Social function of art? back to timtim.
Are we an animal in fundamental conflict with itself, a torn creature no smarter than bacteria in a Petri dish of declining nutrients the world would be better off without?
Why has there been an advance in every field of human endeavour except the one that matters the most: the civilizing of our own barbarous spirit?
As there are no doubt degradations and abominations so far unimagined still ahead of us, then by the same logic there are new heights of creativity and humanity also awaiting us, and the future holds not only the promise of new Mozart’s and Shakespeare’s, but of even greater artists whose work will help us plot our way through this strange and fractured world.
For that is the point of all art, it is fundamental to our entire understanding of ourselves as creatures in a world of change. Its how we have defined ourselves from time immemorial, form the ancient rituals once used to sanctify the world through to the theatre of war, many still appeal to ART to give their lives meaning.
Which means that artists are the most important people in any society, and that everybody is to some extent an artist.
Our creativity and individuality are central to our perceptions of ourselves as human beings and the sense of respect and self-respect that makes life possible. It is artists that are capable of using materials and techniques available to imaginatively recreate the world in which we live.
It’s about hope and meaning, core elements of human life. Artists create because no matter how bleak their visions might be, they are optimistic enough to hope their offerings will have meaning for their fellow humans.
Note when artists are attacked and silenced it is really society itself that is that feels the effect.
Lets question this world, how have we allowed greed and avarice to blind us to the threats of our own survival? How did we believe that patently unsustainable practices could form the basis of any kind of life that could be sustained? How could we have imagined that a society that cared nothing for justice or truth would be either just or truthful when it came to dealing with us? And in the reclamation of civil society, and the rebuilding of our community it is artists who must now step into the breach and provide what our politicians have so glaringly failed to provide, and that is the kind of hope and meaning that comes from looking facts in the face and dealing honestly with them honestly while we still have the time.
If there is a place where the conflict in our hearts between voracity and our good sense can be played out it is in the civilised forge of the arts! Maybe the barbarous weapons of war that has started can be beaten into tools we need to reach the stars. For it is surely not too late, it is never to late, for us to look in the mirror and se what we have become, and in seeing what we’ve become recall what it was we set out to achieve!
The choices are stark, the options are few and diminishing, the real so long denied excluded and repressed, has returned, and now in the theatre at the end of history, we confront yet again that same question that has haunted us throughout the eons: what does it mean, and pausing with trembling heart, we look into the abyss and await the answer.