In the beginning, man created religions in order to gain knowledge about the higher ideals by studying them, and to awaken the inner ideal within himself/herself. Religions conveyed a clear set of values and truths, that goodness would be rewarded and evil would be punished, fall or be transformed. 

As the following of religions became more and more marginalized, religious ideals were eroded and the arts took over the role of guiding people towards the inner ideals. In fact, this is the sole purpose and meaning of art; to awaken and strengthen the inner moral values of love, truth, and devotion that lie dormant in the depths of people's consciousness. The process of degradation of the arts is illustrated by the rewriting of the classics. To do this, the ideology has been manufactured that they must be updated. Well, they don't have to. The viewer will update them if he/she wants to. It is unnecessary for the director to chew our brains about his/her own twisted concept of a subject. If you go to a performance today, you are confronted with the playing as a buffoon, the actors' overacting, the broad gestures, the shouting, the swearing, which have become indispensable props. There is hardly a performance in which there is not at least one phallic symbol at the center, and the actors do not strip down to at least half-naked, as if they suspect that without it no one would pay attention to them. The essence has been lost, art has been devalued into a means of self-expression for a minority. 

We could still hope in fairy tales, for a while. Today we have reached the point where even educated people are not aware of what makes a story a fairy tale, what makes a work of art, and what their function is. The role of fairy tales was, and is now, precisely to awaken and reinforce in children the inner ideal-pattern, by suggesting that the motivation for goodness is love and the motivation for evil is the lack of it. In fairy tales, goodness always triumphs morally over evil, thus reinforcing the belief in justice. The function of fairy tales is not to show what the "real world" is like. Because the "real world" is not reality, but a distorted reflection of it. If the ideal is not conveyed, only a distorted reflection of reality is fixed, and the personality loses its grip, its moral hold, and its values become distorted.

It is hard not to notice that this intellectual and moral degradation is being carried out by design, with the unconscious or conscious complicity of the media, celebrities and now even 'artists'. It may be that real artists and art have been marginalized because they do not promote themselves loudly enough and do not get enough media attention. Intellectual undemand, lack of higher ideals, produces bio-robots for the labor market who can be herded at will by those who maintain and run consumer society. 

The current social formation will fail internationally because it is not sustainable, because it serves the interests of a narrow interest group. The question is: will it not be replaced by chaos, dictatorship and aggression? Whether this can be avoided depends on those who have still been able to maintain their inner stability, their faith in love, goodness, higher moral values and IDEALS.

Margaret Rhasoda Varga
UCCM head-master
2021. Budapest, Hungary