The Nature of Art

In a predetermined universe, what is the nature of art? Just as all human societies at some point create their creators – they also begin traditions of creating creations - otherwise known as art. Why are humans inclined to take useful crafts, like language or pottery, and imbue them with something extra, something intangible and slippery? There are several functions of art, from an anthropological perspective, such as setting standards of behavior and transmitting customs or values. In this way, art acts to preserve culture. Art can also as an agent of change as it opens a relatively safe outlet for allowing taboo thoughts to be expressed. Once expressed within the confines of an accepted artistic medium, taboo thoughts may be dismissed. On the other hand, taboo ideas expressed in artistic media that push the limits of acceptance can precipitate cultural shifts or change, both in what are considered acceptable forms and in the relaxing of taboos. In either case art either preserves or destroys according to its timing. It is this aspect of art that comes into play when examining predeterminism, in that art may act as a force upon the trajectory of ideas pulling them one way or another.

In order for art to be an agent of change, a force shaping the universal outcome, does it have to survive the war of attrition, the sandblasting of time which eventually makes fools of us all? Does it have to be fundamentally important to a generation or more importantly to their offspring? Or is it an individual exercise based on personal insight or observation, of which outward appreciation gives the creator the belief that he or she is not in isolation on this lonely planet? If you accept that the future can be seen in the present, as can the present be seen in the past, and each event is multidimensional – then the act of creation takes on more importance than the resulting artwork because it resonates through time - beyond the single event or individual experience.
-LEH

Predeterminism - the fight for reason

Have you ever had the feeling that your life was spinning out beyond control? Or inversely that everything was happening exactly as it should? In both cases, as in all cases, what you are sensing is the predetermined nature of the Universe: an innate background structural radiation, extant since the Big Bang, which surrounds us and within which we live our lives.

I would like from the outset to wrestle the concept of structural predeterminism away from any Calvinistic religious connotations of morality surrounding the God myth and need to sloppily shoehorn the word God into gaps in our understanding. Structural predeterminism is not God and in fact precludes that notion. The simplest way to explain structural predeterminism is as follows. When we conceptualize the Universe we have two options:
The Universe is finite.
The Universe is infinite.

All that humanity has been able to observe so far would point to the Universe, as life, being finite. In current scientific theory the Universe we live in begins with the Big Bang. In order for the Big Bang to have occurred, as with any nuclear explosion, a finite critical mass must have been reached. It follows, if the original mass was finite then so must be the outcome.

-MSM

oh the humanity!

All societies have the existence of religion in common. It is part of what makes us human. Religion is defined as the beliefs and patterns of behavior which humanity uses to resolve issues that cannot otherwise be solved using known technology. Religion includes not only the rituals which manipulate supernatural powers, but also the story of creation. If every religion has a story about how and why people came to be, then you could say that the function of religion is to answer the currently unanswerable questions of how and why we exist.

If what we, as humans, are seeking is an answer to how and why we exist, and if many of us credit the Big Bang as the precursor to life as we know it, then what effect does existence prior to the Big Bang have, not only on how and why we came into being, but also on what we have become?

-LEH