It seems as though a society that is intolerant of all forms of degeneracy shuts off its own Dynamic growth and becomes static. But a society that tolerates all forms of degeneracy degenerates. Either direction can be dangerous. The mechanisms by which a balanced society grows and does not degenerate are difficult, if not impossible, to define.
How can you tell the two directions apart? Both oppose the status quo. Radical idealists and degenerate hooligans sometimes strongly resemble each other.
Jazz was generally considered degenerate music when it first appeared. Modern art was considered degenerate.
When you define morality scientifically as that which enhances evolution it sounds as though you have really solved the problem of what morality is. But then when you try to say specifically what is and what isn’t evolution and where evolution is going, you find you are right back in the soup again. The problem is that you can’t really say whether a specific change is evolutionary at the time it occurs. It is only with a century or so of hindsight that it appears evolutionary.
For example, there was no way those Zuni priests could have known that this fellow they were hanging by his thumbs was going to turn into some future savior of their tribe. Here was a drunken bragging window-peeper who told the authorities they could all go to hell and they couldn’t do anything to him. What were they supposed to do? What else could they do? They couldn’t let every damn degenerate in Zuni do as he pleased on the ground that he might, at some future date, save the tribe. They had to enforce the rules to hold the tribe together.
This is really the central problem in the static-Dynamic conflict of evolution: how do you tell the saviors from the degenerates? Particularly when they look alike, talk alike and break all the rules alike? Freedoms that save the saviors also save the degenerates and allow them to tear the whole society apart. But restrictions that stop the degenerates also stop the creative Dynamic forces of evolution.
It was almost a custom for people to come to New York, prophesy a doomsday of one sort or another and then wait for it to descend. They’re doing it now. But so far the doomsday has never come. New York has always been going to hell but somehow it never gets there. Always changing. Always changing for the worse, it seems, but then right in the middle of the worse comes this new Dynamic thing that nobody ever heard of before and the worse is forgotten because this new Dynamic thing (which is also getting worse) has taken its place. What looks like hell always turns out to be something else.
When something new and Dynamic wants to come into the world it often looks like hell, but it can get born in New York. It can happen. It seems like it could happen anywhere but that’s not so. There has to be a certain kind of people who can look at it and say Hey, wait a second! That’s good! without having to look over their shoulder to see if somebody else is saying the same thing. That’s rare. This is one of the few places in the world where people don’t ask whether something’s been approved somewhere else.
That, Phædrus thought, is how the Metaphysics of Quality explains the incredible contrasts of the best and the worst one sees here. Both exist here in such terrific intensity because New York’s never been committed to any preservation of its static patterns. It’s always ready to change. Whether you are or not. That is what creates its horror and that is what creates its power. Its strength is its looseness. It’s the freedom to be so awful that gives it the freedom to be so good.
And so things keep happening here all the time that have this Dynamic sparkle that saves it all. In the midst of everything that’s wrong, it sparkles.
Like the kids. You don’t see them but they’re here, growing like mushrooms in secret places. Once Phædrus went to a museum on a weekday morning and there were hundreds of them pointing at all the minerals and dinosaurs and grabbing each other’s arms and holding hands, laughing and watching their teacher from time to time to see if everything was all right. Then suddenly they all vanished and it was as though they had never been there.
What you see in New York depends on your static patterns, What makes the city Dynamic is the way it always busts up whatever those patterns are. This morning, in the restaurant, this black, jet-black thug-like guy with a dirty wool cap pulled over his head comes in. Dirty blue satin sports jacket, Reebok shoes, also dirty. Orders a coffee which they have to serve him because it’s the law and then what does he do? Does he pull out a gun? No. Guess again. He pulls out a New York Times. He starts reading. It’s the book review section. He’s some kind of an intellectual. This is New York.
Wham! You’re always seeing something you’re not set up to see. It’s not been all bad, this rich-poor contrast. When you pass a lot of static laws to cut out the worst, the best goes with it, the sparkle disappears and what’s left is just a lot of suburban blandness. It’s been a psychological fuel that’s jet-propelled a lot of people into doing things they might have been too lazy to do otherwise. If everybody here had the same income, same clothes, same background, same opportunities, the whole city would go dead. It’s this physical proximity and incredible social gulf that gives this place such power. The city brings everyone up a notch. Or down ten notches. Or up a hundred notches. It sorts them out. It’s always been that way, millions of rich and poor all mixed together, skyscrapers and parks, diamond tiaras in the windows and drunken vomit on the street. It really shocks you and motivates you. The Devil is taking the hindmost right before your eyes! And just beyond the beggars go the frontmost, chauffeur-assisted, into their stretch limousines. Yeow!! Keep moving! Don’t slow down!
You see the people who smile at you and are ready to cheat you. Sometimes you miss the ones who scowl at you but secretly support you in every way they can.
When you talk to them they treat you with a ten-foot pole, but at the other end of it you sense this guarded affection. They’re just survivors whose rough edges are all worn smooth. They know how this celebrity of a city works.
It was getting darker now. And colder too. An edge of depression was approaching. Sooner or later it always appeared. The adrenalin was about normal now and still dropping. His walking had slowed down.
Phædrus reached what he recognized was the edge of Central Park. It was windier here. From the northwest. That’s what was bringing all this cold weather. The trees were dark now and billowing heavily in the wind. They still had their leaves, probably because it was nearer the ocean here and warmer than back at Troy and Kingston.
As he walked along he saw the park still kept its quiet, genteel look despite everything.
Of all the monuments the Victorians left to the city, this masterpiece of Olmstead and Vaux’s was the greatest, he thought. If money and power and vanity were all they were interested in, why was this place here?
He wondered what the Victorians would think about it now. The skyscrapers all around it would astonish them. They would like the way the trees have grown so big. He had an old Currier and Ives print of the park that showed the park almost barren of trees. Probably they would think the park was fine. Elsewhere in New York they would have other opinions.
They certainly put their stamp on this city. It’s still here, under all the Art Deco and Bauhaus. The Victorians were the ones who really built New York up, he thought, and it’s still their city deep down inside. When all their brownstones with their ornate pilasters and entablatures went out of style they were considered the apotheosis of ugliness, but now, as their buildings get fewer every year, they give a nice accent to all the twentieth-century slick.