Philosophizing!

[Paff]

Link to original post: [drupal=2920]Philosophizing![/drupal]



Original OP:

So, recently I realized that I haven't had philosophical discussions with people nearly as often these days as I did back in high school, and I sort of miss them and the associated learning and whatnot. So, I've decided to start posting philosophical thoughts and hopefully discussing them with people who are interested in such things.

So, to start things off:

It seems to me that first-world countries currently have more than enough art/entertainment/pastimes* availabe than we should need in order to keep anyone entertained for their entire lives. That is, even if we were to suddenly stop creating new films and games and books and sports and whatnot, we would all live our our lives happily on just what we already have.

*"art/entertainment/pastimes" will hereafter be referred to as "art" for brevity's sake.

So, for purely entertainment reasons, we do not need more art. Which means that any newly-created art is useless to society at large unless it does more than simply entertain.

In order for new art to be worthwhile, then, it has to spread important ideas, or provoke important thoughts, or connect people, or something along those lines.
The creation of art that doesn't do this sort of thing is a waste of society's time.

Of course, there's tons of room for debate over what exactly counts as important ideas/thoughts, and the exact nature of how new art has to do these things in order to be worthwhile. I haven't thought all of that through yet, but whenever I create things in my free time from now on, I'll definitely try to make it do
something useful.

And that's that. Does anyone out there find this topic discussion-worthy?

Updates to this idea:

(First off, various of these are scattered around the discussion; the summary here isn't as comprehensive as the full discussion in this thread.)

When I thought of this idea, I overlooked/didn't specify a few things. Perhaps the most important one is that art, really, can have "value" in three ways:
A. Value to the artist who creates it, if they enjoyed creating it.
B. Value to the viewer who views it*, if they enjoy viewing it.
C. Value to society as a whole by existing in the pool of all art that can be viewed.

*Views/reads/watches/plays/listens/whatever, shortened to "views" for brevity.

Note that, in each of these categories, there are really two kinds of value - direct value from enjoying it, and secondary value from teaching things/provoking thought/getting people in contact with each other/et cetera.

Also note that people tend to pursue the direct pleasure sort of value and take the secondary value as a sort of optional bonus.

The idea, as originally posted, was about type C above. For any given viewer, we have enough art/other pastimes that that viewer should be perfectly entertained for their entire life. Since we can serve everyone's needs for type B with our pool from type C, the idea was that new art should have significant amounts of that secondary, learning-ish value in order to still have value.

That's still an oversimplification, though. Various valid points have been brought up in this thread, which must be addressed by any theory like this one:
1. The theory did completely ignore the value to the individual artists, from the enjoyment of creating it (type A above). I'm not really sure how that affects things - perhaps any such art is worth creating, but the artist should beware that, if that art is less entertaining and less thought-provoking than most currently-existant art, it's actually causing overall harm to others? I dunno.
2. Society/the world change over time, and art that used to be relevant/enjoyable can cease to be. From this standpoint, we need to create enough new art to maintain our pool for type C above.
3. As medical technology improves, the human lifespan increases, and it may eventually increase to the point where our current supply of art is not enough.
4. New art can be _more_ entertaining than current art by a significant amount, and have greater benefits to the viewers from that.
5. Most current art has _some_ value beyond basic entertainment. What is really needed, then, is for new art to have _more_ such value than most current art, or to teach information that hasn't been taught before, et cetera.

Even with those provisos, it's still oversimplifying. However, I'm pretty sure that it's on to something, and worth considering for artists and viewers alike.

 

[CRASHiC]

No.
Life changes.
The world changes.
The number of expressions that can be made is forever increasing.
Could a poem about a car crash be written to help someone understand the event, or relate to the event, or whatever else they seek in art? No.
As the world changes, so does our art to accompany it.

 

[Paff]

No.
Life changes.
The world changes.
The number of expressions that can be made is forever increasing.
...
As the world changes, so does our art to accompany it.

You have a point here. I suppose, as the world changes, peoples' ability to relate to older art (which becomes increasingly irrelevant with change) is diminished, and so for future generations to be entertained for their entire lives we might have to keep creating some new art, even if that art doesn't do anything beyond entertain.

