Ray Harvey

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things.”

Said Oscar Wilde.

Esthetics — or aesthetics, if you prefer — is the philosophy of art.

It is a sub-branch of epistemology. Epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, spawns esthetics like Superman spawns sequels.

Esthetics is classified as a sub-branch of epistemology because art is a by-product of the reasoning brain — which is why animals (for example) don’t create art or enjoy it — or, at any rate, not without some intensive human coaxing and coaching.

Art is the process of capturing through an artistic medium abstract ideas and the emotions that go along with them.

That is the definition of art.

Art is not a luxury item but a human necessity.

Quoting Oscar Wilde once again, who is at his best in the esthetic arena:

“The function of art is to recreate, from the rough material of actual existence, a new world that will be more marvelous, more enduring, and more true than the world that common eyes look upon.”

Art starts with an abstraction such as jealousy, and in an artistic creation like Othello, shows us how in human life jealousy manifests.

The degree to which an artistic creation persuades or seems plausible is the degree to which it is good or bad. Contrary to popular belief, art can and should be held to standards. Of a poor film, therefore, it is perfectly proper to say “This movie sucks!”

Painting and drawing perform the same function as our Othello example, but in a purely visual manner.

Sculpture does so by visual-tactile means.

Music, which is unique among the arts, captures so-called emotional abstractions, via sound, so that when we hear music, we feel ourselves perhaps excited, or melancholic, or thoughtful, or sexy, whathaveyou.

It should also be noted here (not quite parenthetically) that music’s modus operandi is not well understood — not in terms of how the brain organizes sound into euphony, and why, exactly, melody and harmony strike human ears in the precise way that they do.

To qualify as a legitimate art form, the medium must have the power to convey ideas in a perceptual form — which is to say immediately.

That’s why culinary art is not, in the true sense, an actual art but a skill: the best foie gras in the world cannot convey even the simplest human abstraction, let alone something as complex as the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

The same thing is true of sewing, gem-cutting, carpentry, and a million other skills and trades as well. They are not actually arts because they don’t have the power to capture or convey a wide range of abstract meaning. They cannot objectify reality through their medium.

That’s what art does. That is why art is a necessity.

To truly qualify as art, the medium must be able to reproduce nature, via sensory data, and then infuse that data with conceptual content.

Plays and screenplays, for instance, are art.

Movies are art.

Novels and poems are art.

Dancing is art but not a primary: it depends upon music.

This same is true of acting: it depends upon a script, which is one of the reasons that scripts sometimes feel flat when they’re read rather than watched, and why an actor without a script is like a clam without a shell.

Cinematography, like photography, occupies the middleground. Both contain an artistic component, and yet both are stylistically confined — they record more than they create — and are therefore more skill than art.
(Journalism is analogous to this: it too has an artistic component — specifically, in the freedom of writing style afforded it — but journalism also primarily records.)

Art came into existence within the human species because the human brain operates by means of abstractions, which is to say words, which is to say ideas formed by means of words.

Abstractions are thoughts — or, to put that more precisely, abstractions are the human way of grasping the natural world.

We do this by means of thought.

And we think by means of words.

Art assists.

And that is why esthetics is a sub-branch of epistemology.

The senses — sight, sound, touch, taste, and hearing — are what feed our brains with the raw sensory data Oscar Wilde speaks of in the previous quotation.

The brain then processes this raw sensory data conceptually — that is, through a process of abstraction, or, in other words, through thinking — which is essentially the process of learning words and grasping what in reality those words denote.

By means of sensory data, art recasts reality and shows us our abstractions made solid.

Art thereby enhances reality.

And because, as its name implies, art is artificial, it also perfects reality.

Artists themselves are among the most inarticulate when it comes to explaining the nature and function of art. To get beyond their artsy mumbo-jumbo, so that we can see clearly at last what gives rise to art, we need not listen to artists and art critics, but instead merely observe how the artistic drive develops in children. “Through Children,” said Dostoevsky, “the soul is healed.”

Observe what the child with that big stick of sidewalk-chalk draws upon the concrete.

A large yellow crescent with blue stars around it.

A white house in a field.

A blazing sun coming up over black mountains.

Animals.

Stick figures.

Death.

War.

Now ask yourself this: what drives a child to make those drawings?

What is she thinking about that makes her want to set it down in concrete form?

What dictates her subject-matter?

Why did she choose this and not that?

What is the child doing?

And, as important, what is that process doing for her?

Ask yourself:

Why did prehistoric humans paint animals and hunting scenes upon cave walls? What drove that urge? Why did these people choose the subjects they chose? And what did painting those things fulfill within them?

Why have humans always invented stories?

Why have humans always enjoyed listening to those stories, or seeing them played out?

Why the human invention of musical instruments?

Why did David “dance with all his might before the Lord”?

What need is being fulfilled in this?

The answer to these questions is the same:

Each one of those things, through whichever medium, captures the abstract and makes it real and immediate.

Humans — the rational animal — need this because our rational mind operates in an opposite manner: it is thoughtful, inductive, long-range. Art brings the entirety of the elegant universe into our immediate ken.

Art makes the conceptual perceptual.

There is no mood or passion that art cannot give us…. Art is mind expressing itself under the conditions of matter, and thus, even in the lowliest of her manifestations, she speaks to both sense and soul alike…. It is through art, and only through art, that we can realize our perfection; through art, and through art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence…. Like Aristotle, like Goethe after he had read Kant, we desire the concrete, and nothing but the concrete can satisfy us.

– Oscar Wilde

Postmodernism, in all its vicious variations, is a term devoid of any real content, and for this reason dictionaries and philosophy dictionaries offer very little help in defining it.

And yet postmodernism has today become almost universally embraced as the dominant philosophy of science — which is the primary reason that science crumbles before our eyes under its corrupt epistemology.

Postmodernism, like everything else, is a philosophical issue. Accordingly, postmodernism’s tentacles have extended into every major branch of philosophy — from metaphysics, to epistemology, to esthetics, to ethics, to politics, to economics.

In order to get any kind of grasp on postmodernism, one must grasp first that postmodernism doesn’t want to be defined. Its distinguishing characteristic is in the dispensing of all definitions — because definitions presuppose a firm and comprehensible universe.

You must understand next that postmodernism is a revolt against the philosophical movement that immediately preceded it: Modernism.

We’re told by postmodernists today, that modernism and everything that modernism stands for is dead.

Thus, whereas modernism preached the existence of independent reality, postmodernism preaches anti-realism, solipsism, and “reality” as a term that always requires quotation marks.

Whereas modernism preached reason and science, postmodernism preaches social subjectivism and knowledge by consensus.

Whereas modernism preached free-will and self-governance, postmodernism preaches determinism and the rule of the collective.

Whereas modernism preached the freedom of each and every individual, postmodernism preaches multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, egalitarianism by coercion.

Whereas modernism preached free-markets and free-exchange, postmodernism preaches Marxism and its little bitch: statism.

Whereas modernism preached objective meaning and knowledge, postmodernism preaches deconstruction and no-knowledge — or, if there is any meaning at all (and there’s not), it’s subjective and ultimately unverifiable.

In the words of postmodernism’s high priest Michel Foucault: “It is meaningless to speak in the name of — or against — Reason, Truth, or Knowledge.”

Why?

Because according to Mr. Foucault again: “Reason is the ultimate language of madness.”

We can thus define postmodernism as follows:

It is the philosophy of absolute agnosticism — meaning: a philosophy that preaches the impossibility of human knowledge.

What this translates to in day-to-day life is pure subjectivism, the ramifications of which are, in the area of literature, for example, no meaning, completely open interpretation, unintelligibility.

Othello, therefore, is as much about racism and affirmative action as it is about jealousy.

Since there is no objective meaning in art, all interpretations are equally valid.

Postmodernism is anti-reason, anti-logic, anti-intelligibility.

Politically, it is anti-freedom. It explicitly advocates leftist, collectivist neo-Marxism and the deconstruction of industry, as well as the dispensing of inalienable rights to property and person.

There is, however, a deeply fatal flaw built into the very premise of postmodernism, which flaw makes postmodernism impossible to take seriously and very easy to reject:

If reason and logic are invalid and no objective knowledge is possible, then the whole pseudo-philosophy of postmodernism is also invalidated.

One can’t use reason to prove that reason is false.

In May of 1606, the first American settlers arrived in Jamestown.

The Virginia Tidewater Region, where these original 104 set up their colony, was a breathtakingly fertile chunk of land. So it was that these first American settlers found more resources than they could at first believe: oceans teeming with seafood, woodlands alive with birds, inexhaustible game, and soil that grew everything.

Yet within half a year only 38 of the original 104 settlers were still alive, the rest having succumbed to famine.

Not two years later, 500 more people were sent to refresh the devastated settlers.

Within half a year, the majority of these new arrivals — 440, to be precise — had died of starvation or disease.

Cannibalism was not uncommon.

The resources were still as plentiful and rich as ever before — hardly tapped, in fact — and so what went wrong?

This is an extraordinary period in America’s history; for as it happens, it provides us with a real-life illustration of collectivism-versus-private property in action.

You can read more about it in Tom Bethell’s excellent book: The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity Through the Ages.

The original American settlers had intentionally adopted a socialist policy: specifically, communal ownership of property. As a direct result, most of these people starved to death, or were killed off by disease — the very same problem, it turns out, that has been occurring steadily three centuries later in every communist country that’s collectivized its economy, particularly its agriculture.

As one early Jamestown eyewitness, a man by the name of George Percy, described it (in his antiquated English):

“[The cause of] famine was want of providence, industrie … and not the barennesse and defect of the Countri, as is generally supposed” (Warren M. Billings, George Percy’s Account of the Voyage to Virginia and the Colony’s First Days).

But how could this possibly have been? How could people such as this have “lacked industrie” when many of these people were specifically chosen for having the exact opposite character?

The answer to this question is not esoteric, nor is it particularly difficulty to fathom. On the contrary, the answer is deceptively simple: the people of Jamestown had no financial stake in their endeavors. Indeed, they were little more than indentured servants. Thus everything they produced went into a public pool. Working harder and longer, therefore, did not benefit any one person any more than another. And so these people responded exactly as humans always will in such a situation: they simply didn’t work harder — any of them.

In his book, Mr. Bethel notes what some few insightful economists have been saying for a long time: lack of work and “industrie” goes hand-in-hand with lack of property rights.

Or as Philip Alexander Bruce said, in an article about these very Jamestown settlers:

“[They] did not have even a modified interest in the soil … Everything produced by them went into the [public] store, in which they had no ownership.”

Thus, all grew idle and most, in the end, refused to work at all.

“The absence of property rights – and of the work-reward nexus that such rights create – completely destroyed the work ethic of the settlers” (Thomas Dilorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America).

Frustrated, flummoxed, flailing, the British government, which had financed the colonization, sent in 1611 a man named Sir Thomas Dale to serve as “High Marshal of the Virginian Colony.” Listen closely to what Mr. Dale observed; it is astounding and yet perfectly predictable:

“Dale noted that although most of the settlers had starved to death, the remaining ones were spending much of their time playing games in the streets, and he immediately identified the problem: the system of communal ownership” (Ibid).

It was then that the High Marshal Sir Thomas Dale gave every man three acres of land for each to own unto himself. He simultaneously did away with pooling into a communal treasury. Private property, in other words, was officially enacted and public ownership abolished.

Immediately the colony began to prosper.

The notorious “free-rider problem,” endemic to socialism of every strain, vanished as each person became his own master – as each person bore the full brunt of inaction and non-productivity. At the same time, every person had incentive to work harder since harder work meant greater prosperity and a direct benefit to each from that labor.

One of the fundamental flaws of socialism of every stripe is that it assumes that people will work just as hard or harder for others as they will work for themselves. This is untrue. It’s untrue because it is contrary not only to human nature but also to the nature of life. Jamestown shows us a historical illustration of this writ large.

“As soon as the settlers were thrown upon their own resources,” says historian Mathew Anderson, “and each freeman had acquired the right of owning property, the colonists quickly developed what became the distinguishing characteristic of Americans — and aptitude for all kinds of craftsmanship coupled with an innate genius for experimentation and invention” (The Old Dominion, Vol. 1, University of Virginia).

Other propitious things began to happen as well.

“The Jamestown colonists had originally implored the Indians to sell them corn, but the Indians looked down on the settlers because [the settlers] were barely capable of growing corn, thanks to their communistic economics. After the introduction of private property and the resulting transformation, however, the Indians began coming to the colonists to acquire corn in return for furs and other items” (Ibid).

Thus began a friendly system of free-trade.

The division of labor — an absolutely indispensable component of private property, which promotes specialization of labor, insofar as each is no longer forced to produce all his own food since he can now trade specialty items for specialty products others produce — was instantly born. In addition to this explosion of prosperity, there was also greater peace:

It made no sense now for either side — Indians or settlers — to war with the other, because free-trade was advantageous to each. Whereas, prior to Sir Thomas Dale’s instituting of private property, the settlers used “to steal from the Indians,” and even “beg from them,” a fact which the Indians quite naturally resented.

In Jamestown, the institution of private property changed all this.

But there’s more to the story, much more.

Not many years later, in November of 1620, another group of American settlers — 101 of them, to be exact, this group not financed by the British government — arrived on the good ship Mayflower, in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

These Pilgrims, as they were called, moved a short distance away to a place named Plymouth. They were not at all unaware of the early Jamestown disaster, the starvation, the disease, the famine; they were, however, unaware of what had caused it.

Accordingly, they proceeded to make the identical mistake that the settlers of Jamestown had made: namely, collective ownership of land.

And the Pilgrims too paid dearly for it.

Within a few short months, half were dead.

Over the course of the next three years, 100 more settlers arrived from England to Plymouth, all of whom were barely able to feed themselves. As Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford wrote in his famous Of Plymouth Plantation:

“Many [settlers] sold away their clothes and bed coverings [to the Indians]; others (so base were they) became servants of the Indians … and fetch them water for a capful of corn; others fell to plain stealing, both day and night, from the Indians…. In the end, they came to that misery that some starved to and died with cold and hunger. One in gathering shellfish was so weak as he stuck fast in the mud and was found dead in the place.”

But this same William Bradford would soon solve “the ruin and dissolution of his colony,” and he would do it in the exact same way Sir Thomas Dale had saved Jamestown.

Here’s another famous passage from William Bradford’s book:

“After much debate of things … [it was decided that the Pilgrims] should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves … And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, for present use. This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content. The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have been thought great tyranny and oppression.”

Bradford came to fully grasp how lack of property rights negates and indeed destroys the work incentive:

“For [men] and men’s wives,” he said, “to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothe, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husband brook it” (Ibid).

“Common course” was abandoned in favor of setting “every man for his own particular,” meaning private property. Instantaneously, those who had been indolent became “very industrious,” so much so that woman and men who had “previously pleaded frailty worked long and hard – once they saw how they and their families could benefit from such hard work.”

William Bradford went on to correctly identify the source of the “disastrous problem” as “that conceit of Plato’s,” who, in direct contrast to Aristotle, advocated collectivism and collective ownership of land, which, as history has repeatedly proven, is pure poison to any society that implements it. Bradford even wrote later that those who mistakenly believed that communal property could make people “happy and flourishing” imagined themselves “wiser than God.”

Next time you hear Barack Obama, or Nancy Pelosi, or Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn, or any of the other Neo-Marxists propounding that “some” property should be “collectivized,” remember America’s real history.

Remember also how collectivization obliterates the work incentive, the survival instinct, and human industry.

Remember the real-life history of early America and the total failure of collectivization, which is actually a failure of lunacy.

Remember that not once in the history of the world has a communistic system ever flourished.

Remember that our lives, each and every one of us, are absolutely and inalienably our own, and by direct extension that means our property is absolutely and inalienably our own. Nobody may rightfully take any of that property from you without your permission, not for any reason, not in any amount, not even for the so-called “common good.”

Remember also that being compelled to serve the collective is a slow painful death to each member of that “collective.”

Finally, remember this:

“The Pilgrims had encountered what is called the free-rider problem, which is difficult to solve without dividing property into individual or family-sized units. And this is the course of action that William Bradford wisely took” (Tom Bethell, The Noblest Triumph).

Wisely because it set the trend for all that would make America what she would eventually become: a land of independence, industriousness, ingenuity, experimentation, invention, genius, and greatness.

Freedom and its economic corollary, capitalism, saved us in the beginning.