
Culture is not about esthetics (2011) - monort
http://www.gwern.net/Culture%20is%20not%20about%20Esthetics
======
foolrush
Argh. Wrong on dozens of levels, and arguably nothing more than a ridiculous
and repetitive summation of Modernist industrial / capital ideology.

In short, the author shouldn't be so quick to dismiss Postmodern artwork
because it eloquently dismisses his reduction of culture to commodity.

Culture _is_ aesthetics. If you need a tell, glimpse at late Modernist
aesthetics that sought to separate symbology from it. Form vs. Function is
precisely such an ignorant axis model.

Culture communicates via its symbology, and some of that ethic / ideology is
inexpressible via commodification; hence the need for late Modernists to
attempt to exorcise such an emergent phenomenon.

If anything, the aesthetics of a culture (and important symbology) needs to be
emancipated from the late Modernist industrial complex.

~~~
cousin_it
Maybe we'd benefit from having a discussion in simpler terms? The main points
of the article, as I understand it, are that society shouldn't encourage the
creation of new art, because we already have more than enough good art to last
anyone a lifetime, and because artists are mostly motivated by social status
anyway. It seems to me that your comment didn't offer any arguments against
these points. Maybe I'm missing something?

~~~
foolrush
Way back when, in fine arts school, a wise university professor taught us a
unique trick to reframe statements regarding art.

The trick was to replace all instances of “art” with “language”.

Let's try it...

“The main points of the article, as I understand it, are that society
shouldn't encourage the creation of new [language], because we already have
more than enough good [language] to last anyone a lifetime, and because
[language manipulators] are mostly motivated by social status anyway.”

Interesting I would say.

Not to pick on your statement, but rather to illustrate how ideological
underpinnings frame our concepts. Art exists as nothing more (or less) than
language, yet our ideological pressures force framing.

It strikes me that if that is the premise of the article (I read a little more
under the hood) then even then, the framing is questionable.

~~~
cousin_it
OK, I see. Do you have an argument that doesn't rely on conflating "art" with
"language"?

~~~
potatolicious
Agree with the other poster - it isn't conflation. Art _is_ a form of
communication, like languages are. Language and art are concepts that overlap
more often than not.

This permeates all aspects of our lives - there is no objective reason why
"red octagon" means "stop" except that we have created a design language in
which this is standard. Likewise we've constructed massive visual symbologies
that have real meaning - the floppy disk icon, an upward pointing arrow, the
male/female symbols on restrooms that are so universal, etc. These are non-
linguistic things that are nonetheless communication all the same.

There are even more complex manifestations of these symbols, techniques, and
themes in fine arts - but in principle they are the same.

So to address your previous point:

> _" The main points of the article, as I understand it, are that society
> shouldn't encourage the creation of new art, because we already have more
> than enough good art to last anyone a lifetime"_

This becomes a nonsensical statement, because art is communication - and like
all communication it wears culture and politics all over it. Art is unique to
the time and place where it is created - the same way a novel wears the
signatures of the era in which it is written.

This would be like suggesting that we should shut down all newspapers, because
we already have archives full of old newspapers, more than anyone can read in
a lifetime.

Art is intrinsically, inseparably tied to the culture and time surrounding its
creation. It is not substitutable in perpetuity like a daily vitamin pill. Art
created in the 18th century is not the same as art created in the 19th century
- and is not the same as art that will be created in years to come.

> _" and because artists are mostly motivated by social status anyway"_

I've known a lot of artists. I don't think this statement is justified. You
can say a lot of things - artists create for their ego, artists create for the
approval of others, but "social status" brings in a lot of connotations that
frankly aren't warranted.

Art is insular frequently - many artists have no interest in appealing to the
layman, and their works are often inscrutable to anyone who hasn't spent a
_lot_ of time studying the art. Their primary interest in creation is
communicating with others who are as studied as them in a particular topic.
One can spin this as "being driven by social status" but in reality is no
different than listening to the same music as your friends, or watching the
same movies.

To try and bring this back to our world - think about an expert programmer who
blogs about the finer points of compiler design. His blog is complete
gibberish to the layman, and in fact is not understandable to most beginner
programmers either. You _have_ to have a certain background in order to
understand what he's writing - this is what a lot of art is like. The mistake
here is that certain people have put this art in a museum and told everyone
they should like it - in doing so creating a false impression that
understanding what's hanging on this wall is simple. It's really not.