Although that leaves two issues:
1. Is it possible for future generations to do something that would give them the ability to relate to the art we already have, even if our art won't be that relevant to a changed future?
2. How much art do we need to create in order to keep enough relevant art at all times for people to be entertained, and are we currently creating enough or too much?

Could a poem about a car crash be written to help someone understand the event, or relate to the event, or whatever else they seek in art? No.

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply with this, or what your full meaning is. Please explain?

 

[CRASHiC]

200 years ago, did the emotion exist of the fear of a car crash like we do today? The human experience is always changing and growing, and with it so is our art and music.

Evidence:

 

[Jim Morrison]

Link to original post: [drupal=2920]Philosophizing![/drupal]



So, recently I realized that I haven't had philosophical discussions with people nearly as often these days as I did back in high school, and I sort of miss them and the associated learning and whatnot. So, I've decided to start posting philosophical thoughts and hopefully discussing them with people who are interested in such things.

How do you have philosophical discussions in high school :S?

 

[zeldspazz]

Youve Got Mail is a good movie ^_^

Good points Crash

 

[Paff]

@Gf2tw:

I went to an awesome high school mostly filled with nerds, who proceeded to not feel social pressure to repress their nerdiness, and then got into interesting stuff like philosophical discussions.

@CRASHiC:

A bit of nitpicking with the specific "cars 200 years ago" example:
If the concept of cars was around 200 years ago, then people back then certainly could have felt a very similar fear to what we have today. I'm not sure what the state of science fiction was back then, but if any of it had cars, some of it may have had car crashes.

In terms of your argument at large:
You seem to be saying the following things:
1. The world changes, and with it human experience changes.
2. Art changes over time to reflect the changing world.
3. The idea that we can be entertained enough with just the art we have, and that therefore new art must do more than entertain to be useful to society at large, is wrong.

#3 seems to hinge on the idea that art that reflects the newer world has value even if it only entertains. I'm curious to see what your reasoning for that is.

 

[CRASHiC]

I use to think like that. I use to think that if people did certain things with art, especially relate the art with their own life they were hurting the art and misusing it. But I no longer think that. What gives it value is that someone finds something to value in it. Music for theory is no less valid than music for emotion and that is no less valid than music for dancing and that is no worse than music for lyrical purposes.

Let's take Tosca. There are PARTS of this that people can relate too, the general feeling of love. But largely, no one today can even begin to rationalize the political battles we see before us, because such things don't exist in today's society. One of the many, many amazing things about the arts (all forms) is that they can get you to understand an emotion that you never have come close to before. There is value in looking at past art to relate it to their own experiences or to seek to understand the past in a more personal level than a history class.

Examples of these things, from Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Travel (a book about reading a book)

"Very few people have been shot by an arrow, but we can all imagine the feeling from getting shot by an arrow. We can imagine it piercing our skin, the constant pain of it piercing deep in your bone, and the sharp blade pulling against you as you tear it from your skin"

quote from the movies The Young Boys

"One of the most amazing things in art is when we look at the words of someone long dead and find our own thoughts written on the page for us."

*neither are exact quotes, but the basic concept is intact.

What makes art valuable is simply it having value to the person, because otherwise its just a piece of paper, random noise, or a bunch of mud.

I could also bring up how art is still evolving, not in relation to the world and trying to portray it but also in terms of artistic development. New styles and new avenues are constantly being developed. The scope at which the listener can hear and the composer can write are ever increasing as well as the content the world provides artist to pull from.

 

[Jam Stunna]

My problem with your reasoning, Paff, is that you define art's utility in terms of its entertainment value or its good to society. You completely ignore the artist's desire to create, which is probably the single most important factor in the creation of art.

 

[Sephiroths Masamune]

How do you have philosophical discussions in high school :S?

My school has debate

 

[Paff]

My problem with your reasoning, Paff, is that you define art's utility in terms of its entertainment value or its good to society. You completely ignore the artist's desire to create, which is probably the single most important factor in the creation of art.

