Zurich is the most collectively organised and disciplined place I have ever visited, yet when enquiring about their arts I got a kind of blank answer - they don't really have any patrons of art nor is it a major part of their cultural expression. The Swiss pride themselves on precision engineering (for example in the watch industry) and quality. Quality being expressed as the degree of robustness, durability and the like - not of passion. Passion here meaning an untamed energy springing forth from within, expressed without inhibition, resonating with our freedom of spirit.
It got me thinking, maybe the energy which we use to cause social disorder is the same energy we use for creative expression, and the Swiss, in quelling social disorder have placed social barriers on the movement of that energy, in all situations, to the detriment of creative expression. Suppose a river bifurcated into 2 streams. One stream bursts it's banks and floods a village, the other remains within it's banks and provides fresh water and kinetic energy to another village. In order to save the flooded village, it would be a great loss to dam the river before the point of bifurcation.
We must be careful in how we repress the spirit. There are natural barriers for our energies, barriers like a cliff edge where it is dangerous to pass. Then there are barriers which we place, like a slick row of white fence posts marching through the countryside (to use a phrase from Gai Eaton). The Spirit is living, it moves toward it's source, it's goal. To place barriers beyond those inherent is a grave injustice.
It begs the question, what is the right balance? How can we encourage creative expression without affecting social order?
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