Art isn’t just escapism. Sometimes it’s a way to help us understand, contextualize, and/or cope with our own reality.
Comment on 'Colony Ship is a Dark Christian Sci-fi RPG' - Warlockracy
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 20 hours agoArt is escapism. Otherwise it’d be a structure instead of architecture.
There, I explained it to you.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 hours ago
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 17 hours ago
You realize you just described escapism in that second paragraph?
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
This feels like you’re doing the “qualityslop” troll lol.
I think you could make art that is escapist in theme, but by definition escapism is any effort you make to “escape” your reality, or the reality of the human condition. In contrast, the value of art is that it gives us a way to communicate about our reality and/or the human condition using a language that lives past literal interpretation.
Art doesn’t help us to escape our reality, it specifically embraces it and helps us understand and communicate about it. Art is the opposite of escapism.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 8 hours ago
You’re throwing contradictory definitions into the same thought. Your second paragraph specifically contradicts your conclusion, for example.
I’m sure plenty of people assume that someone having an opposite idea from them is a “troll,” but you seem smarter than the usual Reddit reject.
Are you really not seeing what I’m pointing to or are you the one being a troll?
Escapism: Using any method to interpret reality instead of directly facing said reality.
So, if you’re using art to interpret the reality it portrays, you are directly engaging in escapism. Simpler: If you’re looking at a picture of a tree and using your imagination to marry it to the real thing, that is escapism. If you were not doing escapism, you’d go stare at the actual tree.
How strong is this whiskey?
teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
Interesting. I’ve never heard anyone attempt to define escapism like that. Where are you getting this definition?
Or from the other side, what word would you use to mean,
Hopefully you agree that “purely imaginative activity or entertainment” is distinct from “any method to interpret reality”.
What if I told you that looking at a real tree is an act of using your imagination to marry it to reality? Consider that humans looked at the moon and stars every day for centuries before we understood what they were in reality. Some people still do to this today.
Regardless of whether you’re considering something in front of you or a concept in abstract, if you’re attempting to grapple with the nature of reality, you are most certainly not engaging in escapism.
Jumbie@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
My logic is sound and attempting to parse it leads you right back to my original statement.
If you’re going to get philosophical then I’d want to know what reality you’re trying to escape by doing so. Might I offer the chance to go look at a tree?