Great response! While I don't agree that my original post was a rant, I find your response, taken as a whole, to be both fascinating and invigorating.
I think we might be splitting semantical hairs, and while I do not consider myself to be intrinsically anti-semantic, I think we actually are not, by any means, at polar opposites in our views regarding art. I would agree that human nature is pretty much a constant, and I would go further to say that, insofar as nature informs our circumstances then the human condition is likewise a continuum. If this were not so, then the works of Euripides, Shakespeare, Lorca, Coboabe, Mark Twaine, Balzac and countless others would fall on deaf ears. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that art is reactionary. Certainly the ancient Greeks wrote dramas that may be considered such (Trojan Women, The Frogs, and The Birds come readily to mind), but I am among those who consider art to be largely (though not exclusively) aesthetic rather than didactic in purpose.
Brecht was a true didacticist, no doubt. So was Lorca in his own way. Having said this, I believe, nontheless, that most art takes a more open ended approach to the eternal human struggle. It may sound corny but art seeks to ask questions, rather than answer them. This is why art has such explosive potential.
Whoever you are, you're obviously both very smart and wickedly funny.
Would you mind explaining what you mean when you say that art is reactionary? Oh, and by the way, my comment about you being nuts wasn't an attack. It was a stab at humor. I'll concede that you're funnier than I am. In any case, I'm not likely to be hanging around here much longer.
Happy to oblige. Let us consider, for a moment, one of the oldest of oldest stories still current: two heartsick teenagers who both believe all the problems of life can be distilled to the essence of their passion for each other; crappy parents with serious future in-law implications; an unexpected series of almost comic (and I stress ALMOST) SNAFU's; and all the while a miniature war, of sorts, rages, froths, bubbles, and seethes in the background...
And yet...we're understanding of the situation; stirred by the circumstance; and moved by the denouement. EVERY bit of it, logically examined in the light of rationality right up to the end, seems to make no sense--until it does. And when they both die, something in the mundane about it moves us: a spark of understanding flickers through the centuries, and grounds itself in the realization that, yes, those kind of intrinsically human feelings--of feverish adolescent longings; of seemingly senseless conflict swirling hither & yon about oneself like a vortex; of sad ends to badly cut cards in this-or-that particular round of life--have always existed--and will always exist.
Shakespeare was a genius not because he plowed any new ground and sprouted something new in the process; he was a genius because he told us tales about things we already instinctively understood in a way that resonates hundreds of years hence--and will for thousands of years to come. That is true "Art," in every sense of the word: a reminder, not a prognosis.
Such Art, in it's most beautiful, enduring forms, is always thus: a verdict-delivered in the affirmative on the ancient truth that there isn't much new cooking under the Sun; and that even the most precious things we hold in it are common experiences, shared across the ages.