Yeah, I definitely overlooked that, or rather, failed to mention it completely. My thoughts on it tie heavily into my thoughts on part of what CRASHiC said, so I'll give the full response after quoting some of CRASHiC's post:

I use to think like that. I use to think that if people did certain things with art, especially relate the art with their own life they were hurting the art and misusing it. But I no longer think that. What gives it value is that someone finds something to value in it. Music for theory is no less valid than music for emotion and that is no less valid than music for dancing and that is no worse than music for lyrical purposes.

...

What makes art valuable is simply it having value to the person, because otherwise its just a piece of paper, random noise, or a bunch of mud.

I guess really there are three main ways in which art can have value:
A. being valuable to create to the artist who creates it
B. being valuable to view/read/watch/whatever to the individual viewer
C. being valuable to society at large via adding itself to the pool of art that can be viewed

*"view/read/what/whatever" hereafter being referred to as "view"

I guess my thinking (so far) is:

(Note that I thought the issue through more while writing the following than I had when I made the OP, so for any disagreements between the two, the following is my current thinking.)

1. Most of the time when artists create art, they do it because they enjoy it. From this viewpoint, one can certainly say that any work of art has value in one way (A above).
2. Any work of art will have value to some viewers whose tastes are such that they find value in it. This will be some combination of value via entertainment and value via thought-provokage. From this viewpoint, one can certainly say that any work of art has value in one way (B above).
3. The goal for any individual, whether artist or viewer, is generally to spend 100% of their free time doing something that has value for them. If there is not enough art available for viewers to enjoy viewing art during 100% of their free time, they will have to engage in other activities; thus, for viewers whose preference is art, having enough art for their entire lives is helpful. I suppose it's worth mentioning here that most viewers primarily go for entertainment value in art, and take thought-provokage as icing on the cake.
4. We currently have enough art for anyone to be able to view art for their entire lives without running out. Technically, if someone has picky-enough tastes, this might not be true for some cases.
5. Having more art than that is not necessary in order to either allow artists to get value from art via A above (since they can create no matter how much or little is available), or to allow viewers to get value from art via B above (instead of getting value from a new work of art, they could instead get the same value from some preexisting work that, had they viewed the new work, they would have died of old age before getting the chance to view).
6. Thus, for art to have value via C above, it must either have significantly more entertainment value to viewers than preexisting works (so that the average level of their enjoyment of art during their lifespan is higher), or it must do something beyond basic entertainment, such as providing food for thought (so that viewers can have more personal development while they view it).
7. Technically, all art does more than entertain, but much of it does very little more than entertain. It seems that generally art at this point is far better at entertaining than it is at provoking significant thought, and that therefore it should be much easier to make new art that has a benefit via C above by provoking thought than it would be to make new art that has a benefit via C above by being more entertaining than the average entertainment levels of current art.
8. A similar issue is that there is some average level of thought-provoking-ness to the current pool of art. Creating new art that is less thought-provoking than that average actually hurts the overal art pool's value in terms of provoking thought, even if it helps the overall art pool's value in terms of entertainment.

So I guess overall, art is worth creating for the artists personally, and is worth viewing for for the viewers, but the viewers already have enough art to view, and creating new art for everyone to see can easily have limited (or negative) value for the general populace if it isn't also thought-provoking or something.

What're your thoughts?

Let's take Tosca. There are PARTS of this that people can relate too, the general feeling of love. But largely, no one today can even begin to rationalize the political battles we see before us, because such things don't exist in today's society. One of the many, many amazing things about the arts (all forms) is that they can get you to understand an emotion that you never have come close to before. There is value in looking at past art to relate it to their own experiences or to seek to understand the past in a more personal level than a history class.

Examples of these things, from Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Travel (a book about reading a book)

"Very few people have been shot by an arrow, but we can all imagine the feeling from getting shot by an arrow. We can imagine it piercing our skin, the constant pain of it piercing deep in your bone, and the sharp blade pulling against you as you tear it from your skin"

quote from the movies The Young Boys

"One of the most amazing things in art is when we look at the words of someone long dead and find our own thoughts written on the page for us."

*neither are exact quotes, but the basic concept is intact.

