The Scale of Values
W. Carl Ketcherside
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In 1970 Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He was not allowed to claim the award publicly because the Soviet Government refused him permission to travel to Stockholm. He had already prepared his acceptance speech, and although he was not able to present it, the speech was recently published in the Nobel Foundations yearbook. I have read it three times.
Perhaps I was motivated by a sense of obligation to thus pay tribute to an author who could not freely speak to the world on his own. Or, perhaps my interest was sparked by a spirit of protest against a despotic power and its arbitrary attempts to control and suppress thought. I rather think I was seeking to understand, to penetrate the mind and soul of one who, while denied the privilege of writing in the full glare of the sunlight of liberty could still act creatively under the gloomy clouds of suspicion and prohibition.
The theme of the undelivered thesis is that "during the past few decades imperceptibly, suddenly, mankind has become one--hopefully one and dangerously one--so that the concussions and inflammations of one of its parts are almost instantaneously passed on to others, sometimes lacking in any kind of necessary immunity." This rather frightening oneness has not come from an internal desire for unity but has been thrust upon the world by international broadcasting and printing.
Alexander S. declares that while one part of the world learns what happens to another and once remote part of the universe in a minute, it may have no yardstick, no sense of values, by which to measure the meaning or power of the happening. Such yardsticks can only be matured and assimilated over many generations of specific conditions in individual countries and societies. They cannot be exchanged in mid-air.
It is his conclusion that "one world, one mankind cannot exist in the face of six, four or even two scales of values. We shall be torn apart by this disparity of rhythms, this disparity of vibrations." He asks some very penetrating questions about a co-ordinating force for all of the value scales and comes up with the idea that a means exists, and that means is art and literature. He says, "They can perform a miracle."
By art and literature, experiences we have never lived through can be portrayed and described, and we can become aware of the weaknesses and strengths in the experiences of others. There will come recognition and awareness as if we had personally shared in the very life patterns of others. We will thus come eventually to share a universal sense of values which will provide a criterion for measurement enabling us to survive.
I do not want to be cast in the role of one who writes derogatorily or even deprecatingly of either art or literature. I recognize the power and influence of both, but I do not share the optimism of Solzhenitsyn that they can create for mankind one system of interpretation for good and evil deeds, showing us how to embrace the first and avoid the other. I cannot forget that both can be prostituted and become mere propaganda tools.
Long ago, a philosopher said, "Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other."
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Art and literature can never become the yardstick for human behavior because they are expressions of sinful men. Granted that they represent the attempt of man to rise above himself, to transcend the human predicament, it still remains that these brainchildren are attached to their mental wombs by the umbilical cord of human imperfection. And they must always bear about them the inherited traits and characteristics of those who conceived them.
Calvin Coolidge caught this viewpoint when he said: "Not long ago I happened to visit an exhibition of modern pictures. It was held in Pittsburgh and almost every nation was represented. As I looked at those pictures I felt that I could see through them, into the minds of the nations which had created them. I could see the torment out of which they had been born. If that nation's psychology was still diseased, so was its art. The traces of neuroses were unmistakable."
I am committed to the proposition that the creativity of natural man is inadequate to take human behavior and weave it into a pattern upon the loom of experience which will unify the world. Instead, we must have a perfect being from outside, untainted and uncorrupted, who can move into the human spectrum, test it and try it, and be tested and tried by it, without succumbing to its evil. Only such a life can ever be the test of value judgments universally.
I know such a one. He is the only one in history. There will never be another. He is unique. All of the attributes of deity were invested in Him. In Him dwelt all the fulness of Godhood bodily. His life gave new depth to art and lifted it to new heights in doing so. He created a whole new realm of literature. But it is not the art or the literature which provides the dynamic for life. It is His person. He alone can unite the world in life for without Him it can only be united in death. But he conquered death! He lives today!
Our Russian literary giant is mistaken. Art and literature will not work a miracle. Miracles must come through the super-natural, and art and literature only strive to attain the supernatural without ever doing so. The real miracles, validated as historical facts, are those which establish the claims of Jesus to be the Messiah and the Son of God. What a difference it would make if the Russians came to believe this and sought to unite humanity under the banner of the King of kings and Lord of lords. I eagerly pray that they will believe!