Jordan Peterson - The Role of Artists

what is the role of art in a healthy culture is post-modernism as destructive and in this domain as in politics well let lets that's Michel Bamford well what's the role of art in a healthy culture well the artists articulate the the artists are the people who first articulate the unknown and so the role of artists in a healthy culture is to bring to public awareness elements of being that have not yet entered the the collective consciousness so you could imagine imagine that we're all living on an island and many of us are in the center of the island far enough away so that maybe we can't even see the shoreline and we can't see the ocean that's that's where our borders and but we're distant from the artists are right on the edge and they're there they're there they're expanding the landscape they're there they're moving the culture forward that's where my metaphor fails I guess they're moving the culture forward into the unknown and they do that by translating what is as of yet unimaginable but sensed into what is at least imaginable and represented represented in image and drama and literature and that's the precursor to its full formulation in articulated philosophy and thought and that's what artists do their problem solvers their problem detectors and problem solvers that's what true artists do and they're always trying to solve problems like if you there's a great documentary that was made about Picasso for example painting and unfortunately I can't remember the name of it I think it was made in 1957 it's available on YouTube and it's in black and white and Picasso is filmed making a painting on a on a window so that you can see exactly what it's doing and you can watch him work with ideas he he paints something in in any erases that you know he paints over it then he paints again and he paints over it he moves the figures around on the canvas it's a it's a windowpane as I said and you can see them working out visual you can see them working out problems and solutions to problems using using his visual imagination and the the artistic product the painting is is the consequence of that rather than the aim of it the aim is to formulate the problems and to work out the solutions and the artistic product the painting is the byproduct of that not the aim and so artists move us forward into the unknown and you can see them doing that in cities because it's the open people the artists who go into parts of the cities that are have degenerated to some degree back into chaos and then revitalize them and they civilize them and then the less artistic people who who are more conventional move in and you know that's when you get gentrification and that sort of thing and that usually chases the artists out and they go somewhere else cheap and interesting and start the renewal process again so the thing about artists and and it's a hard thing to balance property in our culture is that artists are unbelievably productive economically but it's very very hard for them to monetize their productivity so even though what they produce can be of incalculable value it's very difficult for them to get any of the economic value that they're produced actually directed towards them it's a major problem in and it's a major problem with trade openness as a mode of being in the world so as post-modernism as destructive in this realm as it is in politics post-modernism is perhaps equally destructive in all realms as far as I can tell especially when it's a lot but with new Marxism and those two things there's no reason they should go hand in hand you know because if you're a post modernist there's absolutely no reason stemming from your own philosophy that you should allow yourself with a new Marxist political outlook and the fact that those two things are found together almost inevitably indicates to me that post-modernism is the handmaiden of the neo-marxists rather than the other way around so in fact post-modernism is the intellectual front that the neo-marxists where or a dog to hide from themselves and other people their true motivations which are mostly driven by revenge and and resentment and the desire to destroy and a hatred for quality and a hatred for qualitative distinctions which is deadly its death I mean with young people you want to say look there's not much to you're only 20 and you're kind of useless but that's because you're only 20 you know it's that doesn't mean you're not full of potential that potential needs to manifest itself so that you can turn into something that's that's a like world-beating significance but in order to tell a young person that credibly you have to say look there are a true qualitative distinctions between things and you're just getting started there are Heights that you can ascend to that are genuinely high which also means they're above where you are now but that gives your life the fact that there are those things to pursue gives your life deep meaning and significance and gives your struggle nobility and validity and the postmodernist neo-marxist as far as I'm concerned absolute enemies of qualitative distinctions and so what they do is destroy everyone's ambition it's like we're already as valuable as we're going to get it's like okay well fine that's good we don't have to feel bad about ourselves but what the hell are we gonna do what are we gonna orient ourselves towards what we want is multiple hierarchies multiple steep hierarchies of confidence that are open in in fair competition to everyone and and if we don't have enough hierarchies of competence for everyone then you know it's up to the creative people to produce some new ones it's not like we'll necessarily run out so [Music]

Channel: ManOfAllCreation

Views: 169,108

Keywords: jordan peterson the role of artists, the role of artists, jordan peterson artists

Id: b56xdYB_8Wk

Length: 5min 57sec (357 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 10 2017