5.0.1 Art and Culture: Methods and Impacts - Overview

Version 1.4 December 2016                                                        (Previous Version)

A major part of this Reasonable Global Way is using all sources of insight, not just cold philosophy, changing science, complex history, and conflicting religion, but also the creative arts. 

We are also trying to use a range of mediums to communicate insights and learn from feedback.

We explore the arts and culture because they provide accessible ways for us to learn and gain new insights.  People from all backgrounds, religious faiths and political ideologies follow the arts.  But they just have their own culture, based on age, sex, social groups, ethnicity, and nationality.

Of course the arts don't provide a consistent story.  They change over time and over cultures.  Each artist has their own perspective.  They provide a wealth of stories, not just one. 

Art began as representations of physical objects, especially animals and men and women.  It is dependent on the medium used (coloured clay on rock, oil on canvas, pixels in a video display) and the distribution mechanisms (galleries, museums, YouTube).  Artists have frequently tried to overcome these restrictions to be more abstract, to push the boundaries of the medium, to find a new medium, to present their works in different formats and distribution channels.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

  more                                                                                            Statement 26

Art doesn’t provide values.  It provides opportunities for us to choose what we approve of, to extend our understanding, to feel how someone else might feel, to see the complexity in the real world that isn’t addressed in simple rules that say ‘Thou shalt not�. 

But art often reflects our core values:

·       Art, like science and philosophy, challenges the orthodoxy.  Its value arises not because we are left with more questions but because we are shown how to better approach the Truth.

·       Art and culture find different ways to partition the public Reality that we share.  Each culture views the world a bit differently.  The Surrealist artists shows a deliberately distorted reality.

·       Diversity – freedom of expression – is integral to art.  If we impose arbitrary restrictions, they are, in the long term, ineffective, and, in the short term, encourage corruption of the truth.

·       Life and Love are the dominant subjects of almost all art.

·       Despite what some think, artists are not always striving after Beauty, in the sense of elegant form and structure, but often strive for a “deeperâ€� truth, to evoke a more subtle emotional response, where the beauty is in the elegant way this response is generated.

·       Though many artists will deny it, artists must take some Responsibility for what message they convey, how their work influences others, and how it is used by the media and our leaders.

·       Equality is not a value that dominates the arts.  As a community artists may value equality of opportunity, honest dealings, and so on, but striving for excellence is a largely individual affair.

·       The beauty and insights provided in art is for many people a source of hope.