Defending Dionysus: Putting the Art in P"art"y.

Looking over interviews with comic book writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison one could be led to believe that there is an overlap between brilliant artists and practitioners of new-age "magick".

As a secular person I take Moore and Morrison's metaphysical ramblings with very little seriousness but both of them bring attention to an interesting analogy between art and magick*

According to the above authors, Magick is like art in that it is the practise of arranging symbols to produce profound emotional responses. Art at its root is just the manipualtion of the mind via our secular senses. When building a cathedral, a 15th century architect might install a high-roof to inflict a sense of awe onto onlookers. Songwriters likewise will scribe in a minor chord to match their dirge's lyrical content. We could spend all day discussing the various "cause, effect" relationships that underpin arts ability to move us: my point has been made..

There is something distinctly magical about any kind of creative endeavour that achieves its desired effect. Take for instance the preparation of a pepper-corn sauce. The chef burns off some whiskey, mixes in cream, adds gravy, allows the mix to reduce in the pan and finally chucks in a fistful of peppercorns. The result is a sauce that through the combination of its individual components, achieves a qualia greater than the sum of its parts.

I am quite fond of this definition of art and accordingly I will now use it to discuss party planning as a serious artistic medium.

While the act of enjoying a party is often a relatively dumb activity**, the act of designing a party has the potential to be a highly cognitive and artful process. As someone orchestrating a connoisseurs revel you control the refreshments,  the dress code, the music, the ambient noise, the spatial layout, the whole visual, gastronomic, social and auditory aesthetic is yours to act on, adjust and perfect.


What's more, you can design and select activities to take place at the party. You can use a party to play host to party games.

Indeed the prime contribution that video games have made to artistic understanding is the mediums emphasise on interactivity. Video games have helped us to think of active doing, as opposed to passive listening or watching, as a way to communicate with audiences and at the very least the principles at play in video games can be carried across to party games. Afterall they are both games, just with differing forms of simultion.

For anyone curious, I am thinking along lines less cliche than spin the bottle: though that might actually work as a sort of semi-ironic nostalgia peice. An alternate example would perhpas be a party with the theme "Intrigue" which includes a game where guests try to outwit eachother to accomplish their own competing clandestine objectives, perhaps with booze as an incentive.

If art is the arrangement of symbols to invoke experience then what medium offers the artist a more immersive and developed platform upon which to work their magic, than a party?***



*I use the "magick" spelling to specify it as a religious/spiritual practise distinct from "magic" which denotes the practise of deceiving small children and boring your family members at wedding receptions.

** In fairness the same is true for experiencing music, film or any other medium of creativity.

*** It goes without saying that there are many limiting facets at play here which I have not mentioned. Parties are generally held for fun and so one may struggle to justify a party that explores depression or the horrors of war. Unless a cultural revolution takes place and artists begin to orchestrate and direct parties in unusual ways we may not be able to progress past partying as having "a grande old time".

Consent as a Foundation of Justice: It's not as straight-forward as some would think.

Consider these five examples.



Example A:

Kirsten the store clerk is working late at a petrol station one evening when an armed robber comes through the door and points a gun at her head. The armed robber tells her to hand over the cash or she will be killed.

Kirsten agrees to hand over the cash.




Example B:

Paul gets lost walking in the desert and, through no fault of his own, is bitten by a rattlesnake. He runs to get help and after an hour of desperate searching comes across a man who sells rattlesnake anti-venom.

The salesman informs Paul that the salesman is the only one around for miles and it is an absolute certainty that without the purchasing of anti-venom Paul will die.

The salesman tells Paul that Paul must not only pay the market value for the anti-venom (100$) but Paul must also allow the salesman to urinate in Paul’s mouth.

Paul chooses the latter.




Example C:

Mark is a right-wing libertarian. Mark despises the fact that he is taxed by a government which he deems to be incompetent and injust.

One day a friend mentions to Mark that there are large areas in the Antarctic wilderness where no government influence is present. Mark is then left with a choice. He can either pay for the travel costs (Mark is very wealthy) and live a life free from government or he can choose to continue living with governments that tax him and misallocate what is, in Marks eyes, his money.

Mark chooses to stay put.


 
Example D:

Sam and Mick are co-workers. Mick is offered the opportunity to work in the same office space as Sam where Mick will have access to better facilities that will make his work more productive. However Sam has a personal vendetta against Mick and is liable to make rude comments and act in a dismissive or insulting manner towards Mick, making Mick's work life more stressful.

