Since the first cave drawings, art has been an essential tool for contemplating and expressing the human experience. A primordial part of the human experience is the ancestral quest to reconcile opposing tensions: right and wrong, self and society, the individual and the cosmic. In his book The Story of Art, art historian and professor E.H Gombrich follows the history of art alongside the development of civilizations showing the cyclical process of societal and technological changes affecting human thought and expression and vice versa[i]. As current events and developments in science and technology challenge established understanding, art is a natural and effective tool for the human mind to examine these challenges and to reconcile them with a moral code, world view and reconcile the self with society.
Especially in a democratic society, with its celebration of individual freedoms, the fundamental issue of rights vs. responsibilities is at the heart of nearly every moral question[ii]. There needs to be a balance between the uniqueness of each individual and conformance to social norms for a free democracy to function. Conformance to social norms forges a collective identity, yet without the free expression of individuals democracy itself is dysfunctional. The free expression of each individual is a unique blend of cultural and personal symbols deeply rooted in the unconscious that help guide the decision-making process. Unfortunately, the topic of the unconscious mind is often shrugged off as purely academic or only relevant for someone diagnosed with a mental disorder. Psychology professor Dr Leon Seltzer explains that unconscious repression is a natural defense mechanism that is part of every human psyche. “It’s an involuntary reaction, inasmuch as it represents a psychological mechanism of defense, and all such self-protective workings are instinctual, operate autonomously, and (for better or worse) compel your behavior.”[iii] Ideas suppressed or repressed in the unconscious surface as fears, predispositions, and mental blockages. It can be compared to ruptures deep in the Earth’s crust that impact the form of the landscape. Ignoring the unconscious mind leaves a person unequipped to adapt to the rapid changes in modern society. As technology becomes more prevalent in our lives, the mind is constantly subjected to highly personalized stimuli through social media platforms, search engines, tracking pixels and sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms. Data collected from online activity builds a personalized and detailed profile of decision-making trigger points that are fed back into algorithms in real time to determine output from content providers. This input/output cycle creates a funnel pattern that narrows as time progresses creating an unprecedented level of behavioral influence. The idea of targeted information influencing behavior has been around for millennia, what is new is the degree of personalization and level of exposure.
Carl Jung, recognized as a pioneer of analytical psychology, explains that when the individual is stripped of their uniqueness and marginalized to the point of a statistical abstraction within the framework of society it leads to group fanaticism and the deification of the State[iv]. The legal and political system becomes the highest means for resolving personal moral dilemmas and existential crises. Jeremy Popkin, a noted scholar of the French Revolution, details in his book A New World Begins the turbulent political and psychological process that society went through in a brief period when common citizens were bombarded with pamphlets, theatre productions, public events, and other propaganda with extremist political agendas[v]. Without the free expression of unique individuals, democracy and authoritarianism are only distinguished by ceremony and semantics.
If creativity and conscious awareness are not developed and exercised, then a person becomes a prisoner of their own imagination and unconscious trigger points[vi]. The online world is engineered and financed to dress up such a mind however it sees fit, and the person is left standing naked with no defense to offer. Art and engagement in the creative process are effective tools to begin to access and analyze what is repressed in a person’s own mind to bring about a higher level of self-awareness and remove mental blockages. Art is currently being used in therapeutic applications to treat a variety of conditions including anxiety, stress, and more serious degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s and dementia. In some cases, the degenerative process can even be reversed. Neurologist Avertano Noronha, M.B.B.S., M.D. describes a pilot program with Alzheimer’s patients and the Museum of Modern Art conducted from 2007 to 2014 that found that engagement in the creative process is conducive to neurogenesis (birth of new neurons)[vii]. Noronha demonstrates that when the mind is frequently exercised in a creative process, even a person suffering from cognitive degeneration improves mental clarity and self-awareness. If creative activity can bring a person with a severe degenerative condition such as Alzheimer’s or dementia back in touch with reality, how much more so for a healthy mind? It does not necessarily have to be visual art. Albert Einstein played the violin to surpass moments of mental blockage[viii].
Art can also promote a healthy mind and build critical thinking skills for the art consumer. When a person likes or dislikes a certain work of art it is based on a) their understanding of it and b) to what extent they agree or disagree with what they understand. Any part of the understanding that does not consciously correlate to reality will be patched over with symbolic content from the imagination fueled by unconscious associations. The mind naturally looks for patterns and fills in the blanks. Therefore, the saying that a critique reveals more about the critic than the artist. When a part of the understanding has been exposed as symbolic, it can be re-examined and traced back to something based on facts and evidence to reveal its literal meaning and bring the overall understanding closer in touch with reality. If you look at a Picasso, for example, and do not understand it, search out information about the artist, style, historical context, your family history that relates to that time period, etc. Then come back and look again and you will see something different. When you look at a drawing and see something you did not see the last time you looked, what changed? Your mind has had a filter removed that was preventing you from seeing that detail previously. If elements of a drawing that your attention is focused on can escape your observation, what about other observations you make during the course of a day to base your decisions on? Now that the blockage is removed and you can see it, what does it mean? How is it to be interpreted and understood, and more importantly, what are you going to do with this new information? That is the next level of blockage, ad infinitum. Because this process is infinite, it is self-evident that the purpose is not to reach the highest peak. One million is no closer to infinity than one. The only relevant question is what direction are you moving in? Someone who is at a high level of education but has lost sight of the human and moral context is moving opposite from someone who gains a moral insight for the first time. Without morality, intellectualism is pointless. If a decision or agenda lacks moral content, what purpose does it serve? If it serves no meaningful purpose, then either it needs to be re-evaluated in a moral context or it is not necessary and can be discarded. Unlike laws and regulations which seek to provide external protections for a general populace, self-analysis is an organic, individualized, and inside-out approach deeply integrated and tailor-made for each unique human psyche. Repressed ideas that affect the decision-making process can be brought forward to gain a deeper insight and sharpen creativity and problem-solving skills.
