Issue 131 从早写到晚的一篇

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真的从早晨就开始写了. 早晨写了初稿, 中午吃饭还在琢磨怎么改才对,哪里需要补充例子.其实到最后也没有找到什么特别matching的例子。下午没有改，晚上细改了一遍，除了逻辑框架没有变，差不多等于重写了。中间查了很多资料，艺术类段子术语最难找，找合适的词汇来形容也不容易。自己暂时还觉得可以。

131"The arts (painting, music, literature, etc.) reveal the otherwise hidden ideas and impulses of a society.

Paintings, music, literature, and other forms of art can convey the artists’ emotions and beliefs to the audience either explicitly or implicitly. However, whether these exquisite expressions unveil the concealed ideas and impulses of a society is worthy of discussion. By exploring impulses to create art works, the paper concluded that arts actually is one of many sources, instead of an exclusive medium, to reveal ideas of a society and to help to magnify their impact.

First of all, the essence of many art works, the pursuit of truth, good, and beauty, manifests itself not only in arts but also in daily life. Art works truly reflect our deeply-rooted yearn for perfection, harmony, richness, and beauty. Both in Greek sculptures of human figure and the realistic European oil paintings pervade a sense of clarity, permanence, and innocence. On the other hand, the desire of harmony and beauty can also be widely witnessed even in mundane life. For instance, it drives people and societies to emphasize on personal appearance and self-image, as manifested in obsession in fashion trend, and the implementation and practice of regulations and laws to keep the public areas organized, clean, and tidy.

Taken the prevalence of mainstream ideology, morals, and values, art works with such themes also failed to become the exclusive source to influence the audience. Throughout the art history, art works reflects the dominant beliefs and morals of the society take up a great proportion, such as the Medieval arts depicting the Bible stories, and the Chinese Terra-cotta warriors indicating a powerful belief in the immortality and the supreme power of the emperor. While these mainstream values and ideologies are implied in the art works of the time, but the con-current morals, ethics, and even laws imparted the idea to people as well. For instance, a famous Chinese classic novel depicting the rise of a businessman and his big family, together with his final collapse, was made in the 16th century, when the classic conservative Confucius morals sharply deteriorated, given way to more flexible, even degrading ones, such as an acquiesces of being sex-abusive and heavily profit-driven. As the morals, ethics, and other forms of societal influences already established and shaped the mainstream values, arts are but one of them to magnify the impact.

As a society has long been aware of human being’s innate subtle feelings and emotions, arts revealing human nature would only considered enlightening at an individual level, rather than at a societal level. The nature of human being is complex enough to inspire artists to create art works to capture and illustrate the subtle innate impulses, such as the discontent, depression, and despair as depicted in classic Chinese poetry when the author alienated from the mainstream society. The feelings involved in art works inspires the audience to reflect on one’s experience and confront the hidden feelings and emotions. Nonetheless, taken that the human nature barely changes over time, while these feelings and ideas may be enlightening for individuals, the society as a whole have long been aware of them, therefore ethics, morals, and laws are formed to regulate the potential harm that extreme emotions may entail, such as hate crime.

To conclude, the function and values of art primarily lies in reflecting of human pursuit of beauty, harmony, and peace, mirroring the prevalent ideology, morals, and ethics of the time, and expressing artists’ free feelings and emotions. Nonetheless, as these ideas, values, and emotions are also inevitably conveyed and represented through other media such as daily habits, rituals, ethics and even laws, arts are just one of the many media to reveal the behind impulses and ideas of a society.