Steven Pinker article and ethics in art

I was just reading Steven Pinker's article on morality in the New York Times magazine (I'd give you a link, but it's easy to find). The article has an understated greatness to it; Pinker's thought isn't revolutionary, it is very careful, conscientious and clear. It is written by a person who is highly rational, but not reductionist. In the article he reviews ideas about how evolution has driven us to be be composed the way we are morally, socially, and psychologically without simplifying things. Without asking us to step outside ourselves, he is able to give us some distance from which we can reassess the problem. This is what makes Pinker a humanitarian. He then applies these ideas to some of the moral problems we have created for ourselves, the impasses between different groups, including, pointedly, Christians and Muslims, and liberals and conservatives.

Reading this article, I was thinking about paths towards sociopolitical change; the revolutionary path vs the progressive path. I was thinking about this in relationship to issues in art. What role does ethics have in the creation, viewing, and criticism of art? How does Pinker's explanation of morality relate to the ethical questions we ask ourselves? (You may have to have read the article to understand what I am going to discuss here) I have noticed that artists as a group seem to have a moral sense that is skewed towards what Pinker labels a liberal moral bias in favor of justice and against pain. In fact, there is a strange moment where Pinker used performance art as an example where I felt as though he had made a decision to preclude artists as a group from his group of ideal readers (In the example given he tried to induce a sense of disgust by talking about performance art that sounded a lot like something by Coum Transmissions, precursor to Throbbing Gristle - something I would love to have seen). I am somewhat upset by this - I think that artists are more than just superliberals, but I need time to synthesize these two systems. How do you compare a general life-or-death social morality to the ethics of aesthetics? Pinker mentions the moral panic that ensued over medical advancements like blood transfusions, in vitro fertilization, and cloning, but what about the moral panic over groundbreaking art, theater and music? Both of these things continue today, but it raises questions about the difference between the ways modern and postmodern art relates to the generally-accepted morality; questions of revolutionary vs progressive change.

Readers of Supersilly Sillystraw will not be surprized that I am not drawing firm conclusions about this matter. An exposition on the various ethical questions within aesthetics would result in an entry that would be rather long, even by the low standards of brevity enforced here. But I would like to conclude by pointing out that Pinker's final quote was highly endearing to me, both because it was from Chekov, and because it can be read in a way that allows for the possibility that art can still be as important to our understanding of ourselves as science;

“Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”

This is a wonderful succinct gem which elucidates complicated thoughts I have about the moral dimensions of my own work. Art can be moral because there is an ethics in perception; a new way of seeing will open our eyes to new solutions to our problems and enrich our experience as humans.