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Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
Ha! Yes ... exactly that. It bothers me that they will question my beliefs, but they have never read any of the materials that comprise the basis for my beliefs.
I, on the other hand, have read their Bible, as well as the Book of Mormon, the Koran (or Quran ... however they are spelling it these days), and several other religious texts. Read them ... studied them ... and THEN decided to reject them.
It drives some of the people here positively nuts that I know Biblical text as well as or better than they do.
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An old friend of mine (dead recently, alas), was a reform rabbi. His wife was an Orthodox Catholic priest. They would do team counseling, interfaith marriages and the like. He recounted a few experiences having, um, discussions, with fundamentalists. When you not only know the source texts better than they do, but know them in the original languages...
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And ... as to the real topic at hand, I realize that the patronage system did tend to co-opt artistic integrity, and everyone's greed for the almighty dollor (or Euro ... or name your poison) does much the same thing today. But ... hell, it's just not supposed to happen to the authors that I want to believe are gods among men.
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Forget artistic integrity. Any artist who wants to make a living at her art does what the patron wants. The integrity comes in executing the commission as well as possible. Michaelangelo is famed over the world as a great artist precisely because of that bespoke work to order. And in the case of Michaelangelo and fellows, it's not like they were being asked to do stuff they
didn't want to do. They were devout Catholics, and working for the church depicting religious scenes. They might well have done the same sort of work if they were wealthy and doing it for pleasure instead of a living.
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On a side note ... as I was purchasing 35 books from Amazon today ... all by Terry Pratchett (and the bank had a cow ... they thought my card had been stolen .... I mean who buys everything an author wrote all in the space of fifteen minutes???), I read something about him being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers.
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Yes. He describes it as "an embuggerance". He's still capable of working and living normally, and expects to keep producing books for a while. He's also quite wealthy, thank you -- the Discworld books are enornmously popular in Britain, and he is a top best seller over there -- so he can fund research and care, ands a lot of folks are working on a "matching funds" scheme to get more money in the research pot. It may not help Terry, but it may well assist others down the road.
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See ... now in my private universe, he gets to live forever and have perfect mental acuity for at least that long.
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We just need to get the College of Wizards active on his problem.
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Dennis