Art and lies, damned lies

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I enjoy reading insightful and provocative commentary. But how do I know a piece of writing deserves such accolades? Often because its ideas mirror my own.

Case in point: I just stumbled across this interesting passage in the book “The Immortalist.”

Martin Buber said that “The lie is the specific evil which man has introduced into nature.” Why evil necessarily? Lying helps us to deal with an unsatisfactory reality. Its purpose is to improve somebody’s chances of surviving.

Lying as a device of survival? I made the same point in my piece “The Devil Paints” in which I argued the skills of deception were rewarded by evolution. I stated:

Some years ago I read about one scientist’s observation that the world of birds was full of deception. The primary example was a breed of birds who would use a high-pitched squeal to warn each other when predators were lurking. Birdwatchers observing this breed began noticing that if an individual bird found a bush rich with berries, he or she would emanate this squeal. The other birds would fly off in fear and this bird could eat all the berries for him/herself. Thus, this bird was more likely to survive and pass his or her genes on through reproduction.

But as time went on, the other birds started to figure out the trick. They realized that they had to be a little more critical every time they heard this squeal. And, as these birds wised up, they increased their chance for survival and thus passing on their genes. So the trickster birds had to get even more clever in their tricks, and the birds being tricked had to get even smarter. As such, trickery was essential to these birds evolving into more intelligent creatures.

It’s not hard to extrapolate this anecdote to human beings — we too have used deception to increase our odds for survival. And in fact, lying, or at least glossing over the truth, is still part of our mating ritual. A guy buys a fancy car to imply that he has a big bank account and can easily provide for a mate. Women use makeup and hair products to maintain the look of youth, youth being ideal for childbearing. Duping someone into sleeping with you is a great way to ensure that your genes last another generation. (I’ve long blamed all my romantic failures on the fact that I am inherently an honest person.)

From there I argued that these skills for deception were used in the creation of art.

So how does this relate to art? Well, art is a kind of deception. Let’s look at the written word, particularly fiction. Fiction is largely the act of describing events that never actually happened. Fiction is lies, albeit well-intentioned lies. As evolution rewarded good liars, it was helping propagate the genes capable of writing good fiction.

And check this out, dawg. “The Immortalist” makes the same point a few paragraphs after the one I quoted above.

Reflecting upon is, the lie is an amazing device. To think that members of our race should actually go to so much trouble as to invent what does not exist. Consider the provocation, the enormous anxiety weighing on our species for thousands of years, that could produce such an extraordinary breakthrough as the decision to reject one reality and substitute another. Of course it was the same dimly realized obsession that created our myths and poetry.

Myths and poetry my friends. That’s what it’s all about.

Our obsession with accomplishment

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I continue to read Alan Harrington’s “The Immortalist.” One of the books argument is that man, faced with the modern observation that god is dead, tries to achieve immortality by becoming famous, thus ensuring that he (man, not god) will not be forgotten. We do this not consciously, of course; this drive for celebrity and status is buried somewhere in the nether-regions of the subconscious. This leads to a certain kind of craziness as Harrington notes in one paragraph:

Middle-class people in particular have always competed for the god’s notice, but today, with religious authority on the wane, this competition has become frantic, in some arenas unbearable so. We have a merciless obsession with accomplishment. Millions are caught up in the neurotic new faith that a human being must succeed or die. For such individuals it is not enough to enjoy life, or simply do a good job or be a good person. No, the main project, pushing all other concerns in the background, is to make a name that the gods will recognize.

I have to say this summarizes my internal battles explicitly. On one hand I derive pleasure by obtaining skills—musicianship, writing, drawing, speaking foreign languages, being a skilled lover etc.—but other the other I realize the fruitlessness of it all. These skill have little value in the job marketplace, they are only good for generating a certain kind of respect. But why earn respect? I suppose Harrington would argue because on some level I feel it will lead to some form of immortality. But if that is a false belief, as it almost certainly is, shouldn’t I just chill out and enjoy life?

He has an interesting phrase in there: “succeed or die.” It sounds very Darwinian. I would if this human obsession with skills and accomplishment became stronger after Darwin put forth his “survival of the fittest” theory?

The nature of work

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There’s a book that came out recently arguing that people are working more than ever and this is causing a rise in anxiety. It certainly seems a sound premise. But I’ve seen few rebuttals saying, no, people are in fact not working more than ever, we actually have more free time. And, when you think about all these stories you’ve heard about people in 1750 getting up at 6 a.m. and working on the farm until dusk it also sounds true. People of the past did not live leisurely lives.

