Sleep. In truth, now I'm damn near
playing, because the basic notions Shaw is depending on are so fuzzy they
prompt frivolity. A critical notion of his that he sneaks in there is that
"Art
"feeds" "nerve-hungers". What's he have in mind with that opaque phrase?
Certainly I arise from sleep with some hungers I didn't have when I lay down.
So
does sleep "feed" those hunger?
This is silliness. I shall quit on Shaw.
**************
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