The criticism in the article is off-base precisely because of this. This is
like an amateur programmer looking at this compiler design blog and saying
"all of this is gibberish I don't understand, therefore bullshit". The reality
is that these are expert works designed for experts in a field - and to
understand it (not that you're obligated to understand it at all) you have to
work your way up to it, by understanding who has done what, where they came
from, where they learned and copied from, etc etc.

~~~
cousin_it
The article was mostly talking about popular art, not art made specifically
for experts. Most people are just looking for some simple thrills, which they
can get from old stuff just as well as from new stuff. IMO the analogy between
art and language only distracts from that point, I'd prefer if you engaged it
head on.

~~~
lotsofmangos
I love old fiction, however I cannot read old fiction that references or is
inspired by modern events. The novel is as much an instrument of contemporary
social commentary as much as it is anything and to ignore this is to confuse
the entire subject.

Books like Dead Air by Ian Banks, or Pattern Recognition by William Gibson,
are simply not available in earlier eras as their narrative reference points
did not yet exist.

It is like looking for something in the golden age of Hollywood that closely
resembles Scott Pilgrim vs The World. Without the culture of computer games to
draw on, that film could not get made.

------
lotsofmangos
Culture is about many things, one of which is aesthetics. The idea that
creative arts are valued by some absolute aesthetic quality is to ignore not
only the changing nature of quality itself, but also all the other purposes
that art has. Art is also about commentary on the current culture, and that is
just as good a reason to produce it as any. Not everything has to reach for
the sublime, some people are just trying to illuminate something rather small
and innocuous in a fairly humble manner and if their audience is small, no
matter. As to the question of if we need more books, given we have more of a
high quality than one person could read in a lifetime, like I said, quality
isn't everything. I want books that comment on the current world, not just
books that are the best written.

Also, the idea that there is too much fiction available is a very anglo-
centric position. There are many languages around the world where the novel is
still relatively novel.

------
mikeash
This article has a completely backwards approach. People prefer new art. This
is a clearly observable fact. The article's approach to this fact seems to be
to declare everybody as making the wrong choice, essentially by fiat. It would
be much more interesting to examine _why_ people prefer new art and ask the
question of _whether_ the classics are underappreciated and if there would be
a net benefit to encouraging them, rather than basically assuming the author's
tastes are some sort of objective fact and deriving a bunch of nonsense from
it.

Personally, I think there's a ton to be said for context. People want
characters and situations they can relate to. At the end of the day, I'd
generally prefer to read something where the protagonist uses an iPhone and
cooks with a microwave than one where the protagonist writes letters and has
his food cooked by slaves.

And of course it doesn't have to be as dramatic as smartphones and slavery.
Even a book from just a couple of decades ago is going to feel remarkably
different due to changing attitudes towards everything from homosexuality to
nuclear war.

But he completely refuses to consider such contextual advantages. He states
flat out, "People _are_ better off reading the best books, and the best ones
_are_ predominately the ones that already exist, there _is_ more than can be
read, and new books have no compelling advantage over the classics." (Emphasis
from the author.)

The concluding sentence is an excellent summary of the article, although not
the way it's meant to be: "I have started with common-sense grounds and wound
up somewhere strange." In my experience, when people justify things with
"common sense" they often mean unsubstantiated claims that they don't want to
have to justify explicitly. If you start with "common-sense grounds" and end
up somewhere strange, consider that maybe your starting assumptions are
faulty!

~~~
autarch
I think you may be misinterpreting "the best ones are predominately the ones
that already exist" a bit.

Most cultural production in any medium is forgettable. How many composers do
you think were alive at the same time as Beethoven? Hundreds? Thousands? How
many of them do we still listen to today? Tens, maybe less.

Even more recently, let's take The Beatles and their contemporaries. Of
course, The Beatles were not the only seminal artists of their time. They were
active at the same time as David Bowie and The Rolling Stones. But again, how
many of their contemporaries produced albums that are now forgotten by
everyone who listened to them? How much of what's left even now will be gone
in another 75 years, when basically everyone who was alive in the 60s is dead?

The only difference between the 60s (or early 1800s) and now is that we
haven't yet forgotten all the crap that is being put out today. Will future
historians of pop music assign more than a footnote to Katie Perry or Taylor
Swift 50 years from now? Will they even get a footnote?

So the reason old art is the best art is simply that we've had time to weed
out all the crap. The remaining art that we still remember is the best of what
was released at the time. It's not the best because all old was better, it's
the best because it's been better curated.

In fact, for all we know, the overall proportion of art that is good might be
even better today, but that doesn't change his proposition that we don't
really _need_ new art in order to experience great art for the rest of our
lives.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
While I'm not entirely sure who they are or what they sing, I'm pretty sure at
least some people _actually like_ Katie Perry and Taylor Swift, and it would
be a disfavor to those fans to deprive them of the artists they like.

