Capitalism vs Socialism. Craft vs Art.
#HalfBakedThoughts #orOvercookedOnes
People should be communist and then grow out of it. It is not a good political philosophy but to be a communist, you need a great humanist core and even if the political ideology washes away that core shall remain and protect you from deviating towards any political ideology to the extreme. In some sense, the heart of communism lies in the right place and hence everyone should attempt to understand the socialist manifesto irrespective of how it manifests itself in real-world systems. But it is important to grow out of it, for the past century is filled with numerous examples of how the exact nature of bringing about the class struggle forgets the spirit of why we were compelled to follow this revolution. The humans are forgotten and all that remained was senseless violence to implement a society that is humanistic only in word but flouts the basic principles of humanist thought even more gratuitously than the previous society which it fought against for so long.
It takes a passionate heart to be an artist. This is a cliched over-used line but the best art is created when you are moved to tears to create something without a care for what it means for the world or how this compares to the work of the masters. Even if the art is not tasteful, the pure expression of one’s soul shall connect to another soul through the medium of the art piece. In some sense, all acts of creation of art, however bad from an academic point of view, helps us understand ourselves better and is something that should be tried. But it is important to not over-indulge these instincts and just justify each personal thought, however mundane, as a paragon of expression of the human condition. When that happens, the art itself becomes a narcissistic tool of gaining acceptance and self-worth from the circles, the art was supposed to fight against.
Any artist who wants to make art in this world should work on his craft with discipline along with following his intrinsic drive to tell the world his story. Craft is built by following all great art that exists in the world and then trying to see what are the common components of anything that makes art great. It through a meticulous study of the components that make that art and practice these building blocks with discipline, trying to recreate what masters before you have built. All great artist were once apprentices who copied the great artworks of the glorious age before them. Without an ability to execute the ideas, the heart and soul of your work get lost. Any attempt to connect to another human shall always begin through sowing an intrigue birthed by the technical marvels of the art piece. But it is important to not just focus on the technical aspects of what makes something artsy, for the world is filled with pseudo-intellectual imitators who lack an authentic expression of their own.
The tenets of self-interest that drives Man to do selfish things also accomplish the good of the world by means of invisible but tangible paths. Capitalism is the truth of how we can make the diverse species of humanity co-operate, even if it leads to huge income in-equality and inhuman conditions. Though it is amoral, modelling our society as inhabited by homo-economicus allows us to efficiently allocate scarce resources and paradoxically achieve prosperity in a world doomed with scarcity. But it is important to not take free-markets and pure-capitalism as a goal unto itself, for the current world as ruled by capitalism is filled with gross injustices that make us feel as if humanity is a failed project.
In the end, most human pursuits shall serve humanity.
To serve, we need the heart to serve and the mind to be able to serve.
To serve humanity we need both art and craft. heart and mind. humanism and pragmatism.
Socialism and Capitalism.
