Response to Katie's Question on Hume

Katie posed the question: What have humans done with art in a viewing sense that makes us so much more superior to animals?


In Katie's blog entry about Hume, she mentions that "animals instinctively know how to do everything we had to learn" which I feel may lead to the answer of her question. If we are to imagine humans during a time before the development of what we call "consciousness", we operated in similar ways to that of other animals. We would have acted solely on instinct within the intention to survive. 


Through our growth as conscious beings, we strive for efficiency in the menial tasks that we used to live and die for, utilizing our new found ability to think beyond the nest and create machines to do those tasks for us. I am not saying, however, that this collective growth makes our art now any more superior than the bowls and vases of the past. What I am saying is that our direction has shifted because of a change in perspective. We are now not only able to create and look at art, but we are able to infuse our own ideas into its meaning. 


It is true, though, that because of this growth of consciousness, we tend to not look at the smaller beauties in life or at least appreciate them to their fullest, which may be a reason why we attempt to create art. It does seem that we often over analyze art and all things for that matter because without a purpose of supplying food for our young or constructing a structure of protection, we have delved more into the mental space and live primarily in it. This distances us from our environments, which is why we don't appreciate the little things and it may cause us to over think the minor details in the rapidly evolving and semi-schizophrenic world of art. 


We have, as modern humans, made a split into abstraction and the only ones who will be calling us superior beings are others of our kind. 


Q: Could we ever define the strive for efficiency in our technological devices art?