Art is a HUGE part of human life. Why? What did it ever do for us in the game of survival? How does art–whether creating it or appreciating it–help us to survival against the elements?
The only thing I can imagine is that it must have played an exclusively social function. Those with an artistic talent survived because they could provide others with a temporary escape from the brutality of reality. People supported and sustained them just so they could continue to proliferate their reality-escaping devices.
What do you think the point of art is–I mean, in terms of its role in our survival? How does art help the human species survive?
First, not everything in human life is about survival against the elements. Once you’ve got your basic food and shelter covered, you start wanting a little self-expression. And a record of what you’ve accomplished. And decoration. And nice things to wear. And nice vessels to serve food and preserve beer in. Art comes in when survival is pretty much taken care of of and you’re ready to move on to the next stage of evolution.
Partly. Not exclusively.
Not at all. For one thing, artists do lots of things besides making art: they marry and have babies, maybe grow food and fashion weapons. As long as they pull a reasonable weight, nobody’s going to kill them, just for being talented. Entertainment may provide escape; art doesn’t. On the contrary, art often makes you confront aspects of reality, aspects of social organization, aspects of your own psyche, that you have been denying or evading. Art brings the subconscious out into the light of day.
No - that’s priests.
It develops our perceptions, broadens our understanding, helps us communicate above and beyond vernacular language, allows us to glimpse alternate realities, fuels our imagination, supports our empathy, lifts our spirit and mood, inspires innovation and keeps reminding us that bare survival may be okay for termites, but people can do better.
It needn’t be necessary for survival or reproduction; it may be a spin-off from something that is (like play, or social communication) or an emergent behaviour.
For example, as communication becomes more than grunts and pointing, and as grammar develops, there are different ways to communicate things, more or less clearly, more or less directly. Sometimes literal is good, other times metaphor. Representative arts may come from an attempt to communicate things that words don’t do very well at reaching. Performance arts like music are probably more social, bonding - although the brain apparently responds quite uniquely to rhythm and tone, similarly to language.
Art was an early method of communication. I think the initial role of art was depicting what life was like in historical context, as well as recording events and transferring knowledge/beliefs. Better artists produced better, and probably more detailed, records. As we developed language, it was eventually used as art.
Art originates in tales e.g. cave paintings telling tales of hunts. Then you get storytellers, and people wanting to become and emulate hero’s and what have you. Then they employ people [formerly mystic song tellers/healers] to sing of their exploits. In ancient britain the bardic class were also the religious class and held in high esteem by the tribal elite, indeed they were also pert of that elite. Art in the present day is pretty much part of the elite in today’s society.
Naturally there is much more to it than that, but I think those are amongst the social driving forces. we all want life to be more than it is, for our lives to be a story, and yes indeed, for a release from life’s harshness. When we look at art we are trying to see its story rather than how we look at a photo [somewhat] or object.
I think your mistake is in stating “when survival is pretty much taken care of”–I would have agreed with you if you had said: when your basic needs are taken care of–for it sounds like you’re more or less agreeing with my original statement: that the survival function of art is primarily social. We provide art as an escape for other in order to endure the harsh elements of reality, and the appreciators of arts reciprocate in turn with whatever we artists need in order to survive just so we can continue supplying their reality escape-hatches.
We are bestowed with the desire for “self-expression” as you put it because that garnishes us a bit of social security, which is a good thing to have in the game of survival (so long as what we express has “appreciative value” if I may coin a term).
Granted–believe it or not, I’ve thought these things through despite my hyperbole.
Obviously, you don’t understand a thing about the principles of survival–being “killed” is not the only way a certain trait or genetic lineage goes extinct. If you really understand the principles of survival, you understand that even seemingly innocuous traits, so long as they are useless in the game of survival, are a detriment. What do you think would happen to a business whose CEO spends half the company’s income on vacations to Honolulu versus a business whose CEO reinvests all the company’s income back into the company itself for purposes of growth, research, development, etc. Of course, the latter company will fair better than the former company, and in the competitive market that is today’s economy, the latter will utterly survive and the former will utterly die–despite the fact that all the employees of the former company aren’t really being hurt, and may have all the well wishes in the world for the CEO on his extravagant vacations, so long as they aren’t being given any pay cuts.
I think that’s just a modern movement. Can you imagine someone five hundred years ago wearing a T-shirt saying “The Devil is cool!”–you don’t think they’d be strung by their neck, thereby winning a Darwin award?
Besides, unpalatable art is rarely ever forced upon you. Except in the case of propaganda, it isn’t in the nature of art to be shoved down your throat. So if a particular piece of art if unstomachable to you, you can just ignore it. Those who really take art in are those who can find some way of seeing its “appreciative value” (if I may coin a term ).
What’s a “fashion weapon”?
And did not the people support priests?
Excellent!
But of course you realize that you offered this as an answer to my question: how does art help us to survive. You are saying that by striving to move beyond the level of survival of the termite, to “do better” in your words, we are engaging in a survival strategy.
