There are only two kinds of positive pleasure that I am aware of.
First, oral pleasure. Tasting a pleasant thing. Sugar, salt.
Second, orgasm.
I could add a third, which is drugs, but I have limited experience in the matter, and of the drugs I have tried, none specifically elicited a feeling of pure pleasure, but instead feelings of altered awareness.*
All of the other pleasures are negative pleasures. The pleasure of warmth is only significant because of the pain of cold. The pleasure of bright coloured light is only significant because of the darkness of night. The pleasure of a gentle touch is only significant because of the feeling of loneliness.
*Perhaps though, it is enough to shock the body with something new, so that endorphins and adrenalin are produced, and a feeling of pleasure simulated. The same can be said about bitter and sour tastes, which cannot in themselves be said to be pleasurable, yet create a pleasure-like response. Music can also be explained in this way, I think, in that any single tone, by itself, cannot be considered pleasurable, nor is an unfamiliar sequence generally considered pleasurable, but a kind of alchemy must occur in the mind in order to manufacture pleasure out of such an experience, usually after being repeated several times.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Science is beautiful. Art is shit.
Science is beautiful. Art is shit.
I could leave that statement to stand on its own, as another aphorism, another piece to meditate on, but I feel that some people won't exactly get it.
So I'll try to explain as best I can. My problem is that I am pretty sure of the truth of the aphorism, but it is quite another thing to explain its truth.
So which should I start with, science or art? If you were to ask me whether I consider myself more of a scientific or an artistic person, I'd have to say the latter. And we can find in that admission, coupled with my opinion that all art is shit, a kind of universal self-loathing that we often see among artists. Perhaps it is the case that artists are more self-hating because it is a universal truth that science is beautiful and art is shit. Or, perhaps it is simply that I'm looking at science from my yellowish side of the fence, and seeing something much greener. Perhaps scientists are indeed as self-hating as artists, and I just don't happen to hang around with enough of the right kind of scientists.
Suffice it to point out: even artists tend to lambast artists in their own plays, novels, and television shows. It is a time-honored cliche that art is not particularly useful, and that artists tend to be poor, generally bad choices for career- and success-oriented people. Science, on the other hand, is generally seen in works of art as being respectable and admirable.
But enough of the digression, for that is not the meat of this posting. The meat, I mean to say, is the fact that science tends to seek completion.
Science is always in search of perfection. Science wants to fill in the gaps, and learn what happens between the cause and the effect. Science seeks to tell the story of what actually happened. And, science tends to be beautiful. Scientists tend to describe complete, elegant, and resonant theories as beautiful. But, perhaps that is just a side effect of them lacking art. They simply lack the poetic vocabulary to express these emotional ideas, which are close to a sense of awe and beauty, but significantly different concepts from beauty. In that way, scientists are primitive artistically, just as artists are primitive scientifically.
But what about all the double-threats, like Swedenbourg, for example? Well, being artistic myself, and having a streak of psychoanalyst in me, I don't see individuals as indivisible. Everyone has their artistic aspect and their scientific aspect, and the two sides don't communicate particularly well. Some call it a left-brained/right-brained dichotomy, but I just say that there are some things in the realm of the mind that pertain to art, and others in the realm of the mind that pertain to science, and whether or not they are located in the same hemisphere is basically irrelevant to my argument.
Now, about art. I say art is shit. I mean all art. I say there is no such thing as good art. How can I say this? Well, I'm trying to explain, so just keep reading. Some people think "oh, yes, I like this art, it is good; but I don't like that art, it is bad." Well, what is the criteria of good and bad? Obviously these are subjective terms. Art could in theory be evaluated in scientific terms, and in fact, attempts have been made to do so. However, as far as I know, all attempts to objectively determine the value of art have ended in failure. The only thing it is possible to do with art is to evaluate its various properties and effects, one or two dimensions at a time. One of the most successful, perhaps the only successful such metric, is the ability of art to effect the viewer/listener. In other words, how successful is the work of art as a communication tool for ideas?
