Why the World Needs Art

Humans differ from other animals because we have opposable thumbs, which make us dexterous and therefore able to make the complex forms of machinery that enhance our lives.
I once heard someone say that he believed the main factor which differentiates us from the animals is that we sit in chairs. That was an interesting take.

I think the preeminent characteristics which set us apart from the animals are that we are inspirable and inspiring. But preceding this ability to inspire and be inspired is another uniquely human trait: the need to self-express. To do this, we use our voices, we use our hands, we use our bodies. Everyone, in her own way, has this innate need. It’s as integral to living as breathing.

When we are free -- either within or with out -- what we express is always and necessarily beautiful. However unique or bizarre or unexpected it is, it is beautiful. As we express ourselves we are each representing to the world our own vision of beauty – it is beauty as we and only we can know it. It is reality, and therefore Truth, as we know it. Sometimes one's art may not appeal to our tastes, or we may fail to understand it, but art is always doing something inside us. It causes us to feel something, thus reminding us of our visceral selves. It’s our ‘gut’. When we understand something instinctively and beyond reason, we say we ‘feel it in our gut’. This is how I choose to think of visceral and the viscera here. We’ll choose to follow our ‘gut instinct’ because we know, in spite of what reason is telling us at the time, that it comes from the most honest place in us. The viscera is the seat of Truth, honesty, Nature inside us. We feel as though it is so real and alive that it assumes an actual form in our bodies, the gut. Is it the stomach? The intestines? Of course we know it’s not an actual part of our anatomy, yet we feel it assumes a physical state inside us.

So, if the gut has assumes no form yet it’s inside us, what is it? It is our piece of the divine. It is that thing which makes us more than animal, more than human. It’s how we are tapped into the truths about life which are universal. When we are expressing ourselves freely, openly, honestly – which is always and necessarily beautiful - it means we have, out of utter humility, surrendered our voices, our hands, and our bodies to be the media of the divine within us. And doing this in turn inspires others to create, to express the beauty within them. And Beauty, as Plato has reminded us, inspires Love.