Can both statements be true? I think, in a sense, yes. It comes down to how we work. In the past, you might work a lot but it was a fairly uninterrupted process – you woke up, knew what you were going to do and did it. You might be working a lot but there was a certain flow to it. Nowadays, you might start to work on editing a Word doc, then you get an email saying there’s an emergency and you have to track down a powerpoint doc, then you finish that and you have to get the kids to soccer practice, the you got back to the Word doc and 20 minutes later you need to answer another email, then a call comes in… etc. I’m overstating for dramatic effect, but you get the picture. Though you may be working less in pure volume of hours, it’s a harried, distracted kind of process. And one that probably takes more cognitive energy than running tasks on a farm 15 hours a day.

I have at certain points in my life been in situations where the entire day was spent doing computer work (often for weeks at a time). I would wake up, sit down at the computer and be there all day, aside from eating and bathroom breaks. It sounds awful and in some ways it was but you brain achieves a certain kind of clarity. You can basically ignore all distractions, phone calls email etc. There’s really something almost meditative about that state.

The Immortalist

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I recently stumbled across a rather interesting looking book: The Immortalist, written by Alan Harrington in 1969. I’ve just started reading it and it seems to be a treatise on the idea that man should be making a furtive effort to live forever (or at least a really long time.) By googling the book, I’ve gathered that The Immortalist is considered essential reading by the movement known as trans-humanism, which is dedicated to the effort of transcending the limits of our biological state.

But this is not some dreary science tome full of calculations and chemical compounds. In the first chapter, Harrington lists what he believes are the various psychological strategies man has employed to avoid confronting the finality of death. (Religion is an obvious one, but also hedonism, fame and destruction of the ego.) I don’t quite know what to think about the content but the writing crackles. Check out this passage in which he argues that the modern* youth culture—rock clubs and discotheques, LSD etc.—is all about overwhelming the senses to create an “eternal now” (and thus obliviate an awareness of our impending doom.)

* Modern at the time I mean; late sixties.

…all this too amounts to one more attempt to hide from the end—by substituting Dionysian togetherness for romance, and a bombardment of the senses, lightworks of the soul, a sort of electronic Buddhism in place of sequential perception. The use of kinetic environment as an art form removes death, creating the illusion of an Eternal Now—an illusion in that it seems to guarantee eternal youth, which, of course, is what this generation is really after.

This actually ties in with something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve always felt something of prisoner of time. I hate deadlines and I get anxious when I have only limited time to get somewhere. But I know many people who seem to have the opposite problem; they seem oblivious to how long things take and are thus often late or have to skip activities altogether. There does seems to be a brain component to our ability to understand time. (Neuroscientist David Eagleman has done a lot of work on this subject.) And, as Harrington argues, overwhelming our senses (with drugs, loud music and bright lights) seems to knock out that component, thereby creating a kind of “eternal now.”)

Do we force the real world into being a “just world”?

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First of all, I’m back in the saddle again so to speak. Was out of town for several weeks and neglected blogging.

While away I read most of a book I’ve been meaning to tackle: “Brainwashed – The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.” It’s a book coming from the “neuroskeptic” school—a viewpoint arguing that many of the claims neuroscience makes are inflated. It’s hard to argue with that basic point; you do see seemingly unlikely predictions coming out of neuroscience (and science) all the time. But that said, I find the book rather mushy. I just read through the chapter on free will and found it hard to follow the arguments. Sam Harris’s eBook called “Free Will” seems more cogently argued. (He argues against the existence of free will, the opposite view of “Brainwashed.”)

The free will chapter did have an interesting anecdote about Martin Lerner, a sociologist who developed the idea that people like to believe in a “just world hypothesis” (e.g. that the good are rewarded and the bad punished.) It seems a harmless enough delusion, but what if we alter our perception of the world to map it to a just world. And in doing so, what if we presume people who suffer deserve to suffer? The book states…

In one of his seminal experiments, Lerner asked subjects to observe a ten-minute video of a fellow student as she underwent a learning experiment involving memory. The student was strapped into an apparatus sprouting electrode leads and allegedly received a painful shock whenever she answered a question incorrectly (she was not receiving real shocks, of course, but believably feigned distress as if she were). Next, the researchers split the observers into groups. One was to vote on whether to remove the victim from the apparatus and reward her with money for correct answers. All but one voted to rescue her. The experimenters told another group of observers that the victim would continue to receive painful shocks; there was no option for compensation. When asked to evaluate the victim at this point, subjects in the victim-compensated condition rated her more favorably (e.g. more “attractive,” more “admirable”) than did subjects in the victim-uncompensated condition, in which the victim’s suffering was greater.)