Thus, at its core, art is really a communication device. As a communication device, we can further examine criteria for the effectiveness of art. However, we cannot now begin to say whether art is beautiful unless it is by the same criteria which we might have applied to scientific theories earlier in this post. By scientific standards, art never comes close to beauty. The demands placed on art as a communicative tool make it impossible to be both beautiful and art.
See, by definition a communication is never complete until there is a sender and a receiever. Completion is one of my (arbitrary) criteria for beauty, and so art in itself can never be considered beautiful. Only after the message has been recieved and digested can it be considered complete.
But I'm getting confused as to the definition of beauty once again. I said that the definition of beauty was similar to completion and perfection, but not the same thing. Beauty can only come into being through an emotional response.
Here's how I think beauty and art work. Art is appealing, or beautiful, only when it means the following two criteria. First, it conforms to some standard, fits within expected parameters, and on a psychological level, puts the mind at ease, because it is familiar. Second, it deviates in some way. More traditional tastes would have the deviation be smaller, while the conformity is larger. Radical tastes would have a great deal of deviation, with little conformity. However, no matter who you are, you will always demand some amount of conformity from whatever art you value, in order that you can recognize it as art.
Radical groups may even accustom themselves to a certain subset of art, and then ossify. They might appear radical to the eye of the general public, but they become extremely conservative within their own group. This may also have to do with cultural identity, but I won't talk about that, I think.
So when someone says "This art is really beautiful," they mean to say "this conforms to my expectations about what art should be, enough to make me comfortable enough to examine it more closely, and yet it deviates enough to excite me."
So how can I say all art is shit? Well, I guess my point would be that art tends to be manipulative. It's a play between familiarity and difference. (I read an essay once by Jaques Derrida, but I didn't understand it, though I suspect he might have been getting at something similar.) It's kind of like a fishing lure, and it is deceptive.
But I don't approve of either part of art. I don't approve of the familiar, because we already have that. There's no point in going on living for the familiar. And neither do I approve of the radical, because it is a kind of pain to accept new things. No one should have to experience pain and discomfort. Thus, the only thing art is good for is to prolong suffering. Art proliferates and excuses suffering, and we humans have the audacity to call it beautiful.
I could leave that statement to stand on its own, as another aphorism, another piece to meditate on, but I feel that some people won't exactly get it.
So I'll try to explain as best I can. My problem is that I am pretty sure of the truth of the aphorism, but it is quite another thing to explain its truth.
So which should I start with, science or art? If you were to ask me whether I consider myself more of a scientific or an artistic person, I'd have to say the latter. And we can find in that admission, coupled with my opinion that all art is shit, a kind of universal self-loathing that we often see among artists. Perhaps it is the case that artists are more self-hating because it is a universal truth that science is beautiful and art is shit. Or, perhaps it is simply that I'm looking at science from my yellowish side of the fence, and seeing something much greener. Perhaps scientists are indeed as self-hating as artists, and I just don't happen to hang around with enough of the right kind of scientists.
Suffice it to point out: even artists tend to lambast artists in their own plays, novels, and television shows. It is a time-honored cliche that art is not particularly useful, and that artists tend to be poor, generally bad choices for career- and success-oriented people. Science, on the other hand, is generally seen in works of art as being respectable and admirable.
But enough of the digression, for that is not the meat of this posting. The meat, I mean to say, is the fact that science tends to seek completion.
Science is always in search of perfection. Science wants to fill in the gaps, and learn what happens between the cause and the effect. Science seeks to tell the story of what actually happened. And, science tends to be beautiful. Scientists tend to describe complete, elegant, and resonant theories as beautiful. But, perhaps that is just a side effect of them lacking art. They simply lack the poetic vocabulary to express these emotional ideas, which are close to a sense of awe and beauty, but significantly different concepts from beauty. In that way, scientists are primitive artistically, just as artists are primitive scientifically.
