Have the will to "madness" and "violence"!: On the art of Pyotr Pavlensky

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to article by Fernanda Eberstadt, “The Dangerous Art of Pyotr Pavlensky,” July 11, 2019:

Art, of course, cannot merely comfort but must provoke people to think.  Unsettling as this is, it must be the case that artists may transgress real boundaries, even with unpredictable results, in order to transgress or question the far more unsettling imaginary ones, more so since what they indicate and how far they suggest going will be uncertain.  Welcome to a world of danger.  

Every kind of governance will defend against some dangers.  Against all?  A society that pretended to that would only be one with imaginary comfort zones, said to extend everywhere and in fact defending the powerful against the risks they most fear, with a fury reserved for what, in an only seeming paradox, may be an increasing number of mental patients and criminals punished for dubious transgressions against a morality or normality that partly exist only because of such borders and exclusions.  

It troubles me thinking that Pavlensky may be right and I, a mere writer who likes tranquility, lack courage.  It troubles me, too, thinking that what he does has reason and meaning because the world we live is that awful.  I feel like I owe it to him and others, like Pussy Riot, to have a troubled sleep and admit that I do and we should.  

The political problem he points to, involving pain and damage, and systems of law and order that are mainly just protective, will endure so long as we have societies for the few and against the many.   The ills he suffers willingly, many endure by force.