99 seats asks:
We’re not all a bunch of dirty hippies out here in the arts world. I know that. There are conservatives, libertarians, LaRouchites in the arts world. So, maybe, your political philosophy is that the government shouldn’t be involved in the arts. [...] The thing I hate the most about the conservatives in the arts is their cowardice. I know it seems like you’re outnumbered and that’s a sucky place to be. Ask any liberal how it feels to be different. But stand up for your fucking selves and speak up. I make no bones about about a dyed-in-the-wool liberal and I know it shows up in my work. I’m okay with that. It drives me crazy that the conservatives in our community hide what they think and believe, hide behind a facade. If you think that government involvement in the arts is bad, then say so. Upfront.
Well, see, here’s an odd thing. By most measures, I’m an undoubted liberal. At my former place of employment, my coworkers regularly (but, I like to think, affectionately) called me the “dirty hippie”. It was practically my title.
The thing is: I think that government involvement in the arts is bad.
I’ve mentioned this in the context of other arguments, but it’s worth stating more directly: I think fighting for the NEA is probably the wrong fight. I think government support for the arts is, under most circumstances, a bad idea.
The reason boils down to this:
The arts are not necessary.
Yeah, I went there: Not necessary. Water? Necessary. Food? Necessary. Medical care when we’re sick? Necessary. Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck? Not necessary. Awesome play, but not necessary.
At least, not necessary in a way that anyone has ever been able to make clear. Even when really smart people try really hard, the most they can say is that the arts might provide some instrumental benefits sorta kinda like other things that probably do the job better, but we’re not really sure.
Most of my life I’ve wanted the arts to be necessary. I had it in my little American heart that, since all necessary things are also worthwhile, all worthwhile things must also be necessary. That’s a big mistake. For deeply worthwhile human activity (like the arts), it obligates one to build arguments that may not be true, in order to prove the connection back to “necessary”. At the very least, it puts you in the unforgiving position of pitting the necessity of the arts against the necessity of, say, roads.
Here’s the breakdown as I see it:
It’s obviously an idealization, as it shows the government doing only necessary, worthwhile things. Chuckle chuckle. But this is why I think the government’s role in the arts should be relatively small, to the tune of that little red rectangle up there. It is super hard to argue that government should be traipsing off into “worthwhile but unnecessary” territory, when there is so much necessary territory left unmet. It’s more than super hard; it’s a bad idea.
These conclusions are, for me, a recent development. I’ve only come to them in the last six months or so. In some ways it was a scary jump. But the result was both liberating and, unexpectedly, empowering. Liberating because suddenly I have no obligation to trace a torturous path back from “the arts are incredibly important” to “the arts are incredibly necessary”. The former can be true without the latter, and boy does it feel good to drop the dead weight of trying to prove the latter.
The result was also empowering, because necessity carries a price: the price of inevitability. A necessary act is an inevitable one. You will eat today because you must eat today. You will sleep tonight because you must sleep tonight. Necessary means inescapable, and inescapable means the universe is imposing itself on you.
But art! Oh, but precious, unnecessary art! It is escapable, and that is was makes it so special. If you sing today, it is not because you had to sing. If you dance today, you did not have to dance. You have the power to impose on the universe. You may do the unnecessary. That’s where things get human, and that, in an ironic way, is where things start to matter the most: right past the line where I’m comfortable arguing for government funding.
15 Comments
Right back at ya.
http://99seats.blogspot.com/2009/09/necessary.html
Okay, whatever. But for me, life without art would not be worth living. Therefore art is necessary.
@Thomas: An observation that has a tenuous relationship to the topic at hand, namely, government policy for the masses.
Uh – no more tenuous than your own argument, it seems to me.
You wrote:
“I think government support for the arts is, under most circumstances, a bad idea. The reason boils down to this: The arts are not necessary.”
To paraphrase, my reply was essentially:
“I think government support for the arts is, under most circumstances, a good idea. The reason boils down to this: The arts are necessary.”
You also wrote:
“But art! Oh, but precious, unnecessary art! It is escapable, and that is was makes it so special. If you sing today, it is not because you had to sing. If you dance today, you did not have to dance.”
To which I’d like to add:
“But nuclear weapons! Oh, but precious, unnecessary nuclear weapons! They are escapable, and that’s what makes them so special. If you build a nuclear weapon today, it is not because you had to. If you test a nuclear weapon today, you did not have to test one.”
Or how about:
“But new highways! Oh, but precious, unnecessary new highways! They are escapable, and that’s what makes them so special. If you build a new highway today, it is not because you had to.”
I think you get the idea.
In 99′s original call for a conversation he asked for those of us who disagree on the question of government support of the arts to say so clearly. The above is my attempt to say so clearly, with a rough sketch of the reasons and what I see as the consequences.
I wasn’t directly making the case that the arts have a weak claim on a utilitarian necessity. That case has already been made, e.g., in the link that I provided for your reading pleasure. Here it is in full:
http://createquity.com/2009/07/arts-policy-library-gifts-of-muse.html
If you’re going to make a counter-claim that the arts are necessary, it’d be nice to at least provide a similar reference, preferably that addresses the many challenging questions raised by that research.
