Nostalgia

We have been playing around with the Allegory of Prudence and I am trying to consider how time contributes to the ideas of Universal Experience.  We need to understand how to make people concerned about Wellbeing NOW!  Sure, we care about the environment now that it is threatened and we pilgrimage to visit well-known tourist sites because of their fame, but in each case the site or issue or idea has been filtered through time.  Years and years of research on global warming and migration patters, coupled with a pretty famous ex-vice president revealing an "Inconvenient Truth" has finally made us sit up and pay attention, at the very least putting Wellbeing on the radar.

Staying in the same sphere as UE, let's look at art.  Most people know the famous story of how Van Gogh never sold a single painting in his lifetime, but is now (obviously) a pretty big hit.  Reproductions of his Sunflowers or 'The Starry Night' crowd dorm room walls and museum gift shops.  A simple google image search lets you know how famous these works are.  Yet, this fame is based in retrospection and reproduction, the appreciation of a work not in its moment of inception, but through years of study and contextualization.  So why was Van Gogh's 'moment' in the sun not during his lifetime?  I mean, yes, tastes change and the importance of participating or countering artistic movements certainly factors in, but if we are talking about flash reason, electracy, initiating an aesthetic experience in the NOW, then how do we use fame to our advantage without resorting to what UE terms the 'pre-cooked experience?'  How do we tap into the current attraction of Van Gogh and the concern over global warming in the immediacy of the electracy with issues that might not have 40 years to wait.  How do we tap into the currency of fame, entertainment, the known and unknown, to facilitate an aesthetic experience that works towards the NOW?

Is the answer as simple as Nostalgia? Connecting to tradition and past experience, working to find those 'triggers' that motivate and move people in the NOW?  Hmmmm....