I would consider these to be examples of art having value beyond simply entertaining - its ability to help people understand experiences that they personally have never had, and to relate that understanding to their own experiences, is valuable.

One issue I have with a lot of art in general is that it often uses the same old experiences, or very similar experiences, and presents them in more or less the same way, and the viewers who view those experiences already understand them from seeing other art, which means that it's not actually providing any new value.

I could also bring up how art is still evolving, not in relation to the world and trying to portray it but also in terms of artistic development. New styles and new avenues are constantly being developed. The scope at which the listener can hear and the composer can write are ever increasing as well as the content the world provides artist to pull from.

I definitely agree with this, although I would argue that the evolution of art has very little value in and of itself*, but can be leveraged to produce art that is either more entertaining or more thought-provoking, both of which have value.

*It certainly has some direct value, as deriving new forms and techniques involves logic, self-reflection, increasing one's understanding of humanity, et cetera. But generally that value is limited to just the artists, who number far fewer than the viewers who will see (and potentially learn from) their art without considering its innovations.

 

[john!]

Art is just another form of communication which transmits ideas in a unique way. It's not useless.

The term "art" is really subjective anyways... you might want to define what you mean first.

 

[Jam Stunna]

So I guess overall, art is worth creating for the artists personally, and is worth viewing for for the viewers, but the viewers already have enough art to view, and creating new art for everyone to see can easily have limited (or negative) value for the general populace if it isn't also thought-provoking or something.

What're your thoughts?

I think your argument doesn't hold water for several reasons:

1) The perrogative of the artist (which you addressed)

2) As john9blue pointed out, art expresses ideas. There will always be ideas, so there must always be ways to express them.

3) You haven't specified what that "negative value" for new art would be

4) How can you make a statement like, " We currently have enough art for anyone to be able to view art for their entire lives without running out," which is an objective measurement, about something as subjective as art?

5) You left out the fact that novelty plays a big part in art as well; art from the 1890's (or even the 1990's) will not speak to the viewer in 2010 in as meaningful a way as new art. The producers of Battlestar Galactica alluded to this when they noted that the show was heavily influenced by the realities of post-9/11 America, and that the show would have been much different if it was done at any other time period. Which leads to:

6) Art contributes to history and the historical record as much as any textbook. We don't read textbooks from the 1940's, but we still watch Citizen Kane and Gone With the Wind. They may not speak accurately about the time periods within the movie, but they do speak accurately about what was going on while the movie was being made, and the context and sensibilities of the era that influenced them. Picasso's art is as important to the history of the Spanish Civil War as any other record. New art is necessary to record new events.


I could go on and on, but I think you get my point.

 

[Paff]

Art is just another form of communication which transmits ideas in a unique way. It's not useless.

Indeed; I'm not arguing that it's useless. I'm arguing that art that doesn't use that transmission ability in a significant way is useless to society as a whole, although it may still be useful for the artist.

The term "art" is really subjective anyways... you might want to define what you mean first.

*"art/entertainment/pastimes" will hereafter be referred to as "art" for brevity's sake.

So things like paintings, statues, poems, novels, films, video games, board games, sports, physical activities, crafts, various social activities, et cetera. Some of them tend to be created at much higher rates than others.

I think your argument doesn't hold water for several reasons:

1) The perrogative of the artist (which you addressed)

Yeah, the original concept doesn't take that into account. It's definitely possible for artists to create art that doesn't do much beyond entertain, and for that to be valuable-enough for the artists themselves to be worthwhile. However, it seems that such art still isn't particularly valuable to others. I'm not sure if that means that artists should go ahead and create such art, but then not release it, or what.

(I don't mean to conduct this as an argument. I think that, on the subject of how valuable different types of art are in different ways, there is only one truth, and if we all discuss this enough and consider various ideas from different angles, we might all get closer to knowing that truth. My ideas about what that truth is will change as people point out flaws in my thinking.)

2) As john9blue pointed out, art expresses ideas. There will always be ideas, so there must always be ways to express them.

...


