Was looking at a couple of comics today (in my free time). Appreciated some of the drawings, and the intrinsic storyline, then the question pops again:
Why do we compose?
This is where the english language may fail- I really do mean 'compose' in its full essence, rather than the conventional definitions of 'putting things together' or 'keeping calm'. Compose in this context would generally mean any arbitrary effort on our effort to 'recreate' a part of the existence that we live in. In other words, any form of artistic, scientific, or ethical composition that in essence mimicks our reality would fall under the strictest definition of 'compose'. Conventional compositions i.e. drawings, pictures, music would fall under the catagory of art; MO theory, TOEs, and engineering would fall as scientific re-creations; and the act of kindness- as the fundamental representation of the goodness that we are swimming in.
Enough definitions. Why is it innate in us to wish to re-produce pieces of ourselves in our idealistic domains? We can evidently see that all these forms of re-representations are fundamentally idealistic- sparked by inspiration, sustained by passion, and subsequently realized with skill and empirical methods. Somehow, it is quite interesting to say that it's because the human psyche wishes to partake in the essence of creation. If we go along this lines and factor in the assumption of Transcendental Theory, we can conclude that the human spirit will not rest until all Truth, Beauty and Goodness is broken down (not beauty though), understood, re-created, and mastered to perfection.
Truth in the from of knowledge, Beauty in the form of artistic exquisiteness, and Goodness in form of love.
Such a notion should be fundamentally right- the Christian doctrine goes along the lines that we are 'stewards of the earth', and having mastery over the forces of nature, proceed on to partake in God's plan of creation. While we cannot assume that all forms of creation definitely is part of that divine plan, we can safely assume that any notion to recreate would be going along the same lines of the 'desire to create' as advocated by creation theory. If we were to be less metaphysical and go along with empirical theories, we immediately see a correspondence with the fact that "the system of life is a move against the the law of thermodynamics, to bring development and order within this world if increasing disorder and entropy." Naturally, humans are the most complex forms of living things, and we must factor in that our idealistic psyches are partially influenced by our biological tendencies (which allign to construction). Definitely we can prove either way that we are created for creation, and construction.
Lets not dwell too much into the abstract. Instead as we look at the next storybook we pick on the way out of the library, the next manga that we read online (look at the pictures, and go along with the story), the next movie watched in Cathay, we can see that these forms of literature (under the faculty of art) is a from of human recreation of the world that we live in. Of course, this does not merely restrict to contemporary realism- science fiction, magic, fantasy, and other 'out-of-this-world' genres are also byproducts of human reconceptualizations of this world. In short, as long as there is a trait of humanity, or naturalism residing within that creation, such a work is essentially a work of creation and representation.
Now, a certain contradiction arises from the above assertion. If we are digging through lesser 'contemporary-realistic' works of creation looking for recreation of this reality we live in; it would assume that no creation is essentially perfect unless the creation itself has a one-to-one correspondence with reality itself. We intuitively know that such a view is quite warped, and I definitely do not want to impress this idea today. So how do we explain this?
Another coining factor to our works of creation is actually intellectual escapism. While we incoperate pieces of reality into our works (of literature), there is always a complimentary level of escapism, abstracity, and re-representation that we want to factor in. On face value, this complimentary value corresponds to 'thinking-out-of-the-box', 'creativity', 'style' and 'personality', and from there we arrive back to identity theory. The reason of escapism is actually a form of identity affirmation, for it defines the individual to the level of 'abstracity' the individual escapes to- from the common shared reality of objectivity, to a subsequent subjective idealism that resides in our intellectual domains.
Of course to that, moderation has to be employed judiciously. Over escapism leads to a life of denial, and escapism for the sake of escapism would do injustice to the roles we are supposed to be enacting in this objective world.
Naturally, Beauty theory holds that averageness brings together individuals into a common 'metaphysical being' that denotes the true (vector?) direction of progress. Scientific studies have shown that superimposed human faces actually average themselves to a much more pretty face than the individual faces themselves. And if we are to go on with art, we see that harmony is the key idea fundamental to all things beautiful. If we are to return back to our intellectual creations as a form of art, we can start wondering what happens if we average and map every form of individual creation into one big piece of creation itself.
I do not mean physical average- words don't superimpose themselves to form new words. And colors overlap only to a color of mud and chaos. This average has to be conceptual, metaphysical, essential, and ideal. A good way of visualization would be to tag along a author's comment to the piece of art and attempt to impose these comments conceptually.
Such averaging would cancel out contradictory extremes, and highlight certain points.
And the outcome, paradoxically, would actually converge to become reality itself. Complimentary to how our individual personalities average to objectivity.
Such an outcome definitely brings a very new definition to the concept of beauty- if beauty in truth is averageness, then why do we look at average films and consider them mediocre?
This would entail the concept of schemas- among art, portraits are admired for realism, on the other hand films are admired for a certain level of exxageration and abstracticity. Recall the human desire for escapism as well as realism, and we return to the moderation doctrine again- that the objective identity is not a static, 'smack-certer' steady-state balance of idealistic and realistic domains. Rather, its a dynamic fluctuation of (the 4) components that moderates itself to objectivity, correspondent of the reality we live in.
This is the essence of composition, and our desire for ccomposition. In short- an appreciation/
acknowledgement of ourselves in this world, as well as a form of personal creation.
Very much like how we are supposed to live our lives.
Damn, I hate reasoning in circles. LOL
