The Stupidity of the Arts

originally posted by: sapien82
a reply to: InTheLight

if humans did not create art then we wouldnt have lasted as long !

Art is the source expression of humanity
its how the source is expressed through our species !

if we didnt have art , we wouldnt be human !

I agree and hasn't it evolved into many different ways of expression/communication where we can all be thrilled or shocked or healed?

The Stupidity of the Arts

I can think of two:

Country music
Rap

Bonus entry:

At least half of the video stuff posted on YouTube

The Stupidity of the Arts

Aesthetics aside; being an artist in the film industry, in front of and behind the camera, the experience is incredible and a fantastic way to make an obscene amount of money.

Union proud, Union Strong

SAG and IATSE

What's your definition of art?

Why dote on Wilde, since he wasn't a fine artist, but more an entertainer and critic of his age, and its conformity?
Also a dramatist, but then you should specify "drama" (which should then also have included the bon mots of Shakespeare), rather than "art" in general.

Unless you wish to make a distinction between "Art faculties" (nowadays often renamed the "humanities" at universities to avoid any confusion) vs. the exact sciences.

Considering his highly conformist age, Wilde was quite a progressive public intellectual (until his fall due to matters of the heart - he met the wrong family and their clashes, but no doubt his love for "Bosie" was real, and not just frivolous), and your first quote by him (humans are becoming mimics) foreshadows what Dawkins proposed on the "selfish gene" in 1976, particularly the concept of the "meme". And to add, an entirely unacknowledged foreshadowing too.
Wilde's biting satire is still relevant, whether it was considered "high art" at the time, or simply "low-brow" comedy is debatable.

Even if one wants to view "homosexual artists" as a negative impact on society (which I feel is an unacknowledged gist in your argument - since it makes no sense to me otherwise), it would be strange to focus on Wilde instead of men like Michelangelo or Da Vinci, who were artists (and probably scientists) in a variety of fields.

a reply to: Astrocyte

It finally dawned on me that the "self regulating organism" as oft mentioned by you is part of the Gaia hypothesis.
We'll leave that aside for the time being.

And just to add some science to before we move on

MIND
Changing Our DNA through Mind Control?
A study finds meditating cancer patients are able to affect the makeup of their DNA
www.scientificamerican.com...

But stress reduction in the interest of chromosomal preservation, and other possible health benefits, seems like a pursuit even a 17th Century dualist philosopher could get behind.

The Stupidity of the Arts

I surmise you mean all works of fiction to be included

This doesn't even need to be analyzed; the sort of reading Wilde has in mind - literature - has a different aim from the sort of reading that brings about genuine progress in society: non-fiction i.e. scientific, inductive, deductive.

You have never been to an art gallery? Are there not fiction words put into pictures that transcend earthly scenes, what we can imagine and henceforth stir up emotion and inspire us to rise out of our animal state? You have previously said we are but mere animals.

brings about genuine progress in society: non-fiction i.e. scientific, inductive, deductive

Clever, you haven't defined progress and yet you emotionalize it, whilst claiming such will only be found in the above.

Your ontological ability to regulate your feelings, in other words, derives from outside you. The strength of your intentionality is a measure of your history of interpersonal recognition dynamics. Is that not profound? And isn't it utterly amazing how deceitfully useless powerful clichés from clichés like Oscar Wilde are?

Yeah I'm still ambivalent as to whether we have free will or not.

Your ontological ability to regulate your feelings, in other words, derives from outside you

I'm not sure going on the premise that you have oft mentioned that we dont have free will, then are we able to regulate our feelings? Or more simply you claim, without the other we cannot regulate or change our state.

“One may see his behaviour as 'signs' of a 'disease'; one may see his behaviour as expressive of his existence. The existential-phenomenological construction is an inference about the way the other is feeling and acting [...] The clinical psychiatrist, wishing to be more 'scientific' or 'objective', may propose to confine himself to the 'objectively' observable behaviour of the patient before him. The simplest reply to this is that it is impossible. To see 'signs' of 'disease' is not to see neutrally. Nor is it neutral to see a smile as contractions of the circumoral muscles.”
― R.D. Laing, The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness

Wilde wrote fiction obviously drawing from his surroundings and imagination. You are trying to analyze him in this space in time from his words with nothing other than his fiction to draw your conclusions. You "infer" his world from a snapshot rendered.

Like Galileo perhaps misjudged

www.theguardian.com...
The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde

10. Oscar Wilde was merely a hedonist who, as he admitted, put his genius into his life but only his talent into his works At his trial Wilde said that his aim in life had been self-realisation through pleasure rather than suffering. Later, in his long prison letter to Douglas, De Profundis, he recants and admits that only through pain and sorrow can true nobility of soul be achieved. He was undeniably a first-rate funny-man, but the jury is still out on whether Wilde belongs in the top division of literature, a paradox which is part of his enduring appeal.

