Tolerance vs. Diversity and why Art can be Valuable - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14803096
The real reason that traditions often espoused the merits of tolerance (but not the merits of diversity) is because if you can tolerate other people's viewpoints, you can avoid needing to come to grips with their unique cognitive dissonance and you can also avoid making mistakes that could be related to cognitive dissonance you have but might not be aware of. There is nothing uglier than a clash between two people's cognitive dissonance.

Societies need tolerance to continue peacefully, or even to trade with others but they don't need "diversity". Diversity is really just putting the "cart before the horse" in regards to tolerance -- people assume that since tolerance has personal and economic value, circumstances that require tolerance (diversity) must be inherently good. The fact that diversity has become its own end goal in the socially imploding west (at least in regards to most of western Europe), often with horrible results, speaks to the fact that creating a situation in which extreme tolerance is necessary was not a good idea. Tolerance can be a reaction to things we can't change and a way to better ourselves but to confuse a treatment with the absence of a problem is a mistake. We aren't tolerant because needing to be tolerant has inherent value, we're tolerant because it's a way of coping with things that we can't fix and ameliorating not just the hubris of other people but also our own hubris.

Tolerance then is a reaction to diversity, and often a positive one but a person shouldn't get into the habit of hurting themselves because they enjoy the cure. There will always be people who say "I am tolerant, I like everyone except those who disagree with me" while living in a bubble of their own creation, then going around trying to burst other people's bubbles because it amuses them (and makes them confident in the strength of their own bubble) but panicking if someone tries to do it back at them. It is probably better to avoid, as the saying goes, sinking to their level.

I think it is also worth mentioning that since everyone has fundamentally unique aspects to themselves, the society in which tolerance is not needed because everyone in the same is fundamentally unattainable. This is another reason to promote the "cure" of tolerance without also promoting the "disease" of diversity. A person ultimately needs to find harmless surrogate or recreational activities that don't involve going after other people, or creating problems in an endless loop of "deliberately created problem + self-fulfilling prophecy as cure = more problem" just because it distracts you from seeing your own flaws and justifies your hunger to seek power over others.

One thing that art does is it can encourage a lack of diversity (through the promulgation of culture) without necessarily attacking others. In doing so the "cure" of tolerance becomes less necessary but not due to hostile action. It also gives people who may not have an immediate survival goal something that they can focus upon. Unfortunately, many hostile people who generate "cognitive dissonance loops" as I described earlier are failed artists. I personally believe that an artist doesn't fail because they are "bad" but because they actually failed to reject their own hunger for power over others. Real art can be a social experience. If they had more patience (or a greater capacity for tolerance) then art for art's sake (and not the kind that disparages people of other viewpoints) would have been good enough for them. It might be said that the end goal of both the artist and the martial ideologue are the same and the difference is only in their capacities for forms of aggression vs. their capacity for real tolerance.
Last edited by Hong Wu on 07 May 2017 21:05, edited 1 time in total.
#14803102
Say what?

I thought art was a way to use one's unique experience to encourage people to think outside the box. Diversity is a disease? Then uniformity is a norm?

Diversity is the result of different cultures meeting on one stage or at a common meeting area where they intersect for a period of time. Without diversity it would be like a world with only the color gray.

As an aside, I had to wear a uniform at one of my old schools and I hated it. It made me feel like a bot.
#14803104
Art that is meant to "make people think outside of the box" presumes that art is about "social change" which is just a presumption that the society needs change (is bad), which ultimately goes back to the idea that diversity (aka, anything but our default) must be good. It indicates that someone thinks that something is wrong and needs changing. But change for the sake of change merely indicates the existence of a problem, endless change cannot be the cure, it is only a distraction.

Also, gray is my favorite color because it makes no pretense and says nothing in a world where everyone acts like they have the cure and colors are printed out of machines but hold no meaning anymore.

