From an email from a friend of mine – a brilliant and financially challenged artist: “We are typically as artists polarized against even thinking about money.” Here’s my response:
Well, that’s a bunch of crap that comes from confused thinking.
What’s a useful definition of money? How about: money is the most widely accepted symbol of appreciation with which we can trade for that which helps us exist, live, create art, share ideas, and thrive.
And a useful definition of art: Art is the creative design of things that are more interesting, compelling or beautiful than they would have to be, just to merely exist.
People can be appreciative of what is useful. And people can also be appreciative of what is more than merely expedient. There is no way to have a war between these two definitions – unless one accepts the premise that nobody could possibly be interested in appreciating an artist; that money could only be in the hands of those who hate anything more than the most minimal functionality.
What a strange idea about human nature! What an utterly ridiculous prejudice! What a poorly considered idea of class warfare as an inescapable battle between those who could help others sustain their lives, and those who could make life more beautiful, as though people were doomed by cruel fate and genetics to be in one camp or the other!
In economic theory money is something with an intrinsic value. Once the U.S. dollar was disconnected from gold that’s not true around here. As decorate small cloths, dollar bills are not that great for much of anything. Electronic transaction records are even worse at keeping one warm all by themselves. But that has nothing to do with the underlying premise about a means of exchange, a widely accepted alternative to having to barter for everything. Art is a human experience, appreciation is a human experience, exchange is a human experience. There is no need to wall off some of these positive human experiences, as though people should accept that some of us must be less than what people can be.
I don’t deny that the brainwashing you referred to is widespread, only that it is utterly mindless to let it continue once it’s exposed for what it is. It is an attack on our shared humanity; an attempt to deny that human beings could have more than functional utility to one another.
