Necessity and Invention, War and Art
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” as we moderns are so fond of saying. There is probably no serious adage about the soul which is subject to a greater gap between the number of people who cite it and the number who understand it. Apart from that sad fact, however, it is notable that late modernity has gradually transformed the expression from general wisdom about human motivation to a mechanistic-psychological causal explanation of “progress.” In our breathless collective race toward the abyss of nihilism, i.e., self-obliteration, following the gods of technological, economic, and even ideological innovation, we have gradually exposed the essential flaw in the adage as traditionally formulated.
I propose, then, to make one simple modification to the expression for the sake of truth, a modification derived from our modern progressive experience and adapted to the vortex of daily life in which we have trapped ourselves: “Perceived necessity is the mother of invention.” The mere perception of need, no matter how false or self-destructive that supposed need may be on the standard of human nature, is enough to inspire innovations of all kinds — even to the point of innovating human life itself, the source and proper standard of all needs, into obsolescence. Would not self-obliteration be the ultimate proof of the falsehood of the need which gave birth to it, whether those experiencing this false need recognized the fact or not?
Unless, of course, we view the matter more cosmically or fatally, and infer that the necessity that mothers the invention of our obsolescence is indeed a genuine and true need — but not our need.
Iran has been governed for several continuous decades by a fanatical theocracy. Israel is governed by a democratic-secular quasi-theocracy with socialistic foundations. The United States of America is governed by a cabal of social media conspiracy fools and echo chamber ignoramuses with Mussolini fantasies running amok over the tattered and forgotten remnants of a beautiful constitution like rutting pigs among the graves of heroes. I draw no conclusions from this comparison. I merely point out the facts.
Here is another set of facts. Iran’s film industry has, in recent decades, been among the most impressive in the world, and if I, a very picky and cinema-skeptical viewer, were forced to name my ten favorite films of the past thirty years or so, I suppose that at least a few of them would be Iranian, probably more than from any other country. By contrast, to my recollection, I have never seen a really interesting Israeli film, and America, of course, has made the production of inane and immoral drivel its movie industry’s raison d’être for most of the decades during which Iranians have been enlivening this most modern and compromised of art forms with saving moments of substance and poetry.
A conclusion we may draw from this comparison? Perhaps that some forms of adversity and societal oppression activate the soul’s longing and subtlety, whereas others give rise only to lassitude and stupidity. That is to say, true necessity is the mother of true invention, where falsely perceived necessities (profit, fame, propagandistic influence, nihilistic mass distraction) engender correspondingly futile and life-denying invention.
