Sbusa’s Weblog

The Less Obvious Purpose November 26, 2007

I remember the end of one of our Philosophy classes we laughed about certain things humans do that don’t make sense.  Sports seemed so pointless.  Then someone brought up art as another pointless thing that humans do.  It was what was on my mind at the time when she said it; that it seems stupid to see something and then decide to draw it exactly on paper.   A second later, however, I felt like an idiot, because that is just one form of art.  Paintings, especially these days, rarely are meant to measure exactly what a visual scene depicts.  A lot of modern art is portrayed through grids, or messes of paint thrown at a canvas, or sometimes even just a piece of canvas mounted on the wall.  It’s not “Hey, I bet that I can draw that apple exactly the way it looks.”  It’s “Hey, look at what I see when I look at the apple.  Look at the way that I view the world.”  Art is expression.

Poetry, painting, even theatre.  I think someone did actually bring up theatre as “Wow, let’s pretend to be these people for two hours.”  But plays are stories; they are visual representations of what the writer was trying to bring to the world, and a good actor is someone who understands people and understands the world and can fall into a character and learn his or her thought process and way of life.  Acting isn’t just going up there and learning lines and playing pretend.  I took a playwriting/theatre intensive program at Sarah Lawrence College over summer, and I learned about the things that people put themselves through to really understand and become their characters.  They might not eat or sleep for a week or more to comprehend the hunger and desperation of their character’s living situation.  A less extreme scenario was when my theatre teacher once bought a certain pair of shoes and wore them everywhere for a couple of months to feel the way his character walked and the way he held himself.

Okay, enough about art.  What about sports?  I love sports.  I love playing them and I love watching them.  In both situations they bring people together, either as a team or as fans.  The adrenaline is such a rush.  Are sports just another way that people express themselves?  Stereotypes.  The athlete is someone who enjoys competition, even thrives under it.  The athlete craves the sense of belonging to something, is a team player, loves people, loves the game.  The athelete seeks wisdom to improve his or her game.  Meanwhile, the artist seeks worldly wisdom.  The artist does not necessarily want to improve his or her self or even the world, but seeks to understand.  The artist wants to express and be heard, even if only by his or her self.

How can I explain why humans do what they do?  Why things like sports and art are such a big part of culture… These things date back to ancient history.  People had to find something to do when they weren’t working or taking care of their families.  The results were intriguing because people could do certain things that gave other people good feelings, but had no obvious purpose.  People are awed by physical strength portrayed in sports, the visions of others that enlighten them to a whole new way of thinking, a song’s melody that sympathizes with the way they are feeling or that one uplifting verse that just makes people happy or pumped.  People needed something that was separate from abiding by morals or going to work or being with their family… but there was no apparent meaning behind these things except that they felt good or “to get away”.  Maybe that’s why society honors them so much.  Greeks honored physical strength and beauty.  Gaelic Ireland held poets and druids to the highest staure.

Today, the adding of purpose to these things is more than just beauty or respect in the eyes of a god.  It’s about money.  That’s why some people “sell out”.  Would we really call songs like “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne or “Crank That” by Soulja Boy art or honorable?  What about baseball players that have the highest batting average and take a whole bunch of steroids?  They have the physical beauty, they portrayed the physical strength; does it matter how they did it?  Are what about players and artists that are spoiled and rude and selfish but are still rich and famous and have a lot of fans?  Still, people benefit from the songs and the teams benefit from the players, so they get the fame and the respect and more money than our heart surgeons.  We have to have things that don’t make a difference in our lives as obviously as a good job and a healthy family do; and although I enjoyed laughing about it in class, I think that the way we were going, we could have made anything sound stupid and pointless.