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Issue190
As long as people in a society are hungry or out of work or lack the basic skills needed to survive, the use of public resources to support the arts is inappropriate—and, perhaps, even cruel—when one considers all the potential uses of such money.
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Although nowadays the concept of art usually refers to visual art, the definition of art has changed over centuries. Perhaps the most concise definition of art is its broadest--art refers to all creative endeavors, excluding actions directly related to survival and reproduction. From a wide perspective, art is simply a generic term for various creations, out of which sprang all human pursuits and inspiration. Concerning the necessity of the arts, the speaker asserts that it is too luxurious and wasteful to use public resources to support art when people in a society are hungry or out of work or lack the basic skills needed to survive, which, in my eyes, is fundamentally unreasonable except its emphasis on social pressing problems. To better present my viewpoint let me illustrate it in details.
To begin with, the arts, though unable to afford us material luxury like technological advancement and other human progresses, enriches culture, enlightens our spirit, and broadens our horizon, in other words, presents us with what is eternal and universal; the abundance and civilization of spiritual life, unlike a popular idea that denies the significance of spiritual enjoyment, is insurance and premise for material wealth. As the famous scientist and philosopher Descartes once ardently proposed (and I paraphrased):" There are dual sides of a human: one is material, the other spiritual." True, Shakespeare, who achieved maturity and reached unparalleled success in literature by masterpieces such as <Romeo and Julia><Mac Beth>, etc, created the eternal and universal figure Hamlet, the moral dilemma of whom, as something inflicting all humans regardless of era, tells us the fate of all humans; the music genius Beethoven, brilliant, vigorous, and talented as he is, has been shocking audiences for centuries, international or domestic, professionals or amateurs, by his romantic style of creation after his death, with Pathetique and Moonlight being the most famous two. The two examples aptly show that the arts, with various incarnations such as music, painting, sculpture, literature, poem, drama, and architecture, etc, is a mirror as well as carrier for classic inspiration and innovations that provide pleasure.
In addition, besides merits directly related to our common lives, the arts is an indispensable component of culture, absent of which is a deteriorated sense of identity and a barbaric primitive state similar to other animals. In terms of biological structure, humans differ from other animals by our "second language system", which refers to human language, a unique capacity that other animals lack. Since art forms such as literature, music, drama, and the like, are its most significant carriers, it is not exaggerating to assert that the arts differ human from other animal and that humans without the enrichment of arts but material wealth, however abundant it may be, are no more than animals in low and simply stage. In short, that we are humans, but not other barbaric creatures, is, at least partly, due to our ability to create and innovate the spiritually noble form--the arts.
Admittedly, emphasis on social pressing problems, say, hunger, unemployment, diseases, war, etc, can never be understated, as the speaker holds. In order to understand this point, one only need to see how many Africa refugees are starving to death with every second passes, how many criminal actions and suicides are being committed due to the lose of job, how many people are being deprived of lives by AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Symptom) and cancers, and how many innocent citizens are being killed or injured ruthlessly by nuclear bombs and suicide bombs throughout mid-east countries. Surely, government should allocate a sufficient amount of funds as well as human resource support to these pressing problems, without, however, the arts being neglected.
In summary, from the above discussion, we can safely draw the conclusion that the author is reasonable in pointing out the necessity to solve social pressing problems. However, he/she fails to take into account the benefits of the arts: one is the source of human pleasure, the other indispensable part of human civilization that differs from animals and barbaric state.
[ 本帖最后由 expire7 于 2007-2-9 16:11 编辑 ] |
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