The feeling must be horrible.
This may not be necessary for survival, but it sure helps. It must contribute to our survival in some way. It can’t be like the appendix in the sense that it requires energy and resources in order to maintain but ends up being a waste because it doesn’t help us in any way to survive (see my counterexample to humunculus about the company that wastes half its revenue on vacations for the CEO).
Yes, I was hoping someone would point this out; it opens up a segway into Nietzsche’s take on music and drama–Nietzsche says that music is the oldest form of art, and the most primitive (for a reason), and reached its culminative climax in ancient Greek tragedy.
There’s a reason why music–perhaps the most obscure art forms when considered in the context of human survival–was the first to emerge in our evolution: why do you think primitive tribes are always observed to have traditions of dancing around the fire, choreographed to rhythm and beat, to song, poetry, and lyrics.
Why do you think musical lyrics rhyme?
Why is there such a thing as rhyming at all??? What survival purpose does that serve?
^^ This question here really brings my point to the fore: that music, with its poetic rhyming lyrics, is the most obscure form of art with respect to our survival–for it is incredibly entrenched in our psyche yet it seems so removed from the basic necessities of life: food, shelter, security, etc. Why do we need musical lyrics that rhyme on top of all this?
Because, before writing was invented, rhyming was the only way we could record information. How is one to remember a document 10 stanzas long unless it rhymes? And why would one bother memorizing these rhymes unless it was expressed in a rhythm, a tone, that invoked passions and emotions, enough to make one want to dance. Rhyme is a mnemonic device, and music, the emotion it invokes, is a motive for remembering.
The only reason this seems so obscure to us in the modern age is because something long ago came to replace this mnemonic device, something called writing. Rhyme did a good job of preserving information–one is far less likely to forget a phrase if one must memorize the way it rhymes–but writing did a much better job. So rhyme and poetry and music seem no-a-days to be useless.
^^ There’s the survival advantage–but it has become an appendix.
Man, you just summed up in a few sentences what I was trying to say in several posts. But you seem to agree that art served, and still serves, a social function, correct?
Well, if we’re going to answer to question of how art helped us to survive, we have to look further back than modern times, or even ancient times (like in bardic Britain)–by then art was already here to stay–how it got there is still a question in this context; I agree that art began in tails–its sort of what I was trying to say to HO (in a very long winded sort of way): art began as a means of passing on information by way of using mnemonic devices (rhyme, poetry, and music–the deepest of the art forms according to Nietzsche, for a reason), as a means of telling tails that wouldn’t die (because as a mnemonic device, it has staying power).
But this might address your comment about art being part of the elite: if it is an advantage to our survival, then of course those who endorse it and create it are going to rise to the level of the elite.
Yes, and I think this motivates the strife to become more than we are, to make life more than it presently is, and of course one can see how this can be a survival advantage.
Do you think this is an additional advantage to the mnemonic function of art, or is it just another way of saying the same thing?
The entire function of art is its experience.
Art is a flirtation and tease of ethereal hope when pleasant and threat when not.
Art is a suggestion, a half presence of a dream, a hint of hope or threat of where reality might someday be.
Art is a mime and mimic of the soul and elements of good and bad.
Art is the preference that inspires the need.
Art is the muse before the music begins.
As far as utility in the function of survival,
Art is a hue of communication, the letters before the word, the meaning before the sentence has arisen.
Art is the soul to elicit the spirit.
Art is the tweaking of one’s dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins, for whatever consequences might arise.
Art is everywhere … When you build a twig hut in a forest, you use art… It is the spirit of construction!!
The difference between art and non art is utility…
The angle of a snow shovel evolved to the optimum angle long before rigorous math was invented … It’s like the angle if a stealth fighter!!! It evolved to be perfect, and is not possibly art.
Art however, serves a different form of perfection, that which satiates the human spirit in terms of communication of concepts in higher dimensions.
Art is everywhere to behold, and that’s not even counting the hypothesis of a grand creator !!
Hahaha, you made three posts past mine which buried the factual answer to this question.
Your answers were not such.
Art communicates a higher language than ultility alone… A painting can have a philosophic treatise in it, so can a building. Art is a higher communication.
It is it’s own utility as well, so to speak…
It is to be unravelled… The spirit of what made it.
Things like standard symbols are banal, such as a symbol of god, death … These are the simpletons … Crosses, upside down crosses and stars, 666, etc… The philosophy of morons, art is genius!!! It is not propogandic, and speaks for itself.
In my opinion, genuine art is mostly about satisfying inner thoughts by expressing those in one way or other.
I do not think that art should be specifically meant for communication. Yes, it may be communicative and well acknowledged my others but that should not be the prime purpose of the art.
Any art, if done exclusively for communication (for others), will always be compromised to some extent because, instead of expressing honestly what is in his mind, the artist would become more interested in what others may or may not like.
).