Mick declines the offer to work in the same office space as Sam.



Example E:

Sally likes Rose and wants to go on a date with her. One day Sally asks Rose if she would like to get coffee with her next saturday.

Rose says yes.

————

All five of these examples present situations in which an actor provides some form of consent or non-consent, in the sense that they agree to co-operate or not co-operate with another actor or proposal that has been offered to them.


Obviously, that is not to say that all five examples are examples of "genuine consent". It would seem that. at the very least, in one or two of the examples consent was obtained by nefarious and immoral means that would, depending on your moral outlook, invalidate the given consent.


The tricky question is what is genuine consent and when does it happen?

Often, especially when it comes to sex, genuine consent is characterised as "enthusiastic and informed consent" but I do wonder how far the addition of "enthusiasm" really gets us.

I mean sure in the bedroom if someone is not enthusiastic about the sex which their partner aims to initiate with them then that is a pause for concern, but outside of the bedroom how realistic is it to equate legitimate consent with enthusiasm?


Surely in an economic context, or even of the context of house-hold chores, it's reasonable to presume there are some arrangements which I can legitimately consent to despite not being enthusiastic about their undertaking. I can agree with flat-mates to hoover the lounge on a sunday, mop the kitchen on a wednesday and not play music without headphones after 10pm without actually enthusiastically wanting to do any of those things.


So what are the factors that go into making consent genuine outside of enthusiasm?
Well what seems to be important when judging the five cases above is context: Is there a threat of violence? What penalties will the agent incur if they do not consent? Are the penalties proportionate/reasonable?

The individual speech of act of consent, the mere utterance of "I agree" or "I will", is morally neutral. We can't discern whether or not that act of consent is respectable until we are given information about the context in which it was uttered.  


That is not to say that consent isn't important. Even as a utilitarian I hold to the idea that providing people with the ability to choose (or consent) between various options is the best if not most pragmatic method available to facilitate other peoples happiness.


All of this is just to point to the problem with taking a prima facie approach to consent as it relates to justice. Just social and political relations include consent. To say that a just world is a world in which we all consent to the institutions that affect our lives seems fairly straightforward. However the specification of what kinds of economic, political and social contexts are capable of giving sufficient grounds to consent requires a great deal more theorising.

Poetry, You Have One Last Chance!

In many ways I feel somewhat foolish writing this. Not long ago I was happily harping away about the heady heights of ethical hedonism and why it does not require us to sacrifice intellectual pursuits. Now having been recently reminded of poetry, I'm beginning to have second thoughts.

Whenever I read an essay and see vagueness in the concepts being employed, my philosophical training assumes the worst. For the most part of my intellectual growth I have considered vagueness to be the antithesis of carefulness; it was drilled into me by lecturers and tutors alike that the only time you write vaguely is when you are talking nonsense.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm trying to figure out exactly what it is about poetry that I don't get and I'm trying to provide poetry with a face-saving answer because the alternative isn't that nice. If I'm brutally honest, I just don't see the point in poetry. If you want to write with hidden meanings then go join MI6 because your fascination is with espionage, not art. 

The real irony here is that I love minimalism and poetry is supposed to be the monarch of the minimal. Unfortunatly I find that poetry, due to its coy attempts at brevity, often ends up achieving the very opposite effect of minimalism. Instead of saying what needs to be said simply it says what it wants to say shortly and in turn becomes obscurantist, defeating the whole point of minimalism which is to cut through pomp.


However....

I generally intend to approach most activities with the attitude that if someone else can enjoy X then so can I.  

 Accordingly, and in corroboration with my previous resolutions regarding the expansion of my cultural vistas, I will spend some more time reading poetry. I will dutifully force myself to explore the possibility of finding joy in a hitherto un-tapped pleasure and succesfully disrupt the treadmill.

Hopefully with some discipline and effort I will break through to the other side where I can love poetry, care for it or at least think it worthwhile. Maybe Stockholm syndrome will win out or maybe I'll be left in the cold wondering why everyone keeps changing the line they are on mid-word....

Poetry is a dying medium, so far I have been staunchly in favour of putting it out of its misery by shooting it in the face with a cannon filled with manure... it has one last chance to convince me otherwise.