5) You left out the fact that novelty plays a big part in art as well; art from the 1890's (or even the 1990's) will not speak to the viewer in 2010 in as meaningful a way as new art. The producers of Battlestar Galactica alluded to this when they noted that the show was heavily influenced by the realities of post-9/11 America, and that the show would have been much different if it was done at any other time period. Which leads to:

6) Art contributes to history and the historical record as much as any textbook. We don't read textbooks from the 1940's, but we still watch Citizen Kane and Gone With the Wind. They may not speak accurately about the time periods within the movie, but they do speak accurately about what was going on while the movie was being made, and the context and sensibilities of the era that influenced them. Picasso's art is as important to the history of the Spanish Civil War as any other record. New art is necessary to record new events.

I would consider all of these to be "doing something beyond basic entertainment".

Presenting newly-relevant ideas and so on, as the new version of Battlestar Galactica apparently does (I haven't seen much of if myself), is certainly a very reasonable avenue for new art to pursue.

And as far as history and the historical record goes, I imagine that some art from those periods is more and less useful in that respect. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some works from the 1940's or the Spanish Civil War, that are very rarely, or never, reviewed by historians because everything they say is already said in other works from the same period and/or from other periods.

3) You haven't specified what that "negative value" for new art would be

Ah, I wasn't clear on that.

Our current art has some average degree of entertainment value (of course that's specific to each viewer's tastes, and an oversimplification), and some average degree of beyond-entertainment value (again, an oversimplification).

If a new work of art were created whose entertainment value and beyond-entertainment value are both below these averages, then the new average of all art with the new work added into the pool has become lower; this means that, on average, art viewers from that time on will be less entertained and benefit less in non-entertainment ways.

I'm not saying all new art is bad; anything created with values higher than the averages increases the average value of the pool.

I definitely haven't thought this through too thoroughly yet, so there's a pretty good chance that it's wrong/need significant revision before it's right.

4) How can you make a statement like, " We currently have enough art for anyone to be able to view art for their entire lives without running out," which is an objective measurement, about something as subjective as art?

I could go on and on, but I think you get my point.

Humans live for a certain number of years.* They spend a certain fraction of their time alive attempting to entertain themselves. Both the number of years and the fraction of time vary widely from person to person, but there are general trends, and maxima and minima.

Each work of art takes a certain amount of time to view each time one views it, and can be viewed for a certain number of times before the viewer ceases to find value in viewing it. The number of times varies widely depending on the work and the viewer's tastes.

Each person also has different tastes, which limits them to a certain fraction of all possible forms of art/entertainment/pastimes. This fraction also varies from person to person.

Aside from very exceptional cases (people with depression who have trouble finding enjoyment in anything, et cetera), it seems that just about everyone enjoys a large-enough fraction of all art that the time it would take them to fully view all of the art that is valuable to them is greater than the amount of time during which they will be alive and seeking to entertain themselves.

*Medical technology keeps extending the human lifespan, and I didn't consider this when I first thought of the we-have-more-than-enough-art idea. Lenghtening lifespans may mean that the idea false.

 

[CRASHiC]

By that standard, ALL art is useless to society as a whole. It doesn't provide anything but a reflection, be it of society, or be it of individual experiences, both of which music excels at.

f. scott fitzgerald has a few quotes on this.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician . . . or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

and another I can't find, but it goes something like:

Music is the perfect form of expression, but because the pen is my art that is what I must do.

Music has many valid purposes in society.

1. It gives an expression that can be used to motivate a society- see the nationalist music promoted by Lenon during to rally the people for war. That produced this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9Rs_vQvjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI

2. Capture an event in time for its emotional basis. In music, unlike writing, you can avoid all political motivation and simply let things be and express the emotion that exist there.
Example: During the composer's life time, there was a MASS unexplained return to paganisim around the world. In an effort to capture their emotions the balla The Rite of Spring was written and is one of the most influential pieces of our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA

3. As a sign of protest.
Example: Elegy: Snow in June was written in protest to the Chinese decision to leave from the records the deaths of many people in Tenamen Square and to not acknowledge that the event even happened at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRnbUhLwi6g

4. To explore history's past and understand their emotions.
All of the examples can be used above since all of these events happened in the past.

