Something About Art

So I've been thinking about about writing down a detailed description of my world view for a long time now, but I'm a bit too scatter brained for a book. That being the case, I've decided that the episodic format of a blog would be the best way to capture my random desires to talk about things. With that in mind, I'll introduce you to my first thought on life.

The following is a discussion on art. It's probably not that revealing to many of you, but maybe someone who reads this will find something insightful. The goal here today is to establish both the why and what of art. That is, why do we do it, and what exactly is it?

All art arises from the fact that humans are utility maximizing, social creatures.

We are happiest, have the most meaningful lives, and generate the most utility when operating in a group^{[citation needed]}. In order to facilitate working in groups humans have developed several mechanisms that allow us to empathize with each other. We are capable of deducing what someone else is feeling from a quick glance at their posture, from the smallest motions, or from barely audible queues. This ability to understand the state of another person allows us to take the situation of other people into account in order to maximize utility for the group. As proof of the effectiveness of this ability, just look at the our species' extraordinary reproductive fitness.

One of the most important tools for increasing empathy (and by extension, utility and fitness) has been language. It allows us to express our ideas as symbolic sounds that travel through the atmosphere until they ram into another person who takes the symbols and reconstructs them back into ideas. Let's take a minute to say that again just for the sake of truly appreciating it. We are all capable of taking huge amounts of data, abstracting to the level relevant for the moment, translating that abstraction into a symbolic representation, projecting it into the air, and then someone on the receiving end of your message can do it all over again in reverse. It's basically short-range selective telepathy (if you've ever wished other people could "just read your mind" you might be disappointed to realize they already can, and you just have disorganized thoughts). Language is probably the most important thing ever invented by man.

For all of its amazing wonder, however, humans have still found ways to come up with ideas that are outside of the range of things that languages can express. Sometimes it isn't possible to find the words to describe things we want to express, or using language to express it would be remarkably inefficient. Art exists to provide us with empathetic tools to make up for the shortcomings of language. It's an alternative protocol we can use to communicate about thoughts that language has a difficult time expressing.

So in the end, the reason we make art is to communicate ideas for the purpose of increasing empathy between people in hopes of increasing utility and fitness.

That's pretty much all I've got for you right now. For some of you this is super old news, some of you think I'm full of so much crap, and a few of you might be having your minds blown. I don't know what I'll talk about next time yet. I'm thinking maybe I'll talk about the key features of different mediums in order to deduce the core purposes for things like music, paintings, film and games.

Reaction to Equestria Girls

Here is the trailer for the upcoming film My Little Pony: Equestria Girls



This does not please me.

While the trailer may just be misleading (to make it look more "hip"), I feel like the themes in this film go against why I was attracted to MLP in the first place.

Why should Twilight Sparkle--the hero of Equestria who's been to hell and back several times, initiated by a demi-god, and reborn as a lesser diety herself--be reduced to a high school student who just wants to look pretty, be prom queen, and get the boy?

In other words, a central theme of MLP is showing that the hero's journey is not just for men, but women can become heroes too. Not "heroes in their own right" but true legitimate heroes. The TV series shows the process of Twilight Sparkle metamorphosing from quirky young person into a leader. Throughout the series she takes on responsibility and learns how to consider the benefit of the group ahead of her own. This process ultimately culminates in the death of the young irresponsible aspects of her character and her rebirth into the new role of royal alicorn (complete with transformation sequence and pegasus wings!)

The real beauty of MLP was how it showed that this hero's journey is not just an experience for the male part of the population, but actually a reflection of every human's life regardless of gender.

This trailer (at least) does not seem to keep to those themes. Instead we get the same ideas that have been hashed and rehashed a million times in every tween girl flick ever made. Instead of trials and descent into the abyss we get a trite conflict between catty girls. Instead of learning to lead the people around her Twilight must get a makeover to be the prettiest. Instead of initiation to a higher plane of existence by the moral authority Twilight is initiated into the presence of some teenage buffoon.

Incidentally, romance has only ONCE been a theme in MLP and it was as a joke. Is getting the attention of some dude really the central idea around which we want our women to live their lives?

Anyways, some people will say I'm thinking too hard about this. My response is that those people aren't thinking hard enough. Stories matter: they are the expression of our desires, fantasies, and values.

Is this really what we value? It's not what the MLP TV series values, and this trailer is not cool with me.