Art and telos

Dyne asked the question:  

Why is it that in the ancient-times (to be crass) there were so many great thinkers and poets and in the modern age we don't have much more than a bunch of (for lack of better terminology) wankers. Do you see this? Do you have any theories why this might be? Perhaps you completely disagree. You are free to do so and perhaps you could educated me in your worldview. I look forward to our discourse, friend.

Antibuddha responds:

It's ironic, because blaming it on genetics is a very *modern* response. The simple answer is: art serves no vital purpose anymore. In ancient times, poets for instance were often responsible for being the resevoirs of historical, geneological, religious, etc. information for the tribe or group. Hence, they were often required to memorize large amounts of such information which on the one hand, increased their intellect as well as their emotional sensitivity (from having to focus on human interaction so much) as well as forcing them to develop various poetic forms to aid that memorization. Even somewhat later in history, when poets were no longer essential for the aforementioned purpose, there was still a long tradition of poetry within a culture that often influenced and molded its poets. Today, this is no longer the case. The only purpose poetry serves is to let narcissitic individuals "express themselves" by wanking off with pretentious, often random ("free form") gibberish or to let some wanker spew his ideological opinions about under the guise of "high art" (to say nothing of the business). The same goes for art and philosophy.

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the creation of beauty is not a vital purpose? what if i disagree and insist that it feels vital to me?

Right. To you. Not to society. Our society does not require this in order to function, hence it is an extraneous leisure activity pursued by a few isolated individuals within a subculture, that however, is also not required by the larger parent culture. I'm not really making a moral issue out of it. Pursue the creation of beauty all you want, but it's going to affect little.

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all art and philosophy, or just the art and philosophy you dislike?

Yes, all of it. I'm curious, what crucial role do you think these things are fufilling with the modern social organism that it couldn't do without? If there are some, besides distraction and entertainment, I'd like to hear it.

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i know that's what you said, and i disagree with it. i disagree that art is obsolete. art serves many, many purposes in modern society:[[b]entertainment, seduction, indoctrination, self-expression, group expression, stress relief, making profits, propagandizing ideas and movements, stirring up patriotism, advertising,[/B}to name a few.

Thanks for making my point for me. In other words, degenerate or trivial purposes. Still, I'm waiting for you have to explain to me how technical society is going to fall apart without poets, artists, and thinkers as opposed to engineers, scientists, and technicians. More to the heart of the matter though, if you really look around you and see a quality of the arts and philosophy comparable to that of earlier times and other cultures, then I really can't be bothered continuing on about this with you, especially since I suspect you are just offended by my viewpoint. Otherwise, I cannot see why you would have dragged this out over 2 threads and went off a- rantin' about my supposed rejection of worldly aesthetics and feminine disposition among other things (?) because I do not find that these things you cherish so much are particularly important, socially speaking, anymore and hence of generally poor quality.

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without art, no advertising, marketing, or propagandizing, therefore both capitalism and so-called democracy (or any other system) no longer function.

Again, I reiterate: even if you can call this art, this is generally of *very poor quality*. You see, this is the entire point of this post, whereas you in your misunderstanding and beligerence are dragging into some discussion about art and philosophy being useless de facto or still having some purpose today (whereas I said it has no VITAL purpose), which is not my point. Art is not of a *quality* today that is comprable to other historical periods and/or groups and it is precisely because it is serving "functions" like the above-mentioned. Futhermore, your definition of art and philosophy is so vague it could include almost any human activity. I find it amusing that you find what I'm saying amusing, given that you don't seem to follow well what I'm saying at all, as your responses have all consisted of "but art/philosophy is utilized in such and such now", where what you point out only futher illustrates my point about it's degeneration and triviality. But I'm beating a dead horse , so I think I'm done now.

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no, my definitions are the dictionary definitions. your definitions are pet (non-)definitions that constantly change to suit your argument.

Dictionaries are swell and all, but there's something to be said for inferring meaning from context. The original poster's usage of "art" and "philosophy" was clearly referring to the sort of which is generally perceived as belonging to "high culture" and was asking why this sort of thing is lacking in modern society. I did not say art/philosophy period was lacking in society, but merely the aforementioned type for the reasons I stated, which your supposed counterexamples only further pointed out (i.e. "indispensable to advertising"). Perhaps you would have preferred for me to say they serve no vital, for lack of a better word, spiritual role, as clearly all the things you have pointed out are merely economic. I'm sure you'll disagree with this too, but considering the best you have come up with so far is the typical waffling about the supposed subjectivity of great thought and art it's simply going to go nowhere.

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forthermore, you are the one who tried to reduce all high art to economic and mundane purposes, not me. like claiming that ancient poets used poetry solely to help with mundane things like memorization (clearly false, as anyone familiar with the history of poetry will know).

More evidence you can't follow an argument. What I said was, a lack of writing forced poets to develop forms which aided memorization, creating various poetic traditions and styles that would have otherwise not occurred if widespread literacy was common. Often, even when writing was introduced to many cultures, it was looked up as lowly at first for the aformentioned reason, and did not gain acceptance until later.

I did not say that the ancients developed poetry in order to increase their mental faculties, I said that the latter was a consequence of the former and had the sort of technology we have now been avaialble then it is unlikely that poets would have been esteemed so highly and been given important positions in society. I then went on to say that the fact that poetry now is a luxury more than a necessity, and the technology (in this case mass printing) which makes it possible to communicate that poetry without requiring as much a traditional form has contributed to its degeneration, and yes, irrelevancy.

The rest of your post was typical emotional blabbering that you've been offering up so far, all of it without any real evidence (i.e. communities with "artistic" structures are not necessarily more populated; suburbs and inner cities hardly possess artistic buildings, and even were this true it's still simply a matter of profit). Again, the point here was about the quality of modern art, poetry, and philosophy. If you really think it's on par with that of the past, and that the modern world were to collapse 'twere the poetry of beatnicks, college students, live journalists, etc. for example never to be seen again, well... I can't really say anything more to you.