But what about all the double-threats, like Swedenbourg, for example? Well, being artistic myself, and having a streak of psychoanalyst in me, I don't see individuals as indivisible. Everyone has their artistic aspect and their scientific aspect, and the two sides don't communicate particularly well. Some call it a left-brained/right-brained dichotomy, but I just say that there are some things in the realm of the mind that pertain to art, and others in the realm of the mind that pertain to science, and whether or not they are located in the same hemisphere is basically irrelevant to my argument.
Now, about art. I say art is shit. I mean all art. I say there is no such thing as good art. How can I say this? Well, I'm trying to explain, so just keep reading. Some people think "oh, yes, I like this art, it is good; but I don't like that art, it is bad." Well, what is the criteria of good and bad? Obviously these are subjective terms. Art could in theory be evaluated in scientific terms, and in fact, attempts have been made to do so. However, as far as I know, all attempts to objectively determine the value of art have ended in failure. The only thing it is possible to do with art is to evaluate its various properties and effects, one or two dimensions at a time. One of the most successful, perhaps the only successful such metric, is the ability of art to effect the viewer/listener. In other words, how successful is the work of art as a communication tool for ideas?
Thus, at its core, art is really a communication device. As a communication device, we can further examine criteria for the effectiveness of art. However, we cannot now begin to say whether art is beautiful unless it is by the same criteria which we might have applied to scientific theories earlier in this post. By scientific standards, art never comes close to beauty. The demands placed on art as a communicative tool make it impossible to be both beautiful and art.
See, by definition a communication is never complete until there is a sender and a receiever. Completion is one of my (arbitrary) criteria for beauty, and so art in itself can never be considered beautiful. Only after the message has been recieved and digested can it be considered complete.
But I'm getting confused as to the definition of beauty once again. I said that the definition of beauty was similar to completion and perfection, but not the same thing. Beauty can only come into being through an emotional response.
Here's how I think beauty and art work. Art is appealing, or beautiful, only when it means the following two criteria. First, it conforms to some standard, fits within expected parameters, and on a psychological level, puts the mind at ease, because it is familiar. Second, it deviates in some way. More traditional tastes would have the deviation be smaller, while the conformity is larger. Radical tastes would have a great deal of deviation, with little conformity. However, no matter who you are, you will always demand some amount of conformity from whatever art you value, in order that you can recognize it as art.
Radical groups may even accustom themselves to a certain subset of art, and then ossify. They might appear radical to the eye of the general public, but they become extremely conservative within their own group. This may also have to do with cultural identity, but I won't talk about that, I think.
So when someone says "This art is really beautiful," they mean to say "this conforms to my expectations about what art should be, enough to make me comfortable enough to examine it more closely, and yet it deviates enough to excite me."
So how can I say all art is shit? Well, I guess my point would be that art tends to be manipulative. It's a play between familiarity and difference. (I read an essay once by Jaques Derrida, but I didn't understand it, though I suspect he might have been getting at something similar.) It's kind of like a fishing lure, and it is deceptive.
But I don't approve of either part of art. I don't approve of the familiar, because we already have that. There's no point in going on living for the familiar. And neither do I approve of the radical, because it is a kind of pain to accept new things. No one should have to experience pain and discomfort. Thus, the only thing art is good for is to prolong suffering. Art proliferates and excuses suffering, and we humans have the audacity to call it beautiful.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Definition: Professional
Okay, this isn't as aphoristic as I'd like it to be, so consider it a work in progress.
A professional is someone who has to resort to working at something in order to make a living.
A professional is someone who accepts the least objectional vocation possible. A professional starts at the bottom of the list, and works his way up until he gets to something he can't do. A professional's choice of profession is driven by the avoidance of unpleasantness.
A professional is someone who has to resort to working at something in order to make a living.
A professional is someone who accepts the least objectional vocation possible. A professional starts at the bottom of the list, and works his way up until he gets to something he can't do. A professional's choice of profession is driven by the avoidance of unpleasantness.
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