This column came out a week or so ago in the New York times. I'm not generally a huge fan of David Brook's stuff, but I think he's on the money here. I'm not going to write a ton of commentary (I lied), since I'd just wind up repeating him (and probably some of my own earlier notes), but I'll pull out a few favorite quotes.
Recently, while browsing in the Museum of Modern Art store in New York, I came across a tote bag with the inscription, “You are no longer the same after experiencing art.” It’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but is it true? Or to be more specific: Does consuming art, music, literature and the rest of what we call culture make you a better person?
Ages ago, Aristotle thought it did, but these days a lot of people seem to doubt it.
This is, in a quote and a couple sentences, the big question/goal of this entire exercise. Will spending 15 minutes (or longer most days) help me see the world differently? Does doing that help me to be a better (however we define that) person?
I’d argue that we have become so sad, lonely, angry and mean as a society in part because so many people have not been taught or don’t bother practicing to enter sympathetically into the minds of their fellow human beings. We’re overpoliticized while growing increasingly undermoralized, underspiritualized, undercultured.
This is an interesting spin on social-capital theory. In addition to the value of just spending more time with "culture" I also wonder about the value of shared culture. If 3/4 of a community sees the same movie, reads the same book, listens to the same song, etc. that gives them a shared frame of reference. That obviously has value, but we also have to look at what art that is, and where it comes from. I don't want my great grandkids to have to read all the same books I did because someone declared them cultural keystones, but they probably should read some of them.
I went to college at a time and in a place where many people believed that the great books, poems, paintings and pieces of music really did hold the keys to the kingdom. If you studied them carefully and thought about them deeply, they would improve your taste, your judgments, your conduct.
Our professors at the University of Chicago had sharpened their minds and renovated their hearts by learning from and arguing against books. They burned with intensity as they tried to convey what past authors and artists were trying to say.
The teachers welcomed us into a great conversation, traditions of dispute stretching back to Aeschylus, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, Clifford Odets. They held up visions of excellence, people who had seen farther and deeper, such as Augustine, Sylvia Plath and Richard Wright. They introduced us to the range of moral ecologies that have been built over the centuries and come down as sets of values by which we can choose to live — stoicism, Buddhism, romanticism, rationalism, Marxism, liberalism, feminism.
The message was that all of us could improve our taste and judgment by becoming familiar with what was best — the greatest art, philosophy, literature and history. And this journey toward wisdom was a lifelong affair.
Overlong quote here, but there wasn't a lot I could trim. The idea of The Great Conversation is something I don't ever remember hearing about, despite the fact that I managed to pick up two English literature adjacent degrees. Most of my professors weren't passionate about the authors they were teaching, it was just what was on the syllabus, or a blob or words to practice whatever school of criticism they wanted to talk about. On the occasions that they did care about them, it was mostly vaguely creepy fanboyish adoration. I'm convinced my Am Lit II prof wanted nothing more than to screw Emily Dickinson (after which she'd probably kill him). The idea that studying these works would help us be better people, that artists throughout the ages built on each other, and that we could possibly do the same wasn't mentioned. When I was in undergrad, we couldn't be smart enough to do that, because we were sitting there as students (and therefore idiots), and all human progress had stopped 20 or 30 years ago (conveniently around when most of them had gotten their doctorates...)
In grad school... I don't really think anyone thought any art was great in grad school. Art was a vehicle to make money, or to reinforce a political viewpoint. The idea of art for art's sake, or even for the sake of trying to look at humanity as a whole, would be like saying you were going to try to better understand humanity by being a telemarketer: possible, but not the primary goal.
The universe is a silent, colorless place. It’s just waves and particles out there. But by using our imaginations, we construct colors and sounds, tastes and stories, drama, laughter, joy and sorrow.
I don't have anything to add. This is just a great quote. Maybe I'll print it out.
Again, the single best part of T5FSOB is the idea that anyone, with a little work, can become a better person. So much of our society today seemingly exists to prove that you're a piece of shit just for breathing, and anything that counteracts that is worth sharing.
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