one can conclude, if they read my texts, that i've been strongly influenced by schopenhauer, nietzsche, freud and their whole 'current' in inventing my own philosophy. on this topic, schopenhauer "invented" sublimation and the idea that art can replace sex, nietzsche deduced that both artistic inspiration and sexual desire come from the same source, which he identified as will to power or instinct of life, and freud as instinct of life or libido, and freud invented something that kinda "married" both ideas together as cathexis of the libido which can be sublimated into art as substitute activity; my 'babygirls' tend to have influece on me, i do agree with their basic ideas, but i've developed it from this place. i do seek some originality, and have my own ideas. a lot of my developments where i pick up from the place they left it at include involving modern psychosexology, sociobiology and evolutionary biology into that.
i think as a man i would be really horrible.
i am a fan of the idea that abstract intelligence and art evolved in sexual selection, as basically courting things that served as genetic fitness signifiers. i have in the past written about this hypothesis, introduced by geoffrey miller in 'mating mind'.
i've come to a place of believing this connection between art and sexuality is inherent, since they come from the same source in origin; and i wrote about it in the text about seduction in art, where i have stated that art is libido "turning back" from the world that inspired it with stimuli again towards that world at large since it didn't find an object to attach towards and pursue sexual satisfaction or couldn't find one, or for any reason couldn't find full satisfaction in sex, so it turns back to the world of stimuli that inspired it, and creates something that's an act of pseudo-courting of the audience - seduction; it gets intellectualised, turned into the abstract, and put you into a form that's able to seduce (capture) the audience and play the courting ritual in a substituting way with them instead of the ideal/target physical object. it's supposed to become personal with them, and provoke intimate emotions, usually tied to close interpersonal interaction. subconsciously, all art is seductive - even if it's sad, it's still given the best aesthetic form to provoke intimate emotions in the audience, such as the ones reserved for partners and close people, not to mention sadness is often an experience of unrealised desire, so the libido that pursued said desire can be redirected into "vent art" and, once again, serve seduction of the audience, temporary psychosexual "play" with them.
i was thinking and figured that miller was mildly wrong in implying it's the complexity of art and technical skill et cetera that serves as the selecting criterion - it's important for sure as a signifier of various things, all the stuff like the technical skill in visual art or music, colour harmony shows intelligence and a mutation-less 'quality' brain, but it doesn't explain why humans love modern, abstract art. 'it's an invention of spoiled 20th century kids' or 'it's because their intellect developed so much they've come to love the pure abstract form' doesn't quite explain it. i mean, the first one still doesn't explain why the 20th century kids found it appealing, and the latter doesn't explain how could it develop independently of the evolutionary tendency; nothing happens for no reason when it comes to the human brain, there must have been a prior 'infrastructure' it employed, and it must have been there for a reason.
i came to the conclusion that it didn't go independently of the evolutionary tendencies - which would be silly to believe, after all - it's just that the complexity and technical appeal was never the selection criterion, it was novelty. the aesthetic appeal is about being shown new things - new associations that the brain hasn't seen before (in case of hyperrealistic art it's that the brain hasn't seen such a thing as just a painting and not a real 3d thing before so it has the novelty effect). hence why humans find abstract art appealing - they don't normally think of, imagine or see these shapes in such compositions and especially as a thing of its own, insular that exists for itself. it works on the appeal of stimulation, which is the appeal of novelty, the appeal of something unusual, atypical to reality and what the brain associates and puts next to each other normally.
after novelty, it's probably down to harmony, in both colour and shape, or well in sound. most importantly, though, it has to surprise in some way. art doesn't work if it doesn't surprise the brain and throw it off a bit because that's what it wants - to be surprised. when the human brain seems art and goes "oh?" that's then it loves the art.
the brain most primarily selects art via novelty, and rejects what it repetitive. hence why innovation is considered artistry, but replicating even the best copies only craft. and selection of art via novelty is probably what caused it to further get complex and abstract, since art doesn't only get selected in the great scale of things, evolutionary, but also gets selected on the cultural level, which may happen at a various pace, and globalisation causes exposure to much more various art, which necessarily causes increase of value of novelty, which now becomes not-so-easily available; so art becomes more and more abstract and "avant garde".
novelty factor is very important for the brain overall (as the human brain often operates on familiarity vs novelty); there's a certain balance it maintains between clinging to familiar things and pursuit of new things in form of 'intellectual stimulation' and dopamine. freud would attribute these to instincts of life and death. quite probably, it's the main cause of the human intellect evolving towards such complexity also. my point is that art doesn't just exist 'for art', since that doesn't explain anything, nor does it exist to suit some technicalist criteria, it exists for new ideas. new associations of shapes, concepts, visuals, sounds. art exists for art, which means for stimulation which means for novelty, and seduction happens via tempting novelty.
i think the aesthetic theory is going to be a very important part of my philosophical system overall, since i find it's been neglected in its significance in most cases, and i do believe it was one of the main drives behind humans being as they are now, and all the things about humanity that are considered positive, creative, productive et cetera. i also want to do a down-to-the-grund analysis of things - cultural concepts, or as i call them, 'phenomena' - such as propaganda and art.
in the first place, i want to figure out why is it even a thing. in this case: what is aesthetic appeal, why does it exist rather than not exist, and how did it originate, what needs does it answer to or what conditions shaped it; often, people start analysis at the stage of whether art is inherently revolutionary or whatever, and that - while it may and often does have a lot of merit - seems 30 steps ahead. above all, i don't look for meanings. i want to reconstruct and 'map' the concepts. for one, i'm completely not interested in figuring out whether propaganda is a good thing or bad but justified sometimes, i'm interested in finding out what it is a phenomenon, how it's constructed, what ideas and what mechanisms in the human brain does it utilise to be effective, what makes it effective or not effective; i want to find out the mechanisms cultural phenomena work on and the evolutionary 'infrastructure' they utilise. my reasoning is quite individual-centered; that's just me, but i do think starting from societal meanings and so on is - if not done carefully by an intelligent person - something that leads to a lot of shallow, repetitive analysis; plague of modern 'leftist' spaces.
back to the theory of art, however: recently i've been reading a book called 'the history of stupid ideas'. interestingly, i read that seemingly most early ideologists of fascism and "scientific" racism were artists who found the appeal in the vision of blue eyed londe haired aryan ideal; aesthetic appeal, as the focus, before it was rationalised and developed on.
my new idea is that in general politics/ideology is based on aesthetic more than anything else, has proprties i've called 'aesthetic frameworks', which invoke specific associations (i.e. for fascism one of the associations is light and cleanliness), and a lot of the time support or opposition towards something is based in aesthetic tastes and preferences on the subconscious level. i have to explore and expand it, which i very much intend on.
i've been relatively productive lately, and inspired - my seasonal depression is subsiding. i'll keep posting updates!