Also, feeling like a "bot" only makes you feel bad because you feel inadequate in some way and want to ameliorate this through an external expression of uniqueness, also perhaps because you don't want to encourage uniformity due to the aforementioned conclusion that the existing society must be inadequate somehow. The truth is that people who wear the same clothes are still individuals just as much as people who wear different clothes. The difference is not in their "individuality" but in their relationship towards unity.
#14803106
Hong Wu wrote:Art that is meant to "make people think outside of the box" presumes that art is about "social change" which is just a presumption that the society needs change (is bad), which ultimately goes back to the idea that diversity (aka, anything but our default) must be good. It indicates that someone thinks that something is wrong and needs changing. But change for the sake of change merely indicates the existence of a problem, endless change cannot be the cure, it is only a distraction.

Also, gray is my favorite color because it makes no pretense and says nothing in a world where everyone acts like they have the cure and colors are printed out of machines but hold no meaning anymore.


Some of the most famous art has been about social change or just making a statement like Picasso's Guernica. Art that says something is better than art that is just a blob of paint or a bowl of fruit on the table.

My favorite color is blue, it calms me.
#14803109
MistyTiger wrote:Some of the most famous art has been about social change or just making a statement like Picasso's Guernica. Art that says something is better than art that is just a blob of paint or a bowl of fruit on the table.

My favorite color is blue, it calms me.

"Makes a statement" can mean anything, not necessarily something that is hostile towards the culture it came out of. I personally prefer Van Gogh's "Starry Night" because it is beautiful without trying too hard. It isn't trying to say anything political, it says something different perhaps to each person who views it. To a strictly technical-minded person, or someone who views art as a weapon for cowards, that makes it worthless. But maybe there is a good reason we are drawn to that kind of art while things like "Guernica" never reach the same level of esteem.
#14823246
@Hong Wu @MistyTiger

There is room for both types of art. Art that is meant for social change is just as important as art for art's sake or art for beauty. Art meant for social change is important because it is meant for the progression of society as a whole and during periods of social stagnation is necessary for society to develop. Art meant for beauty is important because it allows us to become lost in the world of the artwork and gives us comfort. Both types of art give us ideas and accelerate the mind. To consider one type to be better than the other is ridiculous and would be just as successful as trying to remove a core component of human nature.
#14823297
All Americans share the same American culture and they are educated to think in a certain way about foreign countries. I don't think promoting African art in America will solve the race problem but getting familiar with Russian culture would help them overcome Russophobia. If the Americans become more tolerant toward the Russians, the US media would cease to be so hysterical about President Trump's suspected ties to Russia.

#14823384
Hong Wu wrote:I think it is also worth mentioning that since everyone has fundamentally unique aspects to themselves, the society in which tolerance is not needed because everyone in the same is fundamentally unattainable. This is another reason to promote the "cure" of tolerance without also promoting the "disease" of diversity...I personally believe that an artist doesn't fail because they are "bad" but because they actually failed to reject their own hunger for power over others. Real art can be a social experience.


Postmodernist-feeling-mongering claptrap.

Art is a weapon.

Michael Gold wrote:Art is a weapon and always social. There is a reason why art in some eras do well that would fail in others.

Art, the Bolsheviks say, is useful or it is nothing. It springs from the life of the masses. It shapes the thought of the masses; is their expression, their daily accompaniment. It is not the monopoly of a few—it is shared, like the land and the factories, by everyone who labors. Art is no more an idle pastime than science; it is as necessary.

Art is a weapon in Soviet Russia. With mass recitations, plays, pageants, and great singing choruses the Bolshevik artists teach history and economics on a vast scale and weld the masses into firmer solidarity of the revolutionary emotions. "Our palettes are the public squares, our canvasses are the cities," chanted Mayakovsky, one of the new poets. Painters have taken to designing textiles and buildings, and sculptors plan factories and communal apartment houses.Writers in Soviet Russia are closer to the masses than writers have ever been since the distant primitive days when Homer chanted his own compositions from Greek city to city. They write like participants of the daily life in fields and factories and union halls; and they are well loved and understood. Mayakovsky, a great poet, has sold three million copies if his works; his chants are on everone's lips...