5. To express and attempt to rationalize that which can not be rationalized or expressed by words.
Example: Dan Deacon's Bromst is an attempt to describe the process your soul goes through to become a ghost after being killed by an atomic bomb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTu9y92AN2Q

6. Simply to express. Pure and simple. The artist feels the need to express some emotion, and they do it best through music.
Lizz King here expresses her feelings while in separation from her lover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3lpWBWiZU

7. To accompany
This is more lose and can apply to a lot of things, be it plays, be it movies, or be it dancing.

These are the things that an artist can find value in. From here, there become infintie things that each individual person can find in them, from hearing new sounds (electronic music) to being comforted, or adding beauty to their life.

The arts aren't practical. The arts aren't necessary per say from a sterile point of view, but from a personal point of view they are indispensable.

 

[Paff]

By that standard, ALL art is useless to society as a whole. It doesn't provide anything but a reflection, be it of society, or be it of individual experiences, both of which music excels at.

Which standard are you speaking of, and how is all art useless to society as a whole by it? I really don't see how you concluded this from anything I've said - maybe I wasn't clear on something, and you interpreted it differently than I meant it?

f. scott fitzgerald has a few quotes on this.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you - like music to the musician . . . or else it is nothing, an empty, formalised bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

and another I can't find, but it goes something like:

Music is the perfect form of expression, but because the pen is my art that is what I must do.

Music has many valid purposes in society.

1. It gives an expression that can be used to motivate a society- see the nationalist music promoted by Lenon during to rally the people for war. That produced this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO9Rs_vQvjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqg3l3r_DRI

2. Capture an event in time for its emotional basis. In music, unlike writing, you can avoid all political motivation and simply let things be and express the emotion that exist there.
Example: During the composer's life time, there was a MASS unexplained return to paganisim around the world. In an effort to capture their emotions the balla The Rite of Spring was written and is one of the most influential pieces of our time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVuVQuMvgA

3. As a sign of protest.
Example: Elegy: Snow in June was written in protest to the Chinese decision to leave from the records the deaths of many people in Tenamen Square and to not acknowledge that the event even happened at all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRnbUhLwi6g

4. To explore history's past and understand their emotions.
All of the examples can be used above since all of these events happened in the past.

5. To express and attempt to rationalize that which can not be rationalized or expressed by words.
Example: Dan Deacon's Bromst is an attempt to describe the process your soul goes through to become a ghost after being killed by an atomic bomb.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTu9y92AN2Q

6. Simply to express. Pure and simple. The artist feels the need to express some emotion, and they do it best through music.
Lizz King here expresses her feelings while in separation from her lover.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NE3lpWBWiZU

7. To accompany
This is more lose and can apply to a lot of things, be it plays, be it movies, or be it dancing.

I agree that music, even without lyrics, can have all sorts of valuable applications - at the very least, being part of the soundtrack for a film with thought-provoking themes is valuable in a beyond-basic-entertainment fashion.

I'd rather not go into a big discussion of every way that art can have value beyond basic entertainment at the moment - I'd rather hammer out the idea of what it needs to be valuable to society as a whole, and to individuals, and to reconcile those thoughs, first. As such, I won't respond to every point in the above quote right now, but am certainly willing to discuss them later (and if you really want, I could respond to all of them now anyway; I just think there are more important things to discuss first).

These are the things that an artist can find value in. From here, there become infintie things that each individual person can find in them, from hearing new sounds (electronic music) to being comforted, or adding beauty to their life.

The arts aren't practical. The arts aren't necessary per say from a sterile point of view, but from a personal point of view they are indispensable.

Certainly, art is important in many ways. My thoughts are that we have an adequate/excessively large amount of it right now, such that just about everyone's basic art needs (comfort/beauty/entertainment/et cetera) can be met with our current supply, so in order for new art to be a contribution, it's got to do something beyond comfort/beauty/entertainment/et cetera.

 

[Pelikinesis]

Well, the art so far talked about is the kind that keeps up with the world's ideas, right? It's not like one day thousands/millions of years back, some caveman thought to himself, 'Ok, I've done my dinosaur hunting, my wife-abducting, and my wheel-inventing. I think I'll invent art next."