~~~
MichaelGG
Would those same people suffer an absolute difference in musical enjoyment if
those two artists did not exist? Is there a reason to believe that another set
of artists wouldn't have filled that gap and users would be just as happy?
That is, if there was no copyright and instead we were listening to stuff
artists made just because they're artists, and they find a way to create, is
the public at net loss?

In photography, amateurs are all over, with top equipment (it's an old joke
that non-pros have the better equipment as they can better afford it). If I go
to look at pictures of some place, it may very well be that professional
photographers are providing zero additional value to my viewing enjoyment. Why
should this be different than any other area?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Would those same people suffer an absolute difference in musical enjoyment if
those two artists did not exist?

Statistically speaking, yes, some of them would.

------
geargrinder
If the author had just summarized his points in a thesis paragraph I wouldn't
have had to wade through so many words just to try and figure out what he was
ultimately trying to say. Ironically, he spent much of the post complaining
about how much there is to read.

~~~
pizza
Not to try to sound like I'm appealing to authority or his greatness or
anything, but I think gwern's essays are fantastic. I think their length is
fine because of how rich they tend to be.

~~~
geargrinder
Long articles are fine and there is good content in this one. Just help me
navigate it better by using a familiar hierarchy more common to informational
essays.

------
diydsp
This is a long, but brilliant essay.

I especially enjoyed the section on Music Instruments about 1/4 down the page.

The theme argues the idea that civilization/society/humans create for the sake
of social status, not for the effect of the creation.

For example: We choose to learn to play guitar to "be cool," or piano to
indicate we want to be thought of as high-class rather than because we value
the sounds of either of these instruments.

This can be incredibly earth-shattering to realize. I hope it's not 100% true,
but there is plenty of evidence to show it is.

This type of thinking may also inform the famous "Mac vs. PC vs. Linux"
debates. Do we choose our OS based on it's social significance or its
technical, productive and visual benefits?

~~~
calpaterson
It's not a novel idea - consumption for identity purposes is a very, very old
and well explored meme:

[https://www.google.co.uk/?q=consumption%20and%20identity#q=c...](https://www.google.co.uk/?q=consumption%20and%20identity#q=consumption+and+identity)

A lot of basic sales books/courses discuss it. I've met a few people in the
traditional publishing and they seem to well understand that the majority of
books sold are never read.

I am actually having great trouble getting motivated to read the whole essay.
Gwern's writing suffers a lot from poor sequencing, excessive
footnotes/hyperlinks/digressions and a general reluctance/inability to
summarise. Wish he could find a way to make his writing "skim-able", so that I
can at least tell what the rough subject is before investing an hour to
understand it.

~~~
wpietri
Yeah. When I write like this, it's because I'm really writing for me. It's my
way of processing a topic.

But if I'm going to publish something, I'd rather write for the reader. I just
threw out half a book manuscript because I realized that while my intended
audience was novice entrepreneurs, my actual audience would be grizzled,
grumpy old veterans like myself. Eventually I hope I'll start fresh and really
write for my readers.

------
davidgerard
I nicked the title for this essay:

[http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-
aesthe...](http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-
punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/)

Culture is not primarily about aesthetics: it's about monkeys' mutual
grooming. It's about aesthetics after the piece of culture has fulfilled
subcultural needs. Is your typical metalhead going to choose an exquisite harp
symphony over a pretty-good slab of loud metally rock'n'roll? Probably not.

~~~
wpietri
You're normally so sharp about deflating dodgy ideas that I'm surprised to see
you say this. As I read it, you and Gwern seem to assume that a) there is an
objective "best" measure for art, and b) the purpose of experiencing art is is
to consume "best" art.

I don't think either of those are true. I agree there's a status component to
things, but we're monkeys; there's a status component to everything. (If I
avoided everything where status behavior was an important driver, I'd have to
stop typing right now; open-source software is filled with it.) Culture, being
the summation of everything we talk about, is "about" a lot of things. Really,
it's about everything.

Sure, everything social that we do is socially mediated, and therefore has
status components. But to say that's what it's primarily about is to me like
saying that all of marine biology is really about water. Sure, it's there, and
sure, anything you point at is related to seawater. But saying it's all about
seawater strikes me as a rhetorical technique used to dismiss something, not a
serious analysis.

~~~
davidgerard
Oh, it's totally all mixed up. It's intersubjective, which means you can sorta
rank stuff but not really.

However, I do think culture is primarily about culture, i.e. mutual grooming
and good feelings with our fellow monkeys. I speak here as a superannuated
rock journalist with a ridiculously large record collection.