...No one need offer any dogmas or definitions as to what is workers' art. The fact is, it exists.


And this wasn't just in the Soviet sphere when, later, Trotsky and Stalin would endlessly argue about art.

The CIA used art as a weapon:

The Independent wrote:The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US.
#14823392
Hong Wu wrote:Art that is meant to "make people think outside of the box" presumes that art is about "social change" which is just a presumption that the society needs change (is bad), which ultimately goes back to the idea that diversity (aka, anything but our default) must be good. It indicates that someone thinks that something is wrong and needs changing. But change for the sake of change merely indicates the existence of a problem, endless change cannot be the cure, it is only a distraction.

Also, gray is my favorite color because it makes no pretense and says nothing in a world where everyone acts like they have the cure and colors are printed out of machines but hold no meaning anymore.

Also, feeling like a "bot" only makes you feel bad because you feel inadequate in some way and want to ameliorate this through an external expression of uniqueness, also perhaps because you don't want to encourage uniformity due to the aforementioned conclusion that the existing society must be inadequate somehow. The truth is that people who wear the same clothes are still individuals just as much as people who wear different clothes. The difference is not in their "individuality" but in their relationship towards unity.

Bruh you sound like the most boring person. Change is bad. Gray is your favorite color. Uniforms are awesome because they promote unity. You're like the weeaboo Mussolini.

One thing that art does is it can encourage a lack of diversity (through the promulgation of culture) without necessarily attacking others. In doing so the "cure" of tolerance becomes less necessary but not due to hostile action. It also gives people who may not have an immediate survival goal something that they can focus upon.

Wut. Since when do artists encourage a lack of diversity? And why is a lack of diversity intrinsically good just because an abundance of diversity is not intrinsically good? Seems like it makes more sense by your own logic that both are not intrinsically bad or good.

I personally believe that an artist doesn't fail because they are "bad" but because they actually failed to reject their own hunger for power over others. Real art can be a social experience. If they had more patience (or a greater capacity for tolerance) then art for art's sake (and not the kind that disparages people of other viewpoints) would have been good enough for them. It might be said that the end goal of both the artist and the martial ideologue are the same and the difference is only in their capacities for forms of aggression vs. their capacity for real tolerance.

Art is a business and thus successful artists are those that can sell their art. Obviously you've never had any experience trying to make a living or even gain some exposure as an artist, because you would realize that whether it is art for art's sake or political art, it's all about being able to sell the images that you have created. An artist that cannot sell is a hobbyist in our society. Or to be more universal, an artist without exposure is not an artist.

Really I would say that art can only be a social experience. If it is not social, then you will not sell it and you will not gain exposure, meaning you will not be an artist. You will just be some person that makes paintings or drawings or whathaveyou.
#14823426
ThirdTerm wrote:All Americans share the same American culture and they are educated to think in a certain way about foreign countries. I don't think promoting African art in America will solve the race problem but getting familiar with Russian culture would help them overcome Russophobia. If the Americans become more tolerant toward the Russians, the US media would cease to be so hysterical about President Trump's suspected ties to Russia.


It's normal for a Russian to think that the current strain of Russophobia has something to do with Russia, it actually has very little to do with Russia. Some people would rather have an excuse for losing an election than to ask themselves if routinely insulting the largest groups in America is hurting their electoral prospects. There are people of course who are genuinely upset with Russia because it has mostly moved on from Sovietism/Communism but most of the people taking the Russian thing into the mainstream are not educated enough to be interested in such things.
#14823427
LV-GUCCI-PRADA-FLEX wrote:Bruh you sound like the most boring person. Change is bad. Gray is your favorite color. Uniforms are awesome because they promote unity. You're like the weeaboo Mussolini.


Wut. Since when do artists encourage a lack of diversity? And why is a lack of diversity intrinsically good just because an abundance of diversity is not intrinsically good? Seems like it makes more sense by your own logic that both are not intrinsically bad or good.


