the usefulness of the useles
Why do we make? Why do we enquire?
Why do you care? What do you care about?
What difference does any of it make?
According to Effective Altruism, a movement which started coalescing in Oxford in 2009 looking to make radical altruism mainstream, stands by their opinion that Art as a form of expression is devoid of a reason. Even when we analyse a piece of art which looks to create awareness on environmental problems, because regardless of how provocative it may be, how useful is to a family with no running water? In fact, it goes as far as to clinically and rather quantitatively measure not only the worth of artistic action but surgically quantify the worth of our actions as human beings under their Replaceability Equation.Â
Your Apparent Good Achieved minus the Good Your Counterfactual Replacement Would Have Achieved equals Your Actual Good Achieved.
This mind-boggling and radical logic presents itself as somewhat of a moral quandary to any human being, stating that their dreams and aspirations mean very little unless they can contribute directly to the improvement of human beings in need. This, of course, is a maxim which in theory, if you dedicate whatever money you make, or at least a part of it to humanitarianism, it quantifies your value as a human being in positive, you are in fact making the world a better place. But what happens to people with more precarious economic situations? Those of low-income jobs, are interns, or, and here comes the contentious one, have a creative job?
Kev Nemelka, a curator with a conscience, gave a fabulous and clear presentation for TEDxBerklee Valencia in 2016 âcalled Sustainable Practice: Reconciling Art and Effective Altruismâ and attempts to return some semblance of hope to us creatives whose jaws and consciousness just dropped six foot underground.Â
He clarifies that despite art and creativity being embedded to base ideas of economic stability and bannered by what he calls âprivilege mantrasâ such as âdo what you loveâ âexpress yourselfâ and âfollow your dreams, he goes on to say that there is, of course, a way to meet in the middle and even create great social value from art.Â
The words utilitarianism and pragmatism are perhaps the trigger words that frankly make me feel uncomfortable, torn in two directions. For one, the maxims of extreme humanitarianism that EA promote are arguably something that we could really benefit from as a civilization. On the other hand, however, the level of sacrifice of the individual, unidirectionality of lifestyle, models of success and projected and apparent worth feels inadequate and even repressed, but I guess all radical and extreme views have problematic similarities.
Kev asks a question which many ask themselves in the art world âhave I dedicated my professional life to something that in the end often amounts to little more than privilege, narcissism and art I can't even convince my parents to hang or pay usable money for?â
What do you gear yourself, your life, your career and practice towards? Do you fall under the sort of socially accepted pragmatic chap that looks to make a profit out of a valid yet selfish need to fulfil yourself? Or is there a humanitarian component to your practice?Â
I would like to believe that despite us mostly falling in the first category, one looked down upon by Effective altruism, like Kev outlines in his talk, it is possible to encompass successfully a humanitarian outlook and aim in our journey to self indulge in âour dream jobâ. That is of course if you last long enough to actually make it.Â
Art is famously hard to quantify and even justify. What does it actually change? Art is also actually historically unsustainable and the absence of pragmatism in art is problematic, more so nowadays where no institution is free from scrutiny, from accountability.Â
But this quantitative way of measuring up actions based on the impact of their reactions is laced to rhetorics of usefulness, which not coincidentally, stem from the same utilitarian notions that target education and again, the arts. Nuccio Ordine masterfully critiques the values of our modern society based on consumerism and materialism in his book âThe usefulness of the uselessâ. In it, he warns us of the perils of continuing down a path which looks down on non-profit investigation, literature and art, eventually leading us to the dehumanization and illiteracy of our society.
The close structural proximity between our neoclassic economic model, which is defined by seeking maximum profit in the least amount of time, and Effective altruism, defined by seeking the maximum humanitarian actions (also based on monetary contributions) in the least amount of time, is slightly discomforting. The truth is that perhaps what I find problematic is the fact that neither care of how and by whom this profit is made, so long it is exponentially superior to what has been made by alternative models and therefore quantitatively superior.
But most importantly, I feel critical of a model which upholds values stemming from our current economic model, the king of modern oppression, the maxim on bought self-idolatry and the culprit to some of the steep environmental and social problems which EA feels so compromised towards. Sustaining their humanitarianism from the system which caused the problem is not going to break the cycle. Perhaps making an exhibition about plastic wonât either, but in so far it has inspired, made people dream, design, try and fail. We have coalesced and we have made projects like the ocean trap cleaning our oceans, social change rippling through our society and preconceptions being demolished which would not be possible if we micromanaged every action in base of an economic gain to be made.
I stand with Ordine when he objects to such treatment in education, in art and in the fields of the research and expression of our humanity that develops Knowledge. He goes on to argue that we focus our efforts on the prioritization of the wrong ends. The last decades, we have focussed so much in the amassing of wealth, that we have gone past the point where we do not have a market economy, but we are a market society. And what more evidence do we need of our assimilation of such toxic values but to observe them in an honest initiative whose only purpose is to make the world a better place at the cost of ourselves?Â
illustration by Vladimir Radunsky