The Arts are the Glue that Holds Civilization Together
Something I have been thinking about a lot since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its profound impact on American (and global) society is the place of the arts in our everyday lives. So many of us are binge watching Netflix or other services, reading far more than we used to, downloading comics or writing our own stories, perusing fine art or setting up easels of our own, or doing all manner of creative and artsy things, both for amusement and to keep ourselves busy. I’ve been cramming in a metric ton (officially weight) of Star Trek across four decades of the franchise, blogging (as I am here), and cataloguing my books (not so artsy, but still nice). For myself, this has been part of an effort to keep me from the more destructive behaviors I might engage in (ranting on Twitter, for example) and to help me adjust to what will surely be 2 or 3 months (at least) of near total physical isolation for others. And in doing all of this and seeing all of what is happening around me, I’ve started to answer a crucial question out loud to myself: why do the arts matter yesterday, today, and tomorrow? And I think I’ve got a decent answer to that. I’d argue that the arts are the glue that holds civilization together on both the personal, national, and global scale. It’s the thing that allow us to express ourselves, to find joy and relief, to be human and explore what that even means. The arts are everything.