Art’s role in breaking our Prisons of Perspective.
A philosophical meditation on the power of art as a tool for transcending the self, and the importance of finding unity within shared experience.
There is a central, paradoxical duality within consciousness. Consciousness; the experience of our emotional and cognitive sentience, is at once both distinctly unique and simultaneously universal. Through diversities of genetics and experience, no two minds can be the same. As a result of this, all perspectives are frustratingly unique. In understanding this notion of conscious individuality, a realisation of the restrictive, prison-like nature of our minds is arrived at. We are our minds and our minds are us. No matter how hard we try, we’re trapped in this sole prison of perspective.
It is understandable then, for human connection to be a psychological necessity to us social creatures. Yet the difficult dichotomy between minds is that they can never observe exactly the same, they can witness as if in parallel to each other —that is to say, our thoughts can ‘travel’ in the same direction but rarely meet. There are no duplicates, no coincidental replicates, our thoughts are inseparable from our physical uniqueness; to have identical thoughts to another, not only in content but also in context and perspective, is essentially impossible. Imagine the spectrum of human perspective laid out as a window, stretching far to either side. As we look out this window our collective gaze all points outward; observing the same objective reality. Yet along such a broad pane of glass, the individual positioning of each viewer creates dramatic variation in perspective — some in close proximity can see similar angles, yet still not exactly the same. Others on the opposing end, find themselves witnessing far different sights than their distant neighbours. With each position at this window the view is unique, no two gaze’s look upon reality at the same angle. The power of our intellect allows us to come as close as humanly possible to intersecting the paths of our minds, to overcoming the prisons of our own perspectives, but too often human communication falls short of these goals. Instead, failures to adequately communicate and conduct dialogues, failures of empathy, only result in exacerbating this curse of divided, imprisoned perspectives.
Herein lies the importance of art. To define art is a notoriously difficult task, so for these purposes, see art as that which is a creation produced implicitly to make you feel, to conduct a release of palpable emotion: paintings, photography, poetry, music, film. As multi-sensory creatures, our perception of the world relies on a multiplicity of inputs: the visual, aural, and physical. Out of these three, film stimulates two, arguably bestowing upon the medium the greatest power to reflect the human experience. In other words, Cinema, is the clearest of all the windows to the soul. Art is a unique phenomena, and bar any advanced extraterrestrial life, it seems only man possesses the power to create in such ways. Emotions are the only shared truths – feeling is what unifies, it’s what allows the woman in England, comfortable away from the horrors of war, to feel an empathetic fraction of the pain felt by the bereaved mother in Iraq. Our own individual tastes of pain or loss or despair, that we store in our subconscious memories, can be tapped like a reservoir. Brought to the surface, black oil exploding with veracity, spurting from the well. Sometimes controlled, other times ferocious, our emotional commonalities allow us to feel that pain, happiness and anger of others. This is, in essence, the nature of empathy, and from that we develop our own notion of morality. Some may doubt the universality of this morality – I, too, would be one of those. True, some may be mentally impaired to the detriment of such ability, leading to gratuitous demonstrations of unthinkable immorality – of which twisted serial killers and mass murderers would often come under. But for others the matter is more complex. Through nurture, if the world is presented as dangerous, unforgiving, and hostile, one’s valid experiences of pain and fear become not a tool from which to empathise but instead a reason for revenge – if the world is mean, if the world does not play fair and empathise, why should I? Of course, this logic only perpetuates further suffering, creating a feedback loop of injustice and amorality at best, pure immorality at worse.
The ability to perceive is universal, but our perceptions are inherently unique. As such, there are those that disagree; that don’t share the same world-view as from their position your truths appear false. This diversity of opinion is necessary for democracy, and is a fundamental aspect of civilisation. The ability to respect and value these diverging opinions is necessary for civility. Yet, ironically, our individual realities pose the threat of preventing us from realising this. Emotion and feeling, however, are not unique, and good art utilises this commonality as a means to explore and represent differing perspectives with an aim to cultivate understanding, to influence our morality. Art is the process of evoking emotion through offering a window into other perspectives, placing the viewer into a world of foreign experience in order to understand it’s not that foreign at all. With the individual, personal interpretation required to contextualise the emotion, the meaning gathered differs to each subsequent viewer as it is based upon the unique experiences of he or she. However, the underlying truths exposed; the feelings evoked, are universal: therefore transcending the prison of perspective. Take ‘Moonlight’, Barry Jenkins’ best picture winner depicting a tender, moving portrayal of the coming of age for a gay black boy in the ghettos of Miami. This experience is incredibly unique – a minority perspective almost never explored in cinema, and yet the film displays a beautiful tendency to resonate with those possessing experiences far removed from that of Little, Chiron and Black, exploring concepts of masculinity, identity and the trials of poverty.
From this unity of feeling, art has a unique power to not only comment on, but unify society itself. Socially-critical art serves to communicate vital messages – greater truths telling of where society has failed or stalled and how we can approach the solution. Stories, from the dawn of civilisation, have been used as ways to educate, to teach lessons. Similarly, with analogies and metaphors, ideas are grasped simply by relating or transplanting the concept onto experience. It also allows us to communicate profoundly; realising and sharing truths from the otherwise external, unobtainable experience of others, through internal, subconsciously introspective evocation of universal empathy.
The creation of primal language by our ancestral fore bearers was a result of increased intelligence, and these primitive grunts of communication evolved into complex syntax and linguistics, capable of utilising our increased intellectual and emotional capacities to evoke powerful effects. Art is the peak of human communication; film, photography, music are the furthest innovations of connection, they present passionate dialogues about and between the unique natures of individuals, and, as a result, what it is to be human. When humanity seizes passion for constructive purpose and creates, the resultant product is invaluable to spiritual and philosophical development as oneself, and also to society as a whole.
To society, art could be viewed as a remedy to the poisoned heart of dialogue in our current reactionary state of polarities. A chance to heal the divisions created through our collective failures to communicate adequately and substantively, succumbing to tribalism and dogma, forgetting our underlying unity. Art forces us to consider and perceive experiences other to our own. To oneself, the role of a philosopher – or as simply a voyager through this sandpit of possibilities that is life – is to experience as many experiences as you can. We only have one life; one mind, and the ability to remove ourselves from the immediacy of the self and experience, even briefly, the perspective of another (even if this other is fictional; a mere projection of the collated experiences of the auteur, the meaning derived and emotion evoked is the same) is one that should not be overlooked in its significance.