Algorithms financed by organizational and political agendas are constantly updated and optimized to discover and leverage personalized trigger points in the human decision-making process. The purpose of art is to give the individual effective tools for self-analysis, personal development and reconciling the self with society. Any great human achievement is a harmony of intuition and creativity. Intuition is the unconscious revealed and creativity is investigative, analytical, and pragmatic problem solving. Engaging in a hands-on creative process exercises all those faculties. Art should not be an escape from life’s problems, but a doorway to their solution. As Carl Jung pointed out in 1957 in his book The Undiscovered Self, “Virtually everything depends on the human soul and its functions. It should be worthy of all the attention we can give it, especially today, when everyone admits that the weal or woe of the future will be decided neither by the attacks of wild animals nor by natural catastrophes nor by the danger of worldwide epidemics but simply and solely by the psychic changes in man”[ix]. The survival of free democracy in the modern world is in the hands and mind of the self-aware unique individual.
Footnotes
[i] Gombrich, E.H. The Story of Art. Phaidon Press Limited, 1995
[ii] The issue of rights vs responsibilities has played an important role in the shaping of modern governments and is still just as relevant to many current political and social debates. While many early philosophers did not directly address the issue of rights vs responsibilities according to modern legal understanding, it is an undercurrent of influential philosophical systems. For example, David Hume, Baruch Spinoza, and Thomas Hobbs offer three different philosophical systems that each emphasize a different perspective and approach. It would be a deep error of omission to analyze any one of these philosophical systems without also considering the psyche of the individual philosopher as well as the broader social and political context in which they were bearers of history.
Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature. Digireads.com, 2019
Spinoza, Baruch Spinoza Complete Works. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc, 2002
Hobbs, Thomas. Leviathon. East India Publishing Company, 2021
[iii] Seltzer, Leon F, PhD. “Subconscious vs. Unconscious: How to Tell the Difference” Psychology Today 4 December 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201912/subconscious-vs-unconscious-how-tell-the-difference
[iv] Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self. Signet, 1957
[v] The French Revolution began as a philosophical ideal to overthrow the monarchy in favor of individual liberty and social equality. Public discontent and revolutionary ideas had been circulating for years, but the storming of the Bastille marked a decisive milestone. The Bastille was a national storehouse of cannonballs, gunpowder, and other military resources. It was a heavily guarded facility considered to be an impenetrable fortress and served as a symbol of the power and military strength of the monarchy. On July 17, 1789, a grassroots group of farmers and peasants upset by social inequalities and the rising cost of food banded together and stormed the Bastille. They overwhelmed the guards and breeched the facility, sending the king’s defense troops into retreat. It was mainly a symbolic victory for the revolutionists but served to legitimize their threat against the monarchy and embolden dissatisfied citizens across the country.
The years that followed brought the fall of the monarchy and a complete reformation of the system of government. More than just a political reformation, it strove for a social and cultural reformation driven by a disdain for the monarchy and its class system and a desire for egalitarianism. Many public monuments were destroyed, and national traditions cancelled. In the name of egalitarianism, church officials were stripped of their elite status as having exclusive landowner rights and their land seized and auctioned to the public. The metric system was developed as an egalitarian replacement for the French system of weights and measures which had biblical roots. The guillotine was invented as a uniform way to carry out capital punishment regardless of economic or social class.
The idealism of the original revolutionists quickly split into many factions resulting in years of political turbulence and violent and bloody clashes between the various factions. This resulted in a fragile democracy that was more the will of the ruling faction of the day than the will of the people. Agendas were pushed into law through political tactics and coercion including launching investigations and bringing criminal charges against prominent members of the opposition.
The country was finally united under the military leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. On May 18, 1804, the Senate voted that Napoleon would be declared Emperor of France. The people voted an emperor over themselves only about fifteen years after the storming of the Bastille and the revolutionary movement to overthrow the monarchy that included the public execution of Louis XVI.
Popkin, Jeremy D. A New World Begins. Hachette Book Group, Inc, 2021
Egalitarianism taken to an extreme becomes the foundation of communism and fascism. All are not equal. Not every brilliant and hard-working scientist will become Einstein and not every talented and dedicated athlete will become Michael Jordan (become since a person is only gifted with the potential). Free democracy requires the freedom of expression of each unique individual for the democracy to realize its full potential.
[vi] There are two types of imagination: a) imagination that is driven primarily by emotions with the intellect only serving a secondary supporting role and b) creative imagination which is driven primarily by the intellect.
Emotions are developed and expressed first in early childhood with the intellect beginning growth and development around age five (Psychology Today. “Early Childhood”, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/child-development/early-childhood). Emotional ego-centered imagination surfaces first and is later transitioned into an intellectual creative imagination that serves as an important tool for learning and development (Psychology Today. “Imagination”, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/imagination). In adults as well as children, intellectual imagination is an indispensable tool for creativity and problem solving, while emotional ego-centric imagination is potentially dangerous and quickly goes flying off to absurdity.
[vii] It had long been believed that the adult brain is incapable of producing new neurons. As a result of this and similar studies, neurogenesis is now well accepted within the scientific and medical community. The program was expanded and is now established as the MoMA Alzheimer’s Project https://www.moma.org/meetme
Huebner, Berna G. I Remember Better When I Paint. Bethesda Communications Group and New Publishing Partners, 2011, (p. 42)
[viii] Isaacson, Walter. Einstein: His Life and Universe. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2017, (p. 14)
[ix] Jung, Carl G. The Undiscovered Self. Signet, 1957 (p. 82)
Marc Mandell 