{"id":23,"date":"2011-05-02T02:38:11","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T09:38:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/?p=23"},"modified":"2011-04-24T09:11:35","modified_gmt":"2011-04-24T16:11:35","slug":"avoiding-the-great-amputation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/2011\/05\/avoiding-the-great-amputation.html","title":{"rendered":"Avoiding the Great Amputation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_38\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/amputee.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-38\" class=\"size-full wp-image-38\" title=\"More Uncanny Piles of Discarded Prosthetics\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/amputee.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/amputee.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/amputee-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-38\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">More Uncanny Piles of Discarded Prosthetics by Nadya Peek from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>David Brooks, primarily a <a href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/opinion\/editorialsandoped\/oped\/columnists\/davidbrooks\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">political columnist and commentator<\/a>, has written a book attempting to understand some of what makes us function as human beings, and as a collaborative society.\u00a0 He discussed the book, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Social-Animal-Sources-Character-Achievement\/dp\/140006760X\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1303274374&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">The Social Animal<\/a>,<\/em> in a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/talks\/lang\/eng\/david_brooks_the_social_animal.html\" target=\"_blank\">TED Talk<\/a> of the same name.\u00a0He says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cFor centuries, we have inherited a view of human nature based on the notion that we are divided selves.\u00a0 Reason is separated from the emotions, and society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions\u2026This has produced a great amputation, a shallow view of human nature.\u00a0 We\u2019re really good at talking about material things, but we\u2019re really bad at talking about emotions.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Later, he says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWhen we think about human capital, we think about things we can measure easily.\u00a0 Things like grades, SATs, the number of years in schooling.\u00a0 What it really takes to do well and live a meaningful life are things that are deeper, things that we don\u2019t really even have words for.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I\u2019m admittedly biased, but it seems to me that art, and the larger thread of creativity, sit at the core of the development of this new social animal, which Brooks believes (and I agree) is at the heart of successful society.\u00a0 And to be honest, it\u2019s sort of stunning to me that (at least in the talk\u2014I\u2019m 518<sup>th<\/sup> on the list to get the book out of our library) he doesn\u2019t mention art once as a tool for developing this new social muscle.\u00a0 This is especially surprising, I think, because his six basic constructs for creating a successful social animal interlock perfectly with the consumption of art:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Mindsight:<\/strong> \u201cthe ability to enter into other people\u2019s minds and learn what they have to offer.\u201d\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Equipoise:<\/strong> \u201cthe ability to have the serenity to read the biases and failures in your own mind.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cEpistemological modesty.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Metis:<\/strong> \u201cstreet smarts\u2026a sensitivity to the physical environment.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sympathy:<\/strong> \u201cthe ability to work within groups.\u201d<\/li>\n<li><strong>Blending:<\/strong> the ability to integrate disparate concepts.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Limerence: <\/strong>A drive and a motivation to find those \u201cmoments of transcendence when the skull line disappears and we are lost in a challenge or a task.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These jive very nicely with what art does to audiences.\u00a0 It teaches empathy, it teaches distance and self-awareness, it teaches an understanding of the world.\u00a0 It is a social enterprise, behind the fourth wall or in front, and the creation and consumption of art is collaborative and complex in a way that few things in the world are.\u00a0 As far as limerence, I think an easier word is Alan Brown\u2019s concept of captivation, which is directly linked to the concept of flow\u2014essentially, then, that a human being is at his or her most contented when he or she is completely enraptured in the activity at hand.<\/p>\n<p>At the core, Brooks\u2019 argument is that we are not separated individuals as much as we are a humming hive.\u00a0 To function well, to govern well, to do business well, to educate our young (and to have our young understand and relate to each other), we must create a world that encourages them to grow as social animals.\u00a0 We do not want this \u201cgreat amputation,\u201d and we all have the tools right in front of us to keep it from happening.\u00a0 They are the art we do, the work we make, and the places that people can come to consume it.\u00a0 Someday, hopefully, people will look to art and its place in our communities when they start talking about how collaborative and intertwined we all have to be to succeed\u2014adopting language that encourages that connection is the first step.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Brooks, primarily a political columnist and commentator, has written a book attempting to understand some of what makes us function as human beings, and as a collaborative society.\u00a0 He discussed the book, The Social Animal, in a recent TED Talk of the same name.\u00a0He says: \u201cFor centuries, we have inherited a view of human [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-language","8":"category-main","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/newbeans\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}