James Cameron’s Avatar has garnered a lot of attention of late, most recently with its impressive 9 academy award nominations.
Outside of these accolades, one of the more intriguing phenomenon associated with the film has been the relatively large number of individuals experiencing depression and/or suicidal thoughts following the film. In general, some people seem to be captured by the beauty of this world that ‘earth’ as we know it feels drab, and something only worthy of escape.
One viewer, Ivar Hill, wrote of this experience on a Avatar message board saying:
“When I woke up this morning after watching Avatar for the first time yesterday, the world seemed … gray. It was like my whole life, everything I’ve done and worked for, lost its meaning. It just seems so … meaningless. I still don’t really see any reason to keep … doing things at all. I live in a dying world.”
We are all drawn towards the beautiful in some fashion or another. No doubt, we all pursue this beauty… whether that be in romantic relationships, in the work or life we find appealing, or even in a draw towards music that resonates with our sense of what is true. But can beauty be a way to orient the ethical life? Can one seek after beauty and call this ethical?
In other words, is the ethical life best pursued by a legalist or an artist?
Part of me hopes that the answer to my question is the artist. I tend to think that the person who does something because they think it is a beautiful way to act conveys a more appealing picture of ethics than the tactician following a set of laws. But is this just a personal pipe-dream?
To be honest, I don’t know the answer to this question, but I want to try to flesh something out in the next post. Three question that might start the discussion… chime in as you feel appropriate.
- Does our experience of beauty make our experience of the ugly depressing and leave us with a posture of an escapist (e.g. Avatar), or might it spur us on to create beauty when it is lacking?
- How are our senses of what is beautiful conditioned by things which might make this intuition unethical or untrustworthy (e.g. Nazi’s perceiving the beauty of a pure Arian race, and thus the ethical act becoming genocide)?
- In what ways is the subjectivity of beauty a benefit and a drawback from the rigidness or objectivity of a ‘law’ based morality?
Feb. 17, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Horace Walpole – “Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.”
I think quite the contrary. This dichotomy is interesting to consider, though. If I could only do one or the other, or in your words, be a legalist or an artist, I would want to feel/be an artist. What drives a legalist? rules, stipulations,rights and wrongs, distilled competition. What drives an artist? Emotions, vitality, humanity, experiences. That’s where life comes from. That’s where stories come from. I would have a hard time finding beauty in purely thinking, or in pure legalism. But, then again, beauty is subjective.
More of an analysis of the quote than an answer to any of the questions… sorry. But your article was enjoyable and thought provoking. Thank you
Feb. 18, 2010 at 12:17 pm
lindsay
i really like your analysis… im going to try to flesh it out a bit more in the next post, so ill be interested to hear your take.
pb
Feb. 26, 2010 at 9:18 pm
[...] final thoughts in the next installment, I want to clarify some terminology from my last post on beauty and ethics. This is cued in part by my lawyer friend Stacey who sent me the following Facebook: in the latest [...]
Feb. 26, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Peter,
I enjoy your writing and thoughts, and your friend Lindsey has added an interesting perspective.
One thing you may want to consider is the possibility of a symbiotic relationship between your artist and your legalist. Beauty is indeed subjective, as any two artists who have ever argued the superiority of their own work would attest. For example, the fascinating, albeit often apocryphal, stories about the mutual dislike between Wagner and Brahms, one whose compositions were angular and forceful, the other’s rich and warm, yet both regarded as best that the music of the period had to offer.
In my opinion, there needs to be a structure of some sort, some normative context for the argument among artistries. Law, even as expressed through societal norms, provides the necessary combination of norms and constraints to give that context. At the same time, the creativity of the artist pushes at and expands those boundaries.
But what do you do about the artist whose idea of beauty in essence blasts through the constraints and creates something untenable for the rest of society? For example, the comments of new music composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, who commented that 9-11-01 was “the greatest work of art imaginable for the whole cosmos … Minds achieving something in an act that we couldn’t even dream of in music … By comparison, we composers are nothing.”
I’m not sure I’d want such “artists” as the 9/11 terrorists to determine the ethics of the world in which I live, thus the necessity of the counterpoint of the legalist.
looking forward to your next entries.
Eddie Carr
Feb. 27, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Eddie
Some really good points here… I guess the challenge is figuring out when one has to put on the artist hat, and when one has to put on the legalist hat… (and perhaps ways in which they may not be as different as we might think). ill try to get at this in the next post.
pb