And so, we can see that if it were not for the arts, no civilization would ever exist. We concluded that virtual worlds of art are more real, in certain respects, than the physical world. However, virtual worlds and the physical world do interact and influence each other. Real tensions of the physical world provoke creators to reflect them in imagined worlds. These are imaginable in new ways every time they meet an audience. This is how creations bring about perceptions and understandings of new ways of human life and thus cause changes to societies. It is up to civilization to accept or to deny what culture brings in. Both scenarios have occurred throughout history.
Mostly, they fight each other. Culture questions civilization. Civilization, in turn, denies what culture brings in, fights creations in different ways, for different reasons, punishes and stages obstacles for creators, disseminators of art, and the audience. The very first thought that would come to mind when we think of such fights, is about censorship. This normally leads to the idea of a tyranny or dictatorship. However, the same can be said about copyrights and other culture-restricting laws, perceptions and practices. Granted, there are differences in motivation between censorship promoters and copyright promoters, but there are hardly any differences in results. Moreover, some cultural phenomena fall under more than one kind of restriction. For instance the sometime ban on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; this lovely book had the bad luck of falling under two kinds of restrictions: copyright and censorship.
Some of these restrictions are lifted when society is ready to accept the cultural phenomenon. For some, that time never comes. At any rate, it is impossible to imagine and measure all the harm done by civilization to culture and, consequentially to civilization itself, due to all the mentioned and unmentioned restrictions.
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