Pursuing Arete: Medicine, Journalism, and Art

Why should anyone care about Art?

The perfect question for the modern, Platonic dualist.  After all, isn’t the entire purpose of art merely to train the masses in civic virtue?  Or – in the case of Transformers – to keep them sedated, enjoying the pyrotechnic ‘splosions on screen, rather than engaging in some sort of Catholic uprising?  If you’re a God-fearing Aristotelian, however, the problem with this question is self-evident.

Everything we do contains an element of Art.

Platonic, dualist thinking leads to a situation where “the ends justify the means”.  Art isn’t engaged in for its own sake, but to serve some other purpose.  Commercials are designed to manipulate, movies, to draw a large box-office, buildings, to satisfy the needs of the clients, and writing, to conform to the standards of its community.  This last point is what has led to the recent chafing and argument within my own niche, the Manosphere.

Many of the more prominent writers in this community have recently “quit” the Manosphere (not that they can do such a thing – whether or not you write within the Manosphere is a decision others make for you), but unlike the separation between the MRAs and the Manosphere, which was driven by distinct ideological differences, this time it’s the frustration and disgust with many of their fellow writers that underlies their rejection.  It’s been voiced in various ways, but they all boil down to: “There’s too many men whining around here; I’m about winning, not crying over Feminism!” At it’s core, the problem is that too many writers are writing for the Manosphere – their justification for their writing is that it qualifies them entry into the ‘sphere – their writing does not justify itself.

All writing (as with all Art, all engineering, all software coding…) must first and foremost be beautiful.  Second, it must be True.  Third, it must be unique… and most importantly, it must do all of these things unconsciously.  As C.S. Lewis put it:

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

The antithesis of this is art that consciously tries to be original, and consciously tries to fit a certain genre.  The result is something pedantic, which dilutes the genre it’s in.

Does the world need another article deconstructing Feminism?  Absolutely not.

Does this mean that you shouldn’t write about Feminism?  That’s the wrong question to ask.  What you should be asking is: does the article need to be written?  Does it deserve to be written?  Not for you, not for your audience, but for the article’s own sake?

In The Art of Rhetoric Aristotle argues:

It is clear, further, that [the function of rhetoric] is not simply to succeed in persuading, but rather to discover the means of coming as near such success as the circumstances of each particular case allow. In this it resembles all other arts. For example, it is not the function of medicine simply to make a man quite healthy, but to put him as far as may be on the road to health; it is possible to give excellent treatment even to those who can never enjoy sound health. Furthermore, it is plain that it is the function of one and the same art to discern the real and the apparent means of persuasion, just as it is the function of dialectic to discern the real and the apparent syllogism. What makes a man a ‘sophist’ [a specious rationalizer] is not his faculty, but his moral purpose.

His contrast to medicine is particularly striking to me, as I have two friends who are suffering right now due to medical sophistry; neither are receiving the treatment they need, and even receiving the correct diagnosis is difficult, despite the doctors being well aware of what it is already.  The thinking of the medical sophist goes thusly:

1. The purpose of medicine is to heal (rather than to pursue arete for its own sake).
2. The best method for healing is to create a systematized structure which guides the doctors’ behaviour (rather than a structure which is guided by the doctors).
3. Ergo, any diagnosis which does not fit the system is an incorrect diagnosis; give the patient anti-depressants, and refer them to another doctor.  Now that they’re on brain-medicine, their complaints can be rationalized away as emotional aberration.
4. By the standards which it has created for itself, the system has been a roaring success.

David Firth covered this aptly in his short film Take This Pill.

To return to the topic of writing, it only takes a glance at any mainstream site to see that the same issues are undermining decent journalism.  The goal of most writers isn’t virtue and excellence within the writing itself, rather they seek to conform to the Editorial Point of View of whatever rag they happen to be writing for.

In and of itself, the EPoV is a critical component for decent journalism.  As Maddox said in his criticism of Buzzfeed, “…since you don’t know who wrote the article, you have no frame of reference for what the reasons he or she might pick to come to those conclusions.” An established body of work defines the writer, and a mission statement defines the newspaper; and yet, a good writer does not pander to their audience, any more than a good newspaper twists the facts to fit the bias – and yet we are seeing more and more of this these days.  Rather than the EPoV serving the purpose of arete in writing, the writing is now subservient to the EPoV.  Ironically, the Buzzfeed system of having no integrity (beyond their commitment to creating popular click-bait to sell ad revenue) is a result of over-privileging the EPoV.  When the system becomes more important than the virtue it is purported to serve, the system is free to morph into any form it desires; and in the evolutionary environment of memeplexes, it will be the most vicious and psychopathic systems which dominate.

At the core of Art is the magic of the human soul, the ingenuity which can turn a wasteland into a civilization, or competition into flourishing.  Hatred of this magic is at the core of every degenerate ideology; the jealousy Karl Marx held for the natural aristocracy, the penis-envy of Feminists who will never taste male agency, and the destructiveness of Greenwash Socialists who lack the wherewithal to invent.  They all embrace an atheistic denial of the divine spark, and view the world as a zero-sum game of all-against-all, where theft and violence are the only solutions, and the only forms of magic are marketing and usury.

Beauty, virtue, and excellence will always win out over ugliness, hedonism, and panhandling… but to achieve them requires heart, ethics, and a whole lot of effort.