I have heard this age we live in dubbed the Anthropocene, an era most marked by human intervention. We have developed technologies and machines and worldviews that enable us to shape the planet and alter natural forces to our whim. Our actions have caused the eradication of millions of species, and brought about wonders our ancestors only imagined (as far as we know).
But how are the ways we have changed the face of the world connected to why we are here? And what are we truly here to contribute?
Art In Our Bones
Humans have been crafting art for longer than we have had civilizations. From a 50,000 year-old carved deer bone to songlines that tell the stories of place to rituals that teach the patterns of migration, we have used our creative power to transmit and keep alive vital information. Cave drawing goes back at least 35,000 years, and those are just the carbon-based ones we can date. Mineral-based cave paintings may be much older, and even the more contemporary art of oil painting dates back to at least 650 C.E.
We are fascinated by the act of creation itself, some of our oldest, most pervasive and most persistent stories are creation myths. This pull to create, and even the meta understanding of creation as a form of creation, seems to come from something cross-cultural, in fact it is the progenitor of culture. And it is inherent in our human nature.
Our eyes can see only a relatively small part of the light spectrum, and yet within that we can identify and name hundreds of unique hues. Our ears can track, recall, and convey rhythm, melody, and harmony in complex combinations. We can repeat this music together, with voices, hands, and instruments we devised and built from trees, gourds, and animals. We carve images into the sides of our drinking vessels and weave geometric genealogies into our blankets. Given space, time, and resources, we naturally turn towards creating.
The Purpose of Beauty
Perhaps by now I’ve reassured you that we are intrinsically creative. But I haven’t yet spoken to why. Other animals craft what we could call art, birds make intricate nests and some primates draw. Aside from the possibility that humans are not separate from the rest of nature, a topic I’ll dive into in a future essay, how is our creating linked to our evolutionary purpose?
When I’ve asked this question in moments of personal ceremony, the response has been that humans are living limbs of awareness. We developed fine sensory, motor, and processing skills so that consciousness could reflect itself (themselves? ourselves?) through the lens of art. Trees exist to metabolize carbon dioxide, hold soil together, and provide sugar and chlorophyll to other creatures. Bees exist to spread pollen to support floral reproduction and the proliferation and continuation of ecosystems (may the bees survive their current crises and live long). Humans exist, in great part, to create art.
Everyone feeds everyone. All who live digest some lives and nourish some others. In addition to sugar and protein and fat, humans eat light, color, and sound. We eat movement, pattern, and meaning. We eat feelings and experiences. We eat the vast array of permutations of existence, billions of unique perspectives metabolizing sensory phenomena through our sensitive organs, and exhaling out expressions of what we have seen as only each unique individual can.
It is common inside capitalism to think that beauty is a luxury, an unnecessary indulgence. And while beauty is highly subjective, I think it is essential to human nature that we recognize and discover beauty. The perception of beauty bonds us to what we perceive as such. We remember what we find beautiful. We make space for it in our lives and our minds. We carry it with us and pass it on. You must study a creature’s form intently to be able to draw it on a cave wall, from memory, by firelight. You must listen carefully, and practice diligently, to chant 200 names for rain and 70 names for wind as in Hawaiian hula. We make beautiful what we love, and wish to remember. The lines between art, science, ceremony, education, and survival skill are blurry at best, and becomes less real the further we examine any art form.
Art helps us remember, and art helps us see. Creating
art helps us keep alive and celebrate what we love.
Other animals shape their environments. Birds build nests and ants carve hills that are monumental in relation to their size. All creatures have an impact, including humans. In this era of urgency, can we slow down enough to remember the power of our artistry? Can our propensity to find and exalt beauty be the gift that enables our sustainability? Can we be powered by love so intently that our impact becomes beneficial, once again feeding that which feeds life?
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