Stone-age Paleolithic Artists' Manifesto
The following text is a reprint of the Stone-Age Paleolithic Artists' Manifesto.
We find these words carved into the walls of a cave in Wyoming known as Burgess Shale. They have remained unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years. In the absence of computers and modern media, they have allowed us to leave behind us the cyber-noise of our cluttered, the computer-cluttered world and come before you with our answers for a modern society in turmoil, a world rife with bloodshed and uncertainty, filled with uncertainty, filled with violence, filled with cruelty, filled with mindless consumerism and filled with a selfish, alienated, and aggressive individualism that has divided the people, the families, the communities, the nations of the world into vassal states of self-interest and self-absorption.
These seven simple words, they open our minds, unafraid to look to the future, to look into the past, to look inward, into our hearts, our souls, our spirit, into the soul of humanity, into what it is, who we are, what we are doing, how we are doing, for answers, for guidance, for inspiration, for a voice to guide us in our journey and so that we may find true happiness, enlightenment and release, by finding who we are, what we are, what it means to be human, what we are in our relation to the universe and with the universe.
Understand we are blessed. We have endured the ages. We can remember what it was like in the caves, what it was like to come face to face with animals. To do that in the Stone Age was to know that the universe was worth knowing, worth understanding, worth trying to understand. It was a different time. We learned the three tenets of life from our elders, that life is difficult, that there is a struggle, that what we have is all we have. We learned that knowledge is worth having. And it has been with us all these millennia, through the ages, through the ages, through the ages. These words remind us that the only true wisdom is knowing what you are, what you are doing, what you are and how you are, in relation to others, in relation to yourself, the universe, and the unseen.
These words remind us that we are here to find beauty, that we are here to find the truth, to find balance. We are here to find peace. We are here to find meaning, and to find ourselves. We are here to ask the universe and the universe will answer. We are here to try and find a place where we can live with one another in love and harmony, where we are and are not judged by others or by ourselves, where we learn from each other and strive to improve ourselves, to better ourselves and to create, to express, to create and so that we may make ourselves a part of our environment, our world, our universe, the place where we live, the place where we have come from and where we shall return.
In closing we offer these words as a guide for modern artists. We offer them to inspire artists to make art, to inspire artists to continue to seek, to strive for the truth, the beauty and the meaning of life, to see beyond the barrage of distractions of our media-cluttered, cyber-noise-drenched, computer-cluttered, cell-phones-caused, group-centric, computer-mediated, drone-polluted, chemically-industrialized, fossil-fueled, inter-connected, species-concerned, post-industrial, resource-poor, post-information age, computerized, pre-industrial, post-photograph, post-physical existence, pre-metaphysical world, a world in which what exists is only what can be discovered through science and through reason.
It is a world in which an engineering-based society has run wild. It is a world in which we have almost forgotten that there are places and spaces that do not exist on earth, but that are out there, beyond the reach of these walls, beyond these caves, beyond these landscapes, beyond this current situation of being, a world that is not the product of a machine, but of a nature.
It is a world in which we can find love, and joy, and peace, and purpose, and joy, and purpose, and hope, and happiness. It is a world in which, in the end, we must, we can, we must, find our place within the world, in the world we have created, or create. It is a world in which we can achieve the meaning and the greatness that we as human beings, with our unique capacity, our capacity to reason, to communicate, our unique capacity to create, can achieve. It is a world in which we can take this inspiration and make it into art. It is a world in which we can reach out to others.
It is a world in which we can share our dreams.
It is our home where we can forge a world that is beautiful and a world in which we can find peace.
24,690 B.C.E