Politics and Awful Art

To be fair, we also hold some "art" to a different standard because it was made by an amateur, a child, or for various other reasons. I don't expect your average scientist to be as skilled at tale-telling as an average professional tale-teller. (Carl Sagan happened to be both a professional scientist and a pretty good fiction writer; I rather liked Contact.)

Once in a while, you do run into someone, such as George Orwell, who is good enough to stick an Author Filibuster into a novel and have it still be a good novel, but more often, they just make things boring to anyone except those who already agree with the argument or would read philosophy for fun anyway.

If you're looking for awesome atheist poetry, Lucretius' "De Rerum Naturae" will supply it -- in Latin, that's true, but, it CAN be translated, you know;-). Yes, it DOES start with a hymn to Venus -- "hominum divomque voluptas", and the rest of the wonderful opening Hymn to Venus -- but that's just keeping the paying sponsors (the Caesars, Augustus in particular) happy, as they claim descent from Venus -- look around the "tantum religio potuet suadere malorum" part for some juicier materials;-).

I take your point, though I guess for "atheist hymns", or the closest things theirof, perhaps the first place to look would be Filk music? There're very very very few professional filkers, and most Filk is with untrained voices and so on, and has to be appreciated as just as it is, just for fun... but there's some good stuff too... Fire in the Sky, Hope Eyerie, etc.. (at least in my view)

One in particular that formed more or less out of the composer's frustration with a Young Earth Creationist is actually pretty good... perhaps one of the nicest attacks on YEC around, specifically "Word of God"

The ones I mentioned are at http://www.prometheus-music.com/eli/virtual.htm (Surprise! is just plain fun though! dunno about deep artistic merit, it's just fun. :))

Of course, tastes vary...

Upon blind faith they place reliance What we need more of is science!

Such are the things that consistently befall me

I come to say "Hi!" to let know of my appreciation and I arrive at a post that seems poetic masturbation.

Nightly I read listen learn love laugh at the litany of biases being overcome by Overcoming Bias' staff

• and by the commentors as well, ye, the commentors as well -

But Alas! and Woe! and forsooth! (and my tooth!) For I read in bed by the light of my phone and can join the choired commentors, Not.

So I power-up tonight! (my laptop delicate) to say "hello, y'all!" from a position not prone (I stand, I won't sit) "Leizer, you're the best! You're fun to read and to cheer for!" "And Robin, your free-market posts are so full of bias and herefore! But I love you anyway, for I'm a disciple of Jesus, And I would not laugh or cackle if he beat out of you the begeesus! (And also you offer us this blog, which may mitigate some sins...)"

But what do I find? What does my screen show? A post about poetry! of which nothing I know...

sigh, sigh / a kercheif for mine eye ~

mnuez www.mnuez.blogspot.com

Maybe to be beautiful, art has to have a sense of balance and proper proportion, but a political fanatic has very little of either of these.

As I remember from A Level English, Goldstein's 'book' on Big Brother's regime was the first part of 1984 to be written. I'm glad to see someone highlighting the parallels between great fictional works like Orwell's and classic rationalist scientific literature; I've always thought there was great value in this.

Rubbish art attempting to point up serious political issues is about as effective as a scientific paper detailing a poorly run experiment. It's the difference between an Atlas Shrugged and a 1984.

Ian, for an example of great, polemic, unbalanced political art, see Rage Against The Machine. Being artistic - even being good at it - doesn't make you honest, it just makes you accessible.

mnuez - hang on to that day job! ;)

Actually, I think I found something better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEOkxRLzBf0

It's such a shame about my failure To have been born within Australia; Because then the rhyme for "Overcoming Bias" Could be found among "The Himalayas".

I've always felt that constraining yourself to poetry that rhymes restricts both what you can say and the artfulness with which you can say it.

One of my less treasured memories is of a State of the Union address, or possibly a presidential inauguration, at which a Nobel Laureate got up and read

It can't have been a State of the Union address, since no one speaks at those except the President(*). On the other hand, Nobel Laureates reading poetry is exactly the kind of thing that happens at presidential inaugurations.