I figure, art just kind of happened, because some people have always felt the need to express themselves in artistic ways and because other people like to observe it. Even IF we no longer needed anymore because the art of the past is applicable and compelling to the future, that's not going to stop people from creating more art.

But there's also the art created by obsolescence. Photography used to be a totally legit way to capture a moment in time. Why bother now that we can capture entire hours at a time via a camcorder? And even further than that, why bother painting a portrait since you have that camera? Why learn martial arts when you can just buy a gun? Some forms of art have become more artsy because their practical application is no longer necessary. But these things still have a different kind of value.

I've heard that art is a vehicle for the soul. Sure, humanity could collectively drop all that poetry, Sistine Chapel nonsense and get stuck nice and deep into the simultaneous goals of curing AIDS and making bigger nukes FASTER. But then we'd be losing our species' soul, right? If humanity's artistic aspect does not keep pace with our technological aspect...I mean, imagine the opposite of that. We halt all techonological prowess and just have a worldwide poetry jam for the conceivable future. Sure, we won't have the Segway Mach 10, but we wouldn't have to choose from a future of Terminator, the Matrix, Gattaca, or Doomsday (yes!). However, we WOULD have tons of new movies and books to compare those movies to and to the future we aren't heading towards because no one's tried discovering the Allspark.

Distracting references to any and everything aside, progress happens, and it happens more ways than one. The science bit is obvious, but the artistic bit is no less unnecessary. The benefits may be harder to understand, but they're there.

Besides, if we all dropped art now, that would mean humanity's artistic journey ended right at Twilight.

Whoa.

 

[Paff]

@Pelikinesis:

I did a poor job of maintaining the thread/OP with my updated thinking on this subject. The OP has now been updated to reflect my newer/current thinking as a result of this discussion so far - I'd be interested in seeing your thoughts.

Well, the art so far talked about is the kind that keeps up with the world's ideas, right? It's not like one day thousands/millions of years back, some caveman thought to himself, 'Ok, I've done my dinosaur hunting, my wife-abducting, and my wheel-inventing. I think I'll invent art next."

I figure, art just kind of happened, because some people have always felt the need to express themselves in artistic ways and because other people like to observe it. Even IF we no longer needed anymore because the art of the past is applicable and compelling to the future, that's not going to stop people from creating more art.

I agree; the original idea totally ignored/didn't consider the value art has to the artist who creates it. I definitely don't think we should eliminate creating-whatever-sort-of-art-you-feel-like as a pastime, but I still think that new art that doesn't do anything beyond basic entertainment is of questionable value to society as a whole. I'm not sure yet what this means for artists who want to create art that doesn't do more than entertain.

But there's also the art created by obsolescence. Photography used to be a totally legit way to capture a moment in time. Why bother now that we can capture entire hours at a time via a camcorder? And even further than that, why bother painting a portrait since you have that camera? Why learn martial arts when you can just buy a gun? Some forms of art have become more artsy because their practical application is no longer necessary. But these things still have a different kind of value.

I guess I should nitpick here, although I don't know important these nitpicks are to the overall discussion:
1. Photography has various advantages compared to film. It has superior image quality for any given filesize and hardware size, and can capture details from brief moments that would be overlooked in a film.
2. Painting/drawing have various advantages compared to photography. It has the ability to caricaturize/cartoonify, or to intentionally alter the way something looks in other ways.
3. Martial arts have various advantages compared to guns. They don't require carrying a gun everywhere with you, they serve as physical excercise and apparently mental discipline excercise, and in actual fights they are not nearly as loud as guns.

I've heard that art is a vehicle for the soul. Sure, humanity could collectively drop all that poetry, Sistine Chapel nonsense and get stuck nice and deep into the simultaneous goals of curing AIDS and making bigger nukes FASTER. But then we'd be losing our species' soul, right? If humanity's artistic aspect does not keep pace with our technological aspect...I mean, imagine the opposite of that. We halt all techonological prowess and just have a worldwide poetry jam for the conceivable future. Sure, we won't have the Segway Mach 10, but we wouldn't have to choose from a future of Terminator, the Matrix, Gattaca, or Doomsday (yes!). However, we WOULD have tons of new movies and books to compare those movies to and to the future we aren't heading towards because no one's tried discovering the Allspark.