Having been imprisoned he saw the errors of his ways and reached "nobility of soul" How convenient.

a reply to: Astrocyte

While I consider myself a liberal, I do not find much in common with mainstream liberalism, and hence I prefer the term "progressive" to discriminate myself from the postmodern confusion that makes so much of modern day liberal doctrine - sexual identity politics, above all - so incredibly hypocritical (for being out of touch with the needs of most people) and therefore profoundly irritating, for having the gall to pretend to be able to effectively lead society.

Meh..."ism" is a disease. The person who leads society shows traits of their "ism" but their "ism's" does not get written on their tombstone. Are you not more than a "political" animal, or a "psychological helper" animal?

eg Jones led the '47 administration that saw the war end.
eg Jones Industrialist father of husband of

Show me a tombstone that says Jones the Liberal, Jones the Centrist

You assume much....just a reminder from an earlier thread of yours.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Recognizing the self in the other, the equivalence between self and others, means that our emotions are 'spread' like wildfire simply by observing them; in vision - I "know" what a face or body movement means without thinking. My feelings REPRESENT the truth of the others experience. Similarly, in my head, I have to deal with the fact that I am feeling and sensing the other.

a reply to: EmmanuelGoldstein

Well yeah a drag and a rush at the same time.

"The secret is not to drag the rush or rush to drag"

copyright 2018 TheConstruKctionofLight

a reply to: myselfaswell

good old fashioned book burning.

Note he said "fiction books" hmmmm

a reply to: Phage


A bit of "mathematiking" the wave just for you

a reply to: strongfp

Of course in today's world art doesn't mean nearly the same, but even 50 some odd years ago

All good points. As to the above its seems that architects are bringing back some art in the exterior design of buildings, a sense of life and colour, taking risks and making the skyline more "human"

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Some Ego for you



followed by I started a joke

a reply to: Astrocyte

If you don't understand the importance of art it's because you haven't experienced it for yourself yet.

And as a person with a scientific mind myself I must say that, given the overwhelming evidence that arts are a healthy and essential part of human development , you are not paying attention to the data.

I think we need to be a bit careful here because the OP seems to take binary oppositions from the late 1960's era of post-structuralism, and then imposes them on Wilde's Victorian age.

By all accounts Wilde converted to Catholicism, and died a Catholic aged 46.

Only under post-structuralism did we get these binaries between privileged discourses, or the Self and the Other.

Most people studying the "hard" or "exact" sciences have probably never heard of Derrida, Lacan or Foucault, or very little.

But at that time it was also becoming apparent that post-World War II Marxism was not leading to a socialist paradise, but a human rights nightmare of epic proportions.
So the intellectuals had to find something else.

But if you look at a smartphone today- yeah it's a triumph of science, but it has a lot of art too.
Actually a lot of it has to do with the rediscovery of perspective in the Renaissance (I'd argue - essentially a revolution of gay men), both for the fine arts, as well as architecture and drawing up plans for machinery.

I doubt that any of Wilde's sayings were indeed clichés at the time.
They were regarded as witty and original.
You'd have to prove that, especially in his case, and you haven't even attempted to. Sure, maybe some were well-known turns of common phrases with a "twist", but he was hardly known for the unoriginal parroting of things.

In fact he's still not, and as with "mimicry" and the Meme", I think some contemporary scientists actually owe him a citation!

And the irony being that neither "psychology" nor "metaphysics" were "sciences" at the time of Wilde, and even today there is no consensus on the matter.

Neither have the exact predictive outcomes of the "exact sciences", and are thus both useless as scientific models.

Well, they're about as "useful" as hypnotherapy to prove Satanic cults or alien contact before a court.
In other words, totally useless as an exact science.

If we want to compare the "arts" against the "hard sciences" it should be apples against oranges, not apples against apples.

This sounds like a harsh title, and perhaps it is - but I must say what the "arts" seem like from the perspective of someone educated in the modern psychologies and neurosciences.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Are the arts any worse than "scream therapy"?

I think sometimes people just need to take a "mental poop"
for whatever reason . If a person's mental poop outlet is.
art ,then so be it.

Other people's mental poop outlet might be to wax philosofecal
about whatever.

Gotta do whatever ya have to do to get "it" out man.
Def not good to hold that stuff in.
I think you are doin' alright.

Hey, watch this:

a reply to: RavenSpeaks

thats just it though , is it us needing to mental poop or some sort of collective consciousness field that needs to poop through us!

No problem saying I have many thoughts of my own .
Art or science is expansion we laern from people in the past then use that knowledge to expand to new things .
This is true in art and science if it was not humans would have never going past pointed sticks .

One guy makes a pointed stick the next realizes a pointed rock works better untill you end up well who knows ? taht is one thing that can never been known is there a end in science or art ? we used to believe there was limits and were already close now we have learn we are still playing with rocks . Compare to what more can be learned .

BTW the line between science and art is fuzzey indeed .

a reply to: midnightstar

yeh science can easily reduce art to its basic principles of geometry and physics!

art is the best thing in the world

humans are creative beings , we create , and if we dont , we stagnate and kill