EXPOSURE
a personal view of arts and culture in Nanaimo
This
week I want to introduce a discussion about aesthetics. It’s the elephant in the
room, and requires a basic understanding if we are going to continue our journey
through the maze of art and culture in Nanaimo.
Aesthetics
is the study of how we assign value to something. In this respect the discussion
of aesthetics is well within the realm of economics. In fact it is the core of
economic discussion. Adam Smith (The Wealth of Nations) truncated this
discussion by defining two types of value; real value and market value. Real
value was determined by the amount of human labour went into a product, and
market value was determined by how much that product could be sold for. Thus a
forest, untouched by human effort, had no real value until it was logged, and
those logs had no market value until they where sold. From then on, the study of
economics has become fairly stultified, while the study of aesthetics has
undergone a series of revolutions, but confined only to examining the value of
human experience.
This
is not a small thing, and when we note that our economic model could not assign
a value to a forest, but an aesthetic model can, we are forced to acknowledge
the profound weakness of our economic model.
". . . when we note that our economic model could not assign a value to a forest, but an aesthetic model can, we are forced to acknowledge the profound weakness of our economic model." Well said Dan!
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