Art is a business and thus successful artists are those that can sell their art. Obviously you've never had any experience trying to make a living or even gain some exposure as an artist, because you would realize that whether it is art for art's sake or political art, it's all about being able to sell the images that you have created. An artist that cannot sell is a hobbyist in our society. Or to be more universal, an artist without exposure is not an artist.

Really I would say that art can only be a social experience. If it is not social, then you will not sell it and you will not gain exposure, meaning you will not be an artist. You will just be some person that makes paintings or drawings or whathaveyou.

You are defining artist as a job, I think that most successful artists do not view it strictly in terms of whether they are selling enough to make a living from it and would be offended by the idea that "some person that makes paintings or drawings" is not an artist because the market isn't sufficiently supporting their work. It seems to me as if you lack some fundamental understandings about art, even TIG's reduction of art as a weapon is more sophisticated than what you wrote here.

It is not unheard of for people's art to become famous some time after their death. Would you say that the person was not an artist because they didn't achieve economic success while they were alive?

Actually your opinion is exactly what I was criticizing... you say art is about sales, exposure, social experience, in other words you think art is about power but I view that kind of art as a weapon for cowards, it is not what I consider real art which has a dimension to it that is unconcerned with the material things you are fixating on.

I'm currently reading a Russian science fiction novel, Metro 2034. I read somewhere that the author gave the first book in the trilogy (Metro 2033) away for free. Was he not an artist before people were paying for his writing? In the story there's a character who likes a painting on the back of a tea bag because it's basically a relic (it's a post-apocalyptic novel), the person who drew the picture for the tea bag is described as a "failed artist" but if it means something to someone, I don't think it could be considered a failure, even if that person is only yourself.
#14823466
I agree with LV's point. Artist is not only a job, it's a title like esquire or MD, it goes after their name, just after the comma.

A successful artist is one who sells art and gets enough exposure to be recognized as being a great artist during his lifetime. The during the lifetime part is very important. Artist is how they define themselves.

If the artist is dead and the art is recognized, they wouldn't be a success. In life they would be termed a starving artist. And society would call them a posthumous success story which is so sad.

Art is a business. It is meant to be seen and distributed among the world to be appreciated. A lot of people will buy art just to add it to their collection. The people who drive trucks or handle vehicles to transport the art from place to place would call art a business as well because they are paid to ship the art.
#14823482
I will confess to having zero appreciation for art. I have never seen a piece of art that created any real emotion in me. Perhaps some mild curiosity on occasion. I guess I simply don't associate emotion with inanimate objects.
#14823519
@One Degree

Curiosity is an emotion and art is music, movies, video games, animation, etc. I understand that you must pretend to have no appreciation for art (even though this isn't an argument about your side saying art sucks and the left saying art is good) for the sake of siding with your team however being unable to identify your own emotions is something else.
#14823521
Oxymandias wrote:@One Degree

Curiosity is an emotion and art is music, movies, video games, animation, etc. I understand that you must pretend to have no appreciation for art (even though this isn't an argument about your side saying art sucks and the left saying art is good) for the sake of siding with your team however being unable to identify your own emotions is something else.


I don't think art sucks. I think it is great people can get enjoyment out of art. I am just not one of them.
Yes, I was raised to suppress emotion and that could be a factor, but I am pretty much just a left brained person. I find beauty in logic and contemplation. It is my preferred method of trying to understand who we are, but I certainly see nothing wrong with people who use art to do so.
#14827459
I think having a job is not a very good reason to be an artist. A good artist is somehow who wants to express something that they are feeling. If you aren't feeling something worth sharing, only then would you not be a good artist I think.

It's sort of like in the bible, it says "seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you." It's sad to say that many for-profit artists have high suicide rates, I would guess this might be because many of them are doing it backwards.
#14845272
“The artist, the enema of society, points out things that many people would prefer not to notice.”