I think it’s possible to extrapolate too much from these kinds of experiments, but this does kind of jibe with my sense of the world. We see someone suffering for whom we can do nothing and as a result we lower our opinion of them, basically saying, “sucks to be you!”

Ha! Humans are scum!

Is artistic skill really about measurement ability?

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Artistic skill is certainly a mystery. Some people struggle to paint or act or play the piano. Myself, I’ve struggled with music and writing and a few other skills. Let me tell you: progress has been slow coming.

I’m thinking about two friends of mine. One was a guy I knew in high school. I was in a band with him though he was a mediocre musician. He was, however, a great tennis player. I think he was ranked in the top ten of the state (Hawaii) for his age group.

I learned that after high school he took up painting and very quickly became a professional. To this day he makes his living as a visual artist. He’s had great success despite the fact that when I knew him he had zero interest in the field.

My second friend was someone I also met during my high school years. At the time, he was already a great pianist, songwriter and visual artist.

I don’t want to say these talents came “easy” to these guys but they definitely seemed to have had a head start. They hit the ground running so to speak. So what could that advantage be? I’m posing an interesting theory here: Artistic skill is really an ability to measure.

Think about it. A lot of art is actually about measuring certain kinds of distances. This is most obvious in drawing and painting and other visual arts. You draw a person and the head looks too big for the body and people aren’t impressed. You sculpt a figure and one arm is too short and the work looks ugly. To do a good job with (representational) art every element needs to be sized correctly in relation to the other elements.

With music, the role of measurement is a little trickier. Consider this though: it’s not uncommon to find people who really seem to play by feel… they just reach for the note they want and it’s there even if they can’t explain how they know how to find it. I suspect that if you have a refined ear (particularly if you have perfect pitch) you develop a sense of how far notes are away from each other on the musical scale (which is really just a tool to standardize certain sound vibrations to pitches.) You may not know the terminology that a certain note is a major third away from another but you “know” it on an unconscious level. Then you pick up an instrument and quickly learn that to get “this” music interval you move this finger from here to there, and to get “that” one you perform a different move.

I myself have long struggled with music; I don’t think I have any kind of “magic” ears. But occasionally even I have found myself locating notes or chords via this intuitive process.

What does this have to do with my two friends? Well, I mentioned that the first one was a great tennis player. Tennis is also about distance measurement—where is the ball in three dimensional space? I wonder if the measuring skills honed in tennis could be applied to visual art? And with my second friend: could his twin skills— art and music— support each other? Is his real talent not so much drawing or playing piano, but gauging kinds of distances?

Part of what got me thinking about this is looking at myself. I recently, after 20 years, got back into drawing. I’m not great (Here’s some samples.) but what I find is that drawing is much easier than I remember it being. I used to take a stab at drawing something—say, a muscular male superhero—and it would take a few tries to get something passable. (And my female figures fucking SUCKED!) Now I find myself hitting something decent on the first try.

Like I said, I haven’t practiced art for years. But what have I been doing? Music, in particular, playing guitar and piano. Has that practice been building up a larger skill—measuring—that I’m now applying to art. Maybe. Who knows?

I think I’m going to do some drawing.

Caught on tape

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Readers may recall my piece on Michelle Shocked a while back. Shocked, at the time, had just been recorded making controversial comments about gays during a performance in San Francisco. The audio of her comments went viral and denunciation was swift. Her career, if not ruined, was certainly wounded. (Resurrection, of course, is not uncommon in the music biz.)

I was reminded of this when the Donald Serling scandal popped up. He too was recorded, though this time while on what he presumed to be a private phone call. His racist comments have now been heard by millions and he lives in infamy.

Slightly related to this: Rapper Jay Z being caught on tape being attacked by his sister in law. Or Mitt Romney’s caught-on-tape comments about the 47 percent.

In all this cases there was not necessarily the assumption of privacy but I don’t think any of the victims thought their words or deeds would be observed by millions.

The L.A. Times has an interesting article on the topic. In closing, the author observes that we can spy on our fellows easily now. And we are facing the death of privacy.

You can be a flaneur now without leaving the house. Without your shoes on! Voyeurism is clickable. Our curiosity and digital technology have come together to produce a beast.

The beast is nimble, able to leap duplex walls or suspend itself, like the hero of an action movie, above the heads of famous people in elevators.

The beast is everywhere. The invasion of privacy has been democratized. Governments do it. Google and Facebook do it. V. Stiviano and hotel security cameras do it.

For most of us average joes, the threat of being constantly on tape doesn’t matter all that much. If someone recorded Wil Forbis making racist statements, I doubt they’d be able to find a media outlet to air the tape. But I think we may be entering an era where something we say—at a party for example—is recorded without our knowledge and then shared with our boss, our significant other, or posted to our facebook page for all our friends to hear. Basically the Serling situation on a smaller scale. And at that point we have to ask ourselves whether everything we say in confidence is sterile enough to avoid the judgment of our peers.

