{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Culture_vs_Copyright_Chapter_3/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Culture_vs_Copyright_Chapter_3","id":"wikisource_Culture_vs_Copyright_Chapter_3","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Culture_vs._Copyright/Chapter_3","summary":null,"tags":["Subpages"],"text":"CHAPTER 3\n\nArts and Personality\n\nCulture, art, work of art, message to humankind, new world, dialogue, creativity, humanity, freedom\u2014these faces of cultural phenomena were presented in Chapter Two. It is interesting though, to see how all these ideas translate into everyday life. Luckily for me, there were five smart people, my students, who were able to help me in further exploration. They proved already that I should not worry about finding the right question to start with. I had thought I should worry about keeping the conversation going, but I was wrong, for neither took much effort.\n\nWell, first things first. The next time I entered the classroom, I announced my question, \"Why do we read books?\" Silence and blank looks were all I got at first.\u2026 But not for long.\n\nWhy Do We Read Books?\n\nAlpha: Isn't it obvious? Books teach us to behave.\n\nBeta: Yeah, like Tom Sawyer in that Sunday school.\n\nKappa: Tom Sawyer is a good boy.\n\nDelta: Who said he isn't?\n\nGamma: I didn't.\n\nBeta: Me neither.\n\nKappa: I am not even sure I don't like what he did in Sunday school.\n\nAlpha: Well, you may like him personally, but he didn't serve as a particularly good example.\n\nKappa: So? You don't always serve as an excellent example, do you?\n\nBeta: Hey, Kappa, do you like Alpha because of that?\n\nKappa: Come on, I'm serious here.\n\nDelta: You're always serious.\n\nTeacher: So, what about books? Why do we read them?\nAre Arts to Teach Us?\n\nBeta: Can\u2019t we think about looking at paintings too?\n\nDelta: What about theater?\n\nGamma: Music?\n\nKappa: Movies!\n\nAlpha: Fashion shows, heh heh.\n\nTeacher: Actually . . .\n\nDelta: I don\u2019t think it matters!\n\nAlpha: How is that? A book clearly teaches you. You understand it.\nHowever, when you listen to music, you can imagine whatever\nyou want!\n\nBeta: Alpha, what have you learned from Tom Sawyer?\n\nKappa: How to tease and beat boys in clean clothes, ha ha.\n\nDelta: How to court girls.\n\nGamma: To paint fences.\n\nBeta: To take a friend\u2019s punishment.\n\nAlpha: See? You guys only look at the dark side of what Tom was\ndoing!\n\nKappa: Come on, Alpha, we do not.\n\nAlpha: Why do you mention the bad things then?\n\nDelta: To make you think, Alpha.\n\nAlpha: Make yourself!\n\nBeta: We are trying. Seriously though, I feel like we\u2019re not quite on\ntrack yet.\n\nKappa: Interesting. I have always liked Tom Sawyer from the very\nmoment I got to know him. And I knew, of course, about all these\nawful things he did, and I\u2019ve never even thought of criticizing him!\n\nAlpha: You fell in love with him, didn\u2019t you?\n\nKappa: Something like that.\n\nDelta: Yeah, girls love him.\n\nAlpha: I was teasin\u2019, Kappa.\n\nKappa: But I\u2019m serious.\n\nDelta: You\u2019re always serious.\n\nKappa: Stop it, Delta. This is different.\n\nBeta: You know what? I\u2019m kinda surprised. I feel like Tom Sawyer is\nbecoming alive in my mind right now.\nAlpha: What is he doing? Knocking at your skull?\n\nDelta: Yeah, Alpha, so that you can learn that from him and repeat after him.\n\nKappa: Guys, what\u2019s come over you today?\n\nGetting on Track: Art Influences Us\n\nGamma: We went to a concert yesterday, my family and I. And I just\nlistened to the music and liked it mostly and didn\u2019t like some. And\nthen we left, and I forgot it and was thinking how I would play\nFreeciv at home. Dad was discussing the concert with Mom, and\nmy aunt started to argue, and all that was pretty annoying, but I\njumped in at some point, I don\u2019t know why. We were arguing all\nthe way back to our house, and I almost got in a fight with my\nkid sister Becky, and we all couldn\u2019t stop. Mom wanted to calm\nus down, but Dad couldn\u2019t stop either. In the end, all of a sudden,\nI felt a huge drive to go back and listen to it again! It\u2019s like Beta\nsaid, I felt like it had become alive in my mind! I mean, all those\nthings I was imagining\u2014while I was arguing\u2014people, feelings,\nactions, you know. They kind of crowded my mind while I was\ntrying to make my point, \u2026 maybe because of that, \u2026 I don\u2019t\nknow.