( )And this was before Obama(*) and after T. Roosevelt, so the President wouldn't have been a Nobel Laureate himself .

(**)The LW spellchecker does not recognize this word (!)

A related problem is the idea that making 'funny' music somehow excuses you from making good music. I listen to quite a lot of 'silly' artists -- Weird Al, They Might Be Giants, The Poxy Boggards, Jonathan Coulton, Tenacious D, Tim Minchin -- and whenever a service like last.fm notices this, it inevitably ignores the fact that all the acts I've named are exceptionally talented musicians in their own right, and plays me lots of 'silly' songs by mediocre singers, players, and melodicists.

One of my less treasured memories is of a State of the Union address, or possibly a presidential inauguration, at which a Nobel Laureate got up and read, in a terribly solemn voice, some politically correct screed about what a wonderfully inclusive nation we all were - "The African-Americans, the Ethiopians, the Etruscans", or something like that.

Could that be this one? It was indeed read at Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration, by Maya Angelou (video), who is neither a Nobel Laureate nor (as I originally thought you might have meant) a US Poet Laureate, but, although I can't really figure out what this poem is about, it does sound a lot like the one you mentioned. ("...the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, / The African and Native American, the Sioux, / The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, / The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh..." Then I think they all walk into a bar.)

(No Etruscans there, but I don't think there are a lot of them about anymore.)

You know, I've heard it argued that you're guilty of this yourself in the first few chapters of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. But only the first few, the rest are fine.

My favorite example of something like this is about the Surrealists. They had rather depressing fallings-out and betrayals of friends, mostly because they had different approaches to the relationship between politics and art. Louis Aragon was wholly political; Andre Breton tried to strike a balance between politics and making the kind of art he liked, and he suffered for it. His former friends really screwed him.

"I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author's political views."

--Edith Wharton, letter to Upton Sinclair (Aug. 19, 1927), http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2009/09/tt_almanac_1508.html

Eyes front! It's a better thought as rationality, which I would never have found, if I'd been so impressed with daring to write about rationality, that I had forgiven myself the prosodic transgression of an extra syllable.

You seem to be saying that forcing yourself to make better art made the rationality better. That's confusing, what would be the mechanism for it?

If you allow affirmation of My-Favorite-Idea to compensate for lack of rhythm in a song, lack of beauty in a painting, lack of poignancy in fiction, then your art will, inevitably, suck.

If you allow awesome graphics or cut scenes in a video game to compensate for weak gameplay, your game will, inevitably, suck.

If you allow awesome special effects in a movie to compensate for plot or character development, your movie will, inevitably, suck.

Yep. The key point of political art is that you have to be excellent at both politics and art. Bob Dylan or The Clash are rare.

I was not your destination
Only a step on your path

Which didn't sound right at all.

Actually, I like it much better that the version in the previous poster (but I mentally replaced “only” with “just”).

(I read “destination” in my head with a strong secondary stress on the first syllable: “I was NOT your DES-ti NA-tion”.)

Ha ha, good joke there at the end.

There seems to be one class of a political topic that seems to lead inevitably to this (and to which I'm guilty of). Any political stance that affects the means of creative production(for example, copyright/free culture). If you get to the point where you cannot stand the people who are making art for political reasons, you are forced to create your own. The result is going to be usually awful. Warning people against creating awful art in that case goes too far -- awful art probably needs to be created in order for masterpieces to emerge from in relation to. But a reminder that it is awful and that it's likely unsubjected to the scrutiny of a billion eyes for the period of time more mainstream art is(thus weeding out most crap in many iterative processes of crap removal), and can lead to affective death spirals, is a Good Thing.

"Dear God" by XTC is my favourite atheist hymn. On the other hand, "Transcendence" with Johnny Depp made me feel empathy for christians watching bible flicks - I so wanted to like the damn thing.

As to OPs main point, "politics is the art killer" has recently entered the discourse of almost every fandom (if the franchise is still ongoing). Congratulations on pointing out yet another problem years before it became so exacerbated, that people can no longer ignore it.