Postmodern Art & The Narratives in Art
Oct 15, 2017 16:45:48 GMT -5 by Auburn
Alerith, sitbone, and 3 more like this
Post by Auburn on Oct 15, 2017 16:45:48 GMT -5
The idea that beauty is not objectively measurable, born from postmodern philosophy, has been a topic of intrigue to me for the past couple years. In some sense, on the surface the rationality seems sound. "If there are myriad of ways to interpret a work of art, and one has no way to say which interpretation is better, how can one even know if the art is beautiful?"
But it is ultimately a conclusion based on ignorance and logic-in-a-vaccum. It's a fallacy to assume that the (very real) infinity of interpretations/manifestations means all are equally (in)valid. Because despite that, those infinities of interpretations cluster themselves into very definitive shapes. So if you take all of those seemingly arbitrary declarations of meaning and beauty, and average them out, you can reliably extract a common essence from them:
Certain anthropologists like to focus on the differences between cultures to say "Aha! i found an exception to the rule. The idea that women have long hair and males have short hair is culturally constructed. As is the idea that males pursue the females; here's a culture where the women are the ones who pursue the men." They present such ideas as if to suggest that the minority of cases completely dismantles the overwhelming evidence towards a majority.
If 1 in 50 does not display the pattern, it does not mean the pattern is not real because its consistency isn't 100%. This is a statistical error. And if one is looking at humanity with the focus of finding absolute consistency in anything, of course one won't find it because human manifestation is the epitome of an organic system. The truth of human nature can best be approximated at by using statistics and probabilities -- which illuminate the road toward our essential components of biology/psychology. For example, the male-female pair bond is overwhelmingly (95%+) more typical, and is not equivalent to a male-male or female-female one in terms of how it represents human nature.
I think where postmodernists get a lot of support is from apologists who don't like to imply that certain minority modes of living are more "incorrect" than others. And that needn't be the case. With a little more of a sophisticated ethical framework, it's entirely possible to say simultaneously that:
- - Heterosexuality is the typical sexual modus operandi in humanity, but
- - Homosexuals and heterosexuals are equal in value as human beings (obviously)
But what happens is humans have a nasty tendency to pick on the outliers. And so in order to come to the protection of the outliers, a brand of idealists have decided they want to override the evidence and even the playing field with the use of ideology. The problem is, it's not true. It's not true that humanity is a blank slate built purely off of memetics (as Dawkins likes to imply). And so the same anything-goes sort of thinking has applied to art, producing a kind of absurd and meaning-depleted art movement.
One where, in the openness to all meaning-interpretation, profundity of meaning (as comes from the primordial imagery of humanity --the very Origin of beauty, given the hypotheses in this thread) and all judgment of great or poor art is lost. And so, as with our art, the soul of our culture wanes into weakness. No longer knowing what the meaning of life is, because we have intellectually moved into a desert, unwittingly thinking it was more rational to do so. But we were wrong. Logic was wrong. New logic says there is indeed such a thing as a core human nature, which comes with non-culturally-constructed standards for typicality, for what is significant (relevant) and thus meaningful to us.
I await the rising momentum, wherein we take beauty away from the postmodernist's decay, and bringing it this time firmly into science and validity. So that beauty becomes a science, not a matter of opinion -- and in so doing, it becomes instantiated into our collective DNA. I await for the pendulum swing where our academia doesn't reject (bitterly) what a Human is, but instead seeks to understand it properly and embody it; embody ourselves - as we truly are.
But it is ultimately a conclusion based on ignorance and logic-in-a-vaccum. It's a fallacy to assume that the (very real) infinity of interpretations/manifestations means all are equally (in)valid. Because despite that, those infinities of interpretations cluster themselves into very definitive shapes. So if you take all of those seemingly arbitrary declarations of meaning and beauty, and average them out, you can reliably extract a common essence from them:
Certain anthropologists like to focus on the differences between cultures to say "Aha! i found an exception to the rule. The idea that women have long hair and males have short hair is culturally constructed. As is the idea that males pursue the females; here's a culture where the women are the ones who pursue the men." They present such ideas as if to suggest that the minority of cases completely dismantles the overwhelming evidence towards a majority.
If 1 in 50 does not display the pattern, it does not mean the pattern is not real because its consistency isn't 100%. This is a statistical error. And if one is looking at humanity with the focus of finding absolute consistency in anything, of course one won't find it because human manifestation is the epitome of an organic system. The truth of human nature can best be approximated at by using statistics and probabilities -- which illuminate the road toward our essential components of biology/psychology. For example, the male-female pair bond is overwhelmingly (95%+) more typical, and is not equivalent to a male-male or female-female one in terms of how it represents human nature.
I think where postmodernists get a lot of support is from apologists who don't like to imply that certain minority modes of living are more "incorrect" than others. And that needn't be the case. With a little more of a sophisticated ethical framework, it's entirely possible to say simultaneously that:
- - Heterosexuality is the typical sexual modus operandi in humanity, but
- - Homosexuals and heterosexuals are equal in value as human beings (obviously)
But what happens is humans have a nasty tendency to pick on the outliers. And so in order to come to the protection of the outliers, a brand of idealists have decided they want to override the evidence and even the playing field with the use of ideology. The problem is, it's not true. It's not true that humanity is a blank slate built purely off of memetics (as Dawkins likes to imply). And so the same anything-goes sort of thinking has applied to art, producing a kind of absurd and meaning-depleted art movement.
One where, in the openness to all meaning-interpretation, profundity of meaning (as comes from the primordial imagery of humanity --the very Origin of beauty, given the hypotheses in this thread) and all judgment of great or poor art is lost. And so, as with our art, the soul of our culture wanes into weakness. No longer knowing what the meaning of life is, because we have intellectually moved into a desert, unwittingly thinking it was more rational to do so. But we were wrong. Logic was wrong. New logic says there is indeed such a thing as a core human nature, which comes with non-culturally-constructed standards for typicality, for what is significant (relevant) and thus meaningful to us.
I await the rising momentum, wherein we take beauty away from the postmodernist's decay, and bringing it this time firmly into science and validity. So that beauty becomes a science, not a matter of opinion -- and in so doing, it becomes instantiated into our collective DNA. I await for the pendulum swing where our academia doesn't reject (bitterly) what a Human is, but instead seeks to understand it properly and embody it; embody ourselves - as we truly are.
.. I share your sentiment; hopefully it won't be too long before humanity finds its way out of the logical rut it's thought itself into.. *keeps dreaming*
It seems to be a real human need. 