\n\nAlpha: I don\u2019t follow you. What does it have to do with today\u2019s\nquestion?\n\nKappa: I know how that feels! That\u2019s exactly what happens every time\nwe go to a movie! We always argue afterwards, and my kid brother\nJimmy always argues with me because he likes to tease me, and\nMom tries to calm us down, and Dad jumps in. Dad tries not to\ntake sides, but he can\u2019t help it. And then we go to watch it again\nsometimes, not the entire family, but whoever can or wants to, you\nknow, and we often buy the video as soon as it comes out. And I am\nstarting to understand now, all of this argument is the best part of\nit. I think I wouldn\u2019t pay much attention to many of those movies,\nif not for this argument! But I can write books about them now!\n\nAlpha: Wow, what a story! A family fight! How does this relate to our\nsubject?\n\nGamma: Don\u2019t you see? It\u2019s all the same.\nAlpha: No, I do not! It\u2019s all different! In a movie, you see what you see.\nIn a book, you can\u2019t see it but have to imagine all of the heroes,\nand landscape, and action. Everyone imagines it in their own way!\nIt\u2019s like everyone is reading a different book although we are all\nreading the same Adventures of Tom Sawyer. And when you listen\nto music, you don\u2019t even know whether you think of it the same\nway the composer does. How can you say it is all the same?\n\nTeacher: If I ask now, why do we read books, watch movies, listen to\nmusic, will your answers be different?\n\nAlpha: . . . Well, that\u2019s not what I meant. I don\u2019t know why we do all\nthose things. My point was that they are different, that\u2019s all.\n\nBeta: Thus, you don\u2019t know any more?\n\nAlpha: What do you mean?\n\nDelta: Beta is reminding you that you had the answer about books,\nremember?\n\nAlpha: I think that books, and movies, and music . . .\n\nKappa: And fashions?\n\nGamma: Hold it!\n\nAlpha: . . . do the same thing to us. They teach us, but in different ways.\nAnd everyone learns what they see or can see or . . .\n\nDelta: Or want to see?\n\nBeta: Well, say, you learn from Tom Sawyer how to defend your girl, and\nthe other guy learns to smoke, and someone concludes that\nIndians are bad guys because there was a bad Indian Joe there. . . .\nHow do we really know that books teach us?\n\nAlpha: I told you, everyone learns what they see.\n\nDelta: Listen, Alpha, if books are supposed to be used for learning,\nthen are writers teachers?\n\nAlpha: So?\n\nDelta: Is that a yes or a no?\n\nAlpha: Come on, we\u2019re not in a courtroom.\n\nDelta: Why don\u2019t you answer?\n\nKappa: OK, OK. Suppose they are to teach us, what is your point?\n\nGamma: Delta is just taking up what Beta is getting at. If authors\nare teachers, but everyone learns different things, then what do\nauthors teach? Did I get it right, guys?\n\nBeta: Well yes, you\u2019re even getting ahead of me now.\nKappa: Well, I don\u2019t know what Mark Twain was trying to teach us, but I was never the same after I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.\n\nBeta: I have a feeling that I\u2019ll never be the same after this discussion.\n\nTeacher: Me too, I think.\n\nAlpha: What are you guys talking about? Are you going to paint fences from now on?\n\nGamma: Oh, very funny, Alpha. Everyone is laughing.\n\nAlpha: Gamma, you may cry if you want to.\n\nGamma: Well, thank you! Now I feel like I live in a free country.\n\nKappa: Oh, here we go again.\n\nDelta: But we were being all deep about these ideas, and I don\u2019t get why Alpha has to play it down like that.\n\nAlpha: Oh, so Delta can be serious too!\n\nTeacher: Can we do a little summary now? It won\u2019t look like final answers, and I cannot even say we have some answers, but certain things were definitely said.\n\nThe First Summary\n\nTeacher: First, books, movies, music, etc. do affect us in similar ways; Gamma and Alpha came close to that. Second, arts do this in different ways; Alpha stressed this. Third, arts change us; this was Kappa\u2019s point. Fourth, argument magnifies the influence of art; Beta, Gamma, and Kappa all touched on that.