All art is propaganda in the abstract because art creates an anti-environment. I should know, I'm an artist. Art will always need (an audience) some-sort of old/present environment to produce its anti-environment effect. The dialectic of artistic expression revolves around 'recount perspective' vs 'counter perspective(s),' and culturally that is why we have a binary result- how things are vs how things ought, should vs could, now vs tomorrow, etc. Again, all 'things' in this world, art, political policy, threads on pofo, must be side-effects or extensions of something else, no-thing can exist as an isolated system of happening, all things move together in a peek-a-boo fashion, and one must be able to navigate XYZ and the bio-chemical moment in order to extract a self-referential emotion. For instance, this post may elicit several different responses, but each response must be a condensed representation of inter-connected phenomenology inside a system of thought-belief-and-experience drawn out over an individual lifetime. Alas, great art should be timeless, as great art is the byproduct of our imagination, and imagination is engaged in a timeless struggle with space-time.

If the artist is dead and the art is recognized, they wouldn't be a success. In life they would be termed a starving artist. And society would call them a posthumous success story which is so sad.
Yes, because the crowd is spell-bound by today. Hence why I care not for today's approval, today's approval is like braille felt by blind reactionaries, it guides communication and gives definition to 'vision.' Most people are too involved with the contemporary environment, stumbling through the motion of 'being' present, to 'see' artistic vision.

To clarify, art is not a 'weapon,' however art can become a weapon once someone recognizes its potential as a weapon. Likewise, money is not the root of all evil, the human mind is. Art is only a weapon to those being assaulted by it. Commercial advertising uses art as a 'recount perspective' for behavioral therapy, yet it is our conscious attention that will decide what behaviors end up being therapeutic. If one can understand what the commercial advertising process is actually doing, one can become immune to its behavioral modification. See, art is a weapon if you let it become one, and money is as evil as the mind can be.

"All art is a revolt against man's fate" like other technological extensions of the human experience (which is existentially limited by dimensional entanglement), art is an externalization of evolutionary perception, it reorganizes 'things' in front of us. With that in mind, art is like medicine, and medicine is a revolt against man's fate.

Art can sharpen our perception of reality













How to dull your perception of reality, one example

The Immortal Goon wrote:Postmodernist-feeling-mongering claptrap.
Art is a weapon.
And this wasn't just in the Soviet sphere when, later, Trotsky and Stalin would endlessly argue about art.
The CIA used art as a weapon:

As one may note, dogmatic persistence will numb ones perception of reality. TIG, in this case, relies on his political obsession(s) to frame his world-view. This is dangerous, because he is not willing to see things from a different perspective and thus he offers a caricature of 'black & white' logic, motivated by fear and a divisive dialectic. A type of 'spy vs spy' society, where humans become inhuman troupers, mere resources to used by blind ideologues. Alas, dogmatic persistence produces a closed-system of ignorance, a state of mind responsible for some of the pain and suffering humans experience day to day. Knowing that the mind is the root of all evil, we can abolish the dogmas that try to convince us that our problems exist outside of ourselves.
#14854078
One Degree wrote:I will confess to having zero appreciation for art. I have never seen a piece of art that created any real emotion in me. Perhaps some mild curiosity on occasion. I guess I simply don't associate emotion with inanimate objects.


I'm not an artist, I know very little about art or art history (one explorations art history course on the way to a degree in psychology doesn't qualify as more than a blip on the art radar) and yet I stood in SFMOMA with tears in my eyes - completely unexpected - in front of Gerhard Richter's Seascape.

Image

It's an absolutely breathtaking painting - no image can do it justice. It's very large, and it looks so real... What I knew of his work is abstract, and I just wasn't prepared for the realism of this gorgeous work. Any critic of modern art who thinks anyone can throw paint on a canvas like the greats... no. Just no.
#14854086
Art is a weapon.

Indeed. Mayakovsky used to claim that he wished his poems were made of steel, so he could smash people's teeth in with them. :D

Every available weapon must be utilised in the struggle against the class enemy, and art is one of the most powerful weapons of all.

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