Distracting references to any and everything aside, progress happens, and it happens more ways than one. The science bit is obvious, but the artistic bit is no less unnecessary. The benefits may be harder to understand, but they're there.

Besides, if we all dropped art now, that would mean humanity's artistic journey ended right at Twilight.

Whoa.

You say quite a lot here, and I'm not sure what all of your implications are, so I'd be interested in seeing a more explicit explanation of what you're saying, and I can't currently respond to everything you're saying.

However: a significant amount of what you're saying seems to be "art has value beyond basic entertainment", which is in full agreement with what I'm saying. The basics of what I'm saying are essentially that new art that doesn't help us think about the present and the future doesn't have much value to society as a whole. If I've misunderstood what you're getting at, go ahead and correct me, though.

 

[Pelikinesis]

Nitpicks are valid. I didn't really want to set up counterarguments because that would derail the discussion. Another reason I didn't set up counterarguments is because I would have countercounterargued more or less what you said.

I think the main issue that would come with agreeing with what you said about not having art that exists solely entertainment is that you'd have to define specifically what you mean by that, and it would probably be necessary to provide examples.

And as soon as you provide examples, some idiot fanboy or other will attempt to win the internet in a flame war.

But if you don't provide examples, we only have a very general and vague thing to agree or disagree on.

Also, one could claim that art that exists solely for entertainment/profit still has other intrinsic merits, or could be seen as a valued cultural lens to view the mindset of the idiots of generation X or other.

etc. etc.

And as far as my implications for the last big paragraph on my last post, I'm mostly implying that I'm kinda weird and tangent-prone.

 

[Paff]

Nitpicks are valid. I didn't really want to set up counterarguments because that would derail the discussion. Another reason I didn't set up counterarguments is because I would have countercounterargued more or less what you said.

Heh, k.

I think the main issue that would come with agreeing with what you said about not having art that exists solely entertainment is that you'd have to define specifically what you mean by that, and it would probably be necessary to provide examples.

And as soon as you provide examples, some idiot fanboy or other will attempt to win the internet in a flame war.

But if you don't provide examples, we only have a very general and vague thing to agree or disagree on.

Yeah, it's an issue worth discussing. And again, it's probably not about having value beyond basic entertainment, but about having more value beyond basic entertainment than average, or filling particular niches, or whatever.

(I haven't been very consistent when talking about this part of it, mostly to try to be brief when trying to make some other main point.)

Because when you get down to it, just about all art has _some_ value beyond basic entertainment in one way or another. Trying to define individual cases as examples of more or less such value, or of different kinds of value, is certainly worthwhile, but won't be easy, and I'm too sleepy at the moment to give it a try.

Also, one could claim that art that exists solely for entertainment/profit still has other intrinsic merits, or could be seen as a valued cultural lens to view the mindset of the idiots of generation X or other.

etc. etc.

Very true. Although I wonder how much is necessary for the cultural lens use.

And as far as my implications for the last big paragraph on my last post, I'm mostly implying that I'm kinda weird and tangent-prone.

Heh.

 

[Espy Rose]

My problem with your reasoning, Paff, is that you define art's utility in terms of its entertainment value or its good to society. You completely ignore the artist's desire to create, which is probably the single most important factor in the creation of art.

This pretty much sums up how I felt reading the original post, and halfway down to the end of the page.

Forgive me for not replying in a better manner; I prefer to play the role of the spectator in this kind of subject. I love philosophy, but I'm terrible when it comes to conveying what I think.

 

[SOLAR]

Art is an expression of self, and what people take from it. I don't understand what you mean in your statement where you say that art needs "new ideas". How about a different presentation of the same ideas? How about just making art for ones self?

A music composer from my college who is extremely talented and well respected in the music community posted on a bulletin board records of his sales for his piece, most likely to make a point. He made on an average 4 cents per year! The point he was making is that the works are for himself, and not necessarily for any larger purpose.