\n\nArts and Reality\n\nKappa: You know what? I realize now, I argued a lot with many different people while I was reading Tom Sawyer!\n\nBeta: Do you mean Aunt Polly or Sid?\n\nKappa: No \u2026 well, yes \u2026 Well, I don\u2019t know. It was like, say, I didn\u2019t like what Sid did, but, at the same time, I felt like it was my brother Jimmy, you know \u2026\n\nGamma: Actually, when you are deep in a book or music \u2026 you forget yourself in a way. I realize very clearly that I felt as if I were with Tom Sawyer \u2026 and on all of his adventures \u2026 I was there.\n\nAnd it felt as if my folks were with me in some way, you know?\nSometimes it felt like I was talking to my dad or mom or Becky, I\nmean my sister. And when it was about Tom Sawyer, then for me it\nwas like talking to . . . some other boy.\n\nDelta: I agree. I never thought about it, but I agree. Other people, those\nyou know, are like shadows that are always there, wherever you are,\neither in a real place or a book.\n\nKappa: And they can be heroes from other books too!\n\nAlpha: Yeah, Pinocchio fighting with Tom Sawyer! Guys, get real! We\ndo not live in books.\n\nKappa: But it\u2019s true! If you love Tom Sawyer as much as a real person,\nyou talk to him a thousand times a day; he is there wherever you go!\nDelta is 100 percent right! . . . And Gamma . . . It\u2019s totally like that!\n\nAlpha: Hey, someone\u2019s a little too excited here, don\u2019t you think?\n\nKappa: Wait, Alpha, don\u2019t you understand? This is just fantastic! You\nalways have your folks with you! Real ones and art heroes! You always have them!\n\nTeacher: Actually, when you say \u201creal ones,\u201d you don\u2019t mean . . .\n\u201cphysical ones,\u201d do you?\n\nBeta: Wow!\n\nDelta: What?\n\nGamma: I got it.\n\nKappa: What?\n\nAlpha: People, it is all your fantasy and has nothing to do with real\nreality. I\u2019m telling you, get real. After all, we got the question to\nanswer\u2014why do we read books? I don\u2019t feel that we are one step\ncloser to an answer.\n\nBeta: Wow! Wow!\n\nAlpha: What? Cat got your tongue?\n\nGamma: I am saying wow too.\n\nTeacher: Thank you, students.\n\nKappa: What is this? Say something already!\n\nGamma: Wait, I am thinking.\n\nBeta: Oh, that is cool.\n\nKappa: Come on, both of you! Let us in on it!\n\nGamma: All right. Do you know, who is your president?\n\nKappa: Our president today?\nGamma: Yes.\n\nAlpha: So?\n\nGamma: Is he a good guy or a bad guy?\n\nAlpha: How should I know?\n\nBeta: But you have to have some attitude, some understanding, some\nfeelings about him, don\u2019t you?\n\nKappa: I do. I don\u2019t want him for a second term.\n\nGamma: Good! Tell us what made you think that?\n\nAlpha: I see where you are heading. It is all the newspapers, TV, radio,\nInternet. . . . So?\n\nKappa: Ah! It is all artificial! The president is as real to me as Tom\nSawyer! And all my likes and dislikes relate to stories I read, movies\nI watched, music I listened to, and so on!\n\nTeacher: Well, something was done by real people like me or your\nloving parents or your smart classmates or even your president . . .\n\nKappa: But now I don\u2019t even know who did what and who did more.\n\nBeta: All our lives . . . this happens. . . . We don\u2019t know what we are\nmade of. Is it our parents who read us tales, or is this the tales that\nwere read to us by our parents?\n\nDelta: Is it that the president is cooked up by a journalist, or is it the\njournalist writing about his president?\n\nGamma: Is it music written by a composer, or the composer who makes\nthe music?\n\nAlpha: OK, I can play this game too. Tom Sawyer or Mark Twain, right?\n\nBeta: Or yourself, when you read it.\n\nTeacher: Or the classmates you are arguing with.\n\nBeta: Or ideas we are arguing about?\n\nGamma: Told you! Wow!\n\nKappa: You sure did! Wow!\n\nAlpha: Everyone\u2014one, two three: Wow!\n\nDelta: So you join in, don\u2019t you Alpha?\n\nAlpha: Join what?\nThe Second Summary\n\nBeta: Hold it, hold it! I have a question. Our minds are like plays where\nimages of real people and heroes of artistic works act out their roles.\nCan we sum it up like this?\n\nTeacher: That is an intriguing summary!\n\nAuthor, Character, