Society Support the Arts: Why

¶ … Society Support the Arts: why and how?

Society should support the arts because art inspires humankind. All civilizations have depended on art and metaphor to illuminate the meaning of life, and when a society loses its central metaphors it weakens and eventually dies (Sweet pp). Moreover, people should be encouraged to create, not be just mere observers, because the creative process, not the end product, actually becomes the teacher (Sweet pp). Although it may often appear silly, art lends drive and purpose to what would otherwise be insignificant lives (Sweet pp).

For example, the pyramids might seem ridiculous given that pharaohs devoted a large percentage of the country's gross national product in order to be immortal (Sweet pp). In contrast, the United States spends billions to stockpile a nuclear arsenal that is capable of obliterating the earth many times over (Sweet pp). Humans instinctively turn to pictures and images for purpose and meaning to their lives, as well as for political stability, order and ethics (Sweet pp). Humans are tribal, and exile is a slow and predictable death of body and spirit, thus artistic expression is a practical necessity because it is the foundation of tribal identity, purpose and cohesion (Sweet pp). If humans do not cohere, they die, art as a metaphor is tantamount to survival (Sweet pp). A society is as strong as the belief in its metaphors permits, and it lasts as long as that belief continues (Sweet pp). Because metaphors are images, and images are pictures, and pictures can be made of or evoked through words, paint, clay and sound, then art must be viewed as a fundamental means of sustaining existence and identity (Sweet pp).

Most cultures have assumed the primacy of art from the Cro-Magnons of the Lascaux caves, through the fifth century B.C. Athens, to the Florence of Michelangelo and Da Vinci (Sweet pp).

When a general such as Sophocles wrote plays and popes knew power to be maintained via images, one has to assume they were aware that fighting and praying were dependent on the metaphor and not the other way around, as today's culture would have it (Sweet pp). Humans were born to be symbol and image producers, thus they should be allowed to be symbol and image producers, however today's culture often gives short shrift (Sweet pp).

Today, the relatively new field of art therapy is one of the few acknowledgments that art is not merely decoration for the rich or the academic elite or the preserve of the obsessively talented (Sweet pp). The production of art should be viewed as a necessity for everyone, the rich or poor, smart or dumb, disturbed or not (Sweet pp). The contemporary tendency to diminish the importance of what used to be referred to as a "liberal arts education," and the downsizing of art and music classes in our grade schools, certainly underscores society's miscomprehension of the "basic need to know ourselves and the best means to exercise that knowledge" (Sweet pp). Joseph Campbell speculated that art and its creation were the only religion left in society, and De Tocqueville's Democracy in America suggests that art embodies the individual's power to combat the tyranny of the majority (Sweet pp).

In June 2005, the International Society for Performing Arts' Board, which is supported by 210 delegates from 28 countries representing Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Africa, voted to endorse a statement urging the world's government at all levels to acknowledge that art has the ability to connect people of all ages, ethnic origins, and economic and social backgrounds with their own imaginations and cultures (ISPA pp). It also allows people to bridge cultural barriers that might otherwise divide them, and more importantly, it plays a role in the lives of young people and should be an integral part of school curriculum at all grade levels (ISPA pp).