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I see how that justifies art in general, but that doesn't justify new art. If you have values that have already been expressed by other people, what's the use o

• endominus 4y ago
  This is where my point about culture being PvP rather than PvE is important to understand. Cultures are in active conflict with other cultures. It's like marketing; do you need $X dollars to inform people about your brand? No, but if you don't spend it, your competitor will, and take you to the cleaners. You can't rely on fixed targets like "supplying a mosquito net for every family" or "delivering 100,000 doses of the MMR vaccine to this region." You are playing an iterative game, and new strategies will be discovered, exploited, countered, and become obsolete. The language of art and how it must engage with people is in constant flux; no one views Shakespeare's plays as low-brow entertainment any more. Further, art builds on art. Less so now that copyright has strangled the ability of artists to expand on each others' work, but a community of artists working and improving alongside one another does produce better art. Sturgeon's Law is in full effect; 99% of art produced is crap, but it needs to be supported so that the 1% that actually matters ever gets made. And artists often improve best when they have bad examples to analyze; of cinema, it is said that it is easier to understand the rules of film-making from a bad film than a good, because the mistakes are in full view.