[ExI] Art and myth as systems thinking of a sort

[Dan]

--- On Tue, 7/14/09, Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/14 Dan <dan_ust at yahoo.com>:
>> --- On Mon, 7/13/09, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Why, I have always believed that fairy tales and
>>> mythology
>>> do amount to "systems-thinking for children".
>>
>> You might be right about that... And this goes for
>> adults too. This sounds similar to the ideas of Bruno
>> Bettelheim, especially as given in his _The Uses of
>> Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales_.
>>
>> Regarding adults, too, might this function be served
>> by art? I know Rand has been trashed (and defended) on this
>> list, but look soberly at her ideas on art. She sees art as
>> concretizing certain types of abstractions. This seems akin
>> to a systems view of the world. E.g., one doesn't draw out
>> chains of reasoning when thinking of, say, Othello or Ahad.
>> Instead, one seems to have a sort of image one can draw on
>> of just what it means to be obsessed. (This can also go awry
>> -- as in stereotypes.)
> 
> I totally disagree that any of this stuff relates to
> systems thinking.
> You could stretch and say that various types of art could
> help
> stimulate novel system-related ideas, but as part of the
> actual system
> design / modeling / understanding process, no. Also, I'm
> sure elements
> of system thinking help stimulate the artistic process. But
> they are separate things.

I'm not so sure one way or the other. I think art not as a process of production or creation, but one of reception or experience does trigger something like systems thinking. E.g., art objects are typically perceived as "organic" wholes and not as an assemblage or lump. This often folds into how they are received and criticized -- as in when Euripedes' "Medea" 
is criticized for having a "deus ex machina" ending.

But maybe you're right in one sense here. I see, looking at Rand's esthetics theory, her seeing art as a way of subconsciously doing a lot of complicated thought. (Hence my subject line change earlier: "systems thinking of a sort.") Though I think she means both sides of art -- both making it and experiencing the finished object -- I think the take home for the systems thinking thesis might be that art a surrogate for systems thinking -- not necessarily better or worse, not exactly the same thing, but something that allows people to "mentally model complex systems," no? I used the examples of Othello and Ahab in particular because these seems to simply the complex system of an obsessed individual. As Rand might say, it gives us a means to think about these things by asking, "What might an Othello do in this situation?" (I believe the example she used was of Babbitt in her collection of essays on the subject, _The Romantic Manifesto_.)

Also, as to your remarks on video games, an intereting take on them as a contemporary art form is that of Paul Cantor in his lecture "Commerce and Culture." I don't want to overplay my hand here, but it seems there's some overlap between art (both making and experiencing it; in video games, of course, part of the experience is usually having many alternatives to choose from) and systems thinking.

I imagine Koestler has similar ideas.

To be sure, I'm not offering, here, teaching art or art appreciation as a substitute for attempting to teach systems thinking.

Regards,

Dan