Although, if you’re taking the position that highways are unnecessary, it may be a challenge to find common ground here.
To answer my own question, here’s a starting point for making the case for the necessity of the arts:
http://createquity.com/2009/04/deconstructing-richard-florida.html
Also:
http://createquity.com/2009/05/reconstructing-florida.html
(Apparently Createquity is my new favoritist blog evar.)
I’d heard of Richard Florida’s ideas through a friend, but they are basically new to me. Totally fascinating stuff, and I’m really interested to dig deeper. It’s certainly the most promising premise I’ve heard for why the arts could be necessary in a way worthy of governmental support.
I’m not actually interested in making a utilitarian claim for the arts, strong or weak, because utilitarianism itself exists as a subset of the forms of meaning created by the arts. To make a utilitarian argument for art would be a bit like making a utilitarian argument for life.
Yeah, I hear what you’re saying, and I can sense the freedom that letting go of the “necessary” label holds. However, what a slippery word “necessary” is. As Thomas Garvey says, are nuclear weapons “Necessary”? Education? Highways? The fact is that much of the world gets by without those things, so how can they be “necessary”? That is a word that is defined by a culture. True necessity would be the bottom row of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis, excretion. That’s a pretty narrow slice of reality. But government does more than that. It is focused on increasing the public welfare.
I’m running out the door for rehearsal in a few minutes, so I’m going to pound out a response super-fast and hope I don’t mangle my ideas TOO badly:
It’s an important and worthwhile point about the meaning of “necessary”. The concept is, as you say, defined by a cultural context and in practice it is rarely a truly binary condition.
So, yes, I accept that “necessary” is in reality a sliding scale of priorities, and that assigning necessity is better modeled as assigning a position on that scale. Some stuff is clearly at the top of the list, and some stuff is clearly at the bottom, and then there’s a lot of room for debate in the middle.
Also, as you say, the scale is defined by the cultural context. The necessity of paved highways changes in the context of a culture where the wheel has not yet been invented.
But the question of cultural context is not, I think, all that relevant, because the only one that matters is the one we’re in right now. Since “necessity” can’t be absolute across time and space, then we’re not talking about some platonic ideal of necessity, and the next most obvious answer about context is: here and now.
Which leaves us trying to figure out where the arts fall on the scale in America right now. Where do we place them relative to roads and medical care and social security and schools and the armed forces in our society right now?
I submit that, right now, we have very weak reason to put them anywhere near the high end of the scale. I submit that in our current cultural context, with our current set of evidence, I feel really uncomfortable arguing for public money for the arts when our health care system is so broken. That (and other things) are so insanely far up the priority scale that, to me, the arts effectively fall into “unnecessary” territory, when it comes to Government Priorities. When it comes to Personal Priorities, well, that’s another matter. But I’m just talking about the government right now.
It’s worth noting that this perspective leaves the door open for this status to change. I’m not saying the arts are always and forever unnecessary in the eyes of the government. Just that in the current context they don’t really qualify.
Switching gears just slightly:
>I’m not actually interested in making a utilitarian claim for the arts
Well, that’s fine, but I’m not sure if any other kind of claim belongs in the realm of public policy. It could be other kinds do, but I don’t presently see it. I don’t have time to try to expound on this point, but if it’s worth an attempt I’ll try later.
I don’t think anyone would argue that the arts are more important than health care or social security or schools, or even as important. But there are huge swaths of government spending in areas like, say, military bands or scientific research into obscure areas or providing subsidies for US corporations. How would you put the arts in terms of those things?
I expect I’d judge the arts to be more important than some things on which the government already spends money. So I’d prioritize the dissolution of some government programs over others, certainly, but that wouldn’t mean I’d give the arts a free pass.
Tough and equitable love, man. Tough and equitable love.
Chris, very little in the government budget is really defensible under strict utilitarian terms. Keeping old people alive, who merely consume resources, is really just sentimental, isn’t it? Yes, it is – far more sentimental than funding a high school orchestra, trust me. Maintaining a nuclear strike force that could destroy the entire planet is – well, actually, isn’t that simply insane? And I wonder, seriously – what exactly is the Dept. of “Defense” defending us from? An invasion from Mexico or Canada? Something tells me their budgets are not driven by utilitarian arguments, either. So, now that we’ve disposed of Medicare, Social Security, and the Defense budget, I think that leaves us with something like 80% of the budget to devote to the arts. NOW you can begin making those tough, but equitable arguments for them.
Or how about making tough and equitable calls for all the irresponsible spending, instead of deciding that billions of “wrongs” eventually do make a “right”?
I know it ain’t real practical, but I keep getting hung up on these “principle” things. Wish I could just get rid of those. It’d make life so much easier.
And for the record, I can’t tell if you’re trolling me or seriously proposing that old people are worthless. I’m wildly unsympathetic to either position.
As an old person, I thank you.
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