Homo-Mysterious: Evolutionary Puzzles of Human Nature by David P. Barash

Author:David P. Barash [Barash, David P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199751945
Google: eGnf26i1jm8C
Barnesnoble:
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

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Art II: Play, Practice, and

Sex (Again)

Perhaps art evolved because it provided an adaptive payoff via learning, something that benefi ted individuals regardless of its impact on the larger social group. After all, the arts offer abundant opportunities for instruction. John Dryden maintained that theater in particular offers “a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.” Revisiting our earlier and perhaps overly negative discussion of art as providing vicarious, pornography-like opportunities for “cheap thrills,” maybe the emphasis should be less on the arts as procurer of subjective pleasures and more on how they provide palatable opportunities for adaptive information gathering, whether boring or dangerous or in between.

Learning and Play

Art — particularly literature — can be useful in providing not just

“teachable moments,” but also “teachable narratives,” stories that have genuine substance while offering prolonged connection as

we work our way through them. Such instructive narratives aren’t necessarily as simplistic and iconic as “What might happen if I kill my father and marry my mother?” or “What are my options if Uncle Claude kills Dad and then marries Mom?” Rather, things can be at least somewhat more subtle: how to navigate a boring marriage to an even more boring country doctor, and what is likely to transpire if you have an affair? Beyond narratives of personal drama or historical scope (such as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia), imaginative stories — especially if they are not too imaginative, that is, if they retain the key quality of believability — can provide lessons that help us navigate the ordinary daily dramas that constitute a normal life.

Nor is the potential payoff of art limited to learning about our personal lives; it might help us explore the real world more generally. “Art opens up new dimensions of possibility space,” according to Bryan Boyd, “and populates it with imaginative particulars.”

Or, as Lewis Mumford once suggested, “If man had not encountered dragons and hippogriffs in dreams, he might not have conceived of atoms.” Maybe so, but isn’t it equally likely that we have often been misled by our imagination, deluded into believing in dragons and hippogriffs, along with ogres, saints, demons, dragons, gods, gremlins, trolls, and fairies? When dealing with the real world, which is notably intransigent, a case can be made that the human imagination needs not so much wings as lead weights. We must be anchored in reality, if only because when it comes to the harsh truths of evolutionary success or failure, that’s precisely where we fi nd ourselves.

This, in turn, makes it all the more puzzling that when it comes to literature and its verbal companion, storytelling, people across the globe prefer fi ction to nonfi ction. One might expect, by contrast, that people would react with disdain and disgust to stories that are known to be untrue! After all, we have little use for dull knives, unpalatable food, ships that don’t fl oat, or houses that fall down — that is, things that don’t meet the stern tests presented by reality.

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