In my case, the answer is absolutely a big, fat, fucking no.

Good teacher, bad person?

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Andrew Sullivan has an interesting post on the fact that college students are rejecting their commencement speakers with a seeming newfound vigor. Their reasons are usually an objection to the proposed speaker’s political views or actions. Sullivan quotes another author who says:

The entire point of college is to be exposed to different things: Different types of people, different ideas—and maybe some of those people will hail from organizations that negatively impacted poor countries, or maybe they were partly responsible for a war that ate up the country’s resources and resulted in human rights abuses and lots of needless death. But if, at the end of your time as an undergrad, you haven’t learned that oftentimes you find great wisdom in shitty people, or just that there might be some value in hearing what someone you don’t like or respect might have to say, what on earth have you learned?

“…oftentimes you find great wisdom in shitty people…” Boy, ain’t that the truth.

Reminds me of an old lyric of mine.

You say I’m a hypocrite
Well, I’ll pay that price
Listen up fellow because sometimes hypocrites
Give the best advice

Uncomfortable truths

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I’ve been admittedly lax in blogging and will continue to be so for a while. I’ve gotten caught up in learning some cartoon animation software and it has grabed my focus.

That said, I’ve been interested in the discussion that’s risen over NY TImes Science writer Nicholas Wade’s book, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History.” As many have stated, Wade is arguing two things: There is such a thing as race and humans have been continually evolving up to present day.

When stated as such, it’s hard to see what the fuss is about. Most people, egalitarian platitudes aside, buy into the premise of race as a useful dividing line. Few people, for example, are oblivious to the race of an actor or celebrity. But what Wade is noting is that people have variations of genes specific to their race. Race is more than skin deep. (See here, particularly the seventh paragraph, for more on this.) If we accept that our behavior is influenced by our genes (which I think is the prevailing view though there are dissenters) then we open ourselves up to the idea that different races have different behavior tendencies. For example, a tendency towards increased violence. And, if we accept that intelligence has a genetic factor then we open ourselves up to the notions that certain races will be statistically “smarter” than others, and you know what a can of worms that is.

It’s interesting that this book came along when it did. A couple months ago I stumbled across discussion of the HBD movement. These are people who argue in favor of “human biodiversity” – the notion that there’s qualitative variation in our genes and these lead to variation in our behavior and traits. When stated in that fashion it generates at best a yawn from most people. But what’s really being said here is that some people are smarter, more violent, less sociable, more empathic, etc. than others. It drives a sword into the heart of the “everyone is equal” sentiments found (usually) on the left.

I have to say, when you nose around in HDB web sites like this one, you don’t have to look hard to come across commenters who have a disconcerting zeal when they advocate recognizing racial differences. That said, there’s some thought provoking ideas there.

I don’t really have a conclusion here other than I want to follow the debate. I haven’t read any of the criticisms of Wade’s book so far, so I’m relatively unlearned on the topic. But I do think science has a way of revealing uncomfortable truths.

Silence your emotions!

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Several years ago I wrote a blog post that argued that we cannot trust our feelings. (I can’t seem to track that damn post down, however, so no link.) This viewpoint—the distrust of emotion—is at odds with beliefs prominent in our society and especially our entertainment. Think of Obi-Kenobi telling Luke to trust his feelings. Of the general hippy adage “If it feels good, do it.” (I’m not sure a hippy ever actually said that.) Modern society still is in the throes of European Romanticism. We still want to believe feeling something means that it is true.

For myself, over the past couple years, I’ve been moving away from that belief. It simply isn’t hard to catch your feelings lying to you and quite often—telling you that you’ve been slighted when you haven’t, that you’re afraid when there’s really no need etc.

I’ve been reading an interesting book entitled “Emotional Awareness.” It is a transcribed converstaion between the Dalai Lama and Paul Ekman, a psychologist. At one point Ekman says:

When most people experience an emotion or act emotionally, they are not conscious of doing so. They could not tell you, because they do not know themselves, “What I am doing now is acting fearful,” or, “acting angry.” It is not that they are unconscious. But they are not observing themselves and realizing, Maybe that really is a coiled rope and not a snake, and I do not need to be so afraid. To be conscious of that, we would have to acquire this ability which nature does not give us.

In essence, Ekman is arguing we need to learn to see the past the deceptions of our emotions. I find this view, so contrary to Romanticism, interesting and appealing. I might even say, “It feels right.” 😉