The Good Delusion

My philosophy of values is something that gets revisited a lot on this blog. What with it being called Absurd Heroes and all, I suppose that's not really strange - philosophy of values is something I place a lot of value in. Ironic, I know.

So, let's for a moment go over the basic idea behind absurdism again. Absurdism states that there are no inherent values - the world is meaningless and devoid of any real content, save for what values we invent for ourselves. The idea behind the philosophy is that causes - something to champion, something to be a hero for - fill our lives with meaning. Essentially, any goal we set is arbitrary and meaningless, but the struggle towards that goal is meaningful, because of the challenge it poses, because it keeps us moving. When Sisyphus gets the rock to the top of the mountain, it rolls down on the other side - nothing is achieved, nothing has happened - but the struggle to push the rock gives him something to do.

So much for values as in goals. The struggle to create a good fiction, or a nice drawing, or a beautiful piece of music, are valuable; the outcome basically isn't really important. So what of being a patron of the arts? Is enjoying art also an entirely arbitrary thing? Maybe. I'm thinking it probably is.

The reason I'm philosophizing about this is because I just watched a magical girl transformation sequence and started crying. My thoughts at the moment were basically "My God, this is so beautiful". Yes, you read that right. I was deeply touched by a cartoon depicting a poorly-drawn girl spouting random English nonsense and then magically changing into a pretty outfit. Now, normally - to protect my pride - I would probably blame this reaction on sleep deprivation, or making some association, or some other excuse. But the fact remains: I was deeply touched. I felt the essence of True Art for a moment, art that moved and inspired me.

And I'm thinking, can you argue for something being True Art and something else not being? I don't think so. Beauty, or Quality, much like a religious experience, is something which cannot be quantified, measured, or established in repeatable experiments. Just like God, it's only something we feel, not something we can ever prove. So when we say, "This is a good song", we are saying essentially the same thing as "I felt the presence of God". You are saying you felt something, the existence of which you cannot prove, an intangible, unquantifiable, unmeasurable something, with no substance, no essence, no form. You're essentially saying you saw something that for all intents and purposes doesn't exist.

And yet, there are trends. There are some things that are more widely considered beautiful, and there are whole academic fields devoted to trying to understand quality. And there are shortcuts, like the golden ratio, or tropes, or literary techniques, which are recipes that will likely result in something of quality. But we won't find universal consensus. The whole thing reminds me a bit of the ancient Jews, reading the Torah and trying to understand the nature of God, trying to say, "This here text proves that God is good, because it describes benevolence in his actions", much like a literary critic might say, "This here text proves that Catcher in the Rye is good, because it describes its expert usage of the unreliable narrator technique". In both cases, you can flatly deny the arguments. "It is true because it's in the Bible", they say, and you say, "But I don't believe the Bible is true, and you can't prove it. You can't even demonstrate it, actually - you can't even provide indications that it might be."

And yet, I think, a lot of people claim that Good is something real. You'd certainly think so, what with how hurt people can be when you insult their favourite pieces of art. Firefly sucks. The Final Fantasy series is for losers. Hyperion is a terrible book.

It hurts, doesn't it? It feels so wrong somehow. Art is very important to us. And yet we haven't even got a clue what it actually is.