The world is bankrupt: not just our world but the world that we inhabit. Man, as an expansive species, was always going to bring the roof down on his own head unless there was some element of absolute restriction in his culture. He knew it in his myths of the tree of knowledge and of Pandora's box. The only thing left in our box now is geo-technology.
Our society, the most expansive culture of the most expansive species, has replaced taboo with the risk asessment and the precautionary principle. We have internalised and digested our sense of restriction, substituting calculation for prohibition.
Bach created the B minor mass and never heard it performed. For us performance is everything. We create without prayer and our highest spiritual faculty, to some, is the sense of wonder. Truly we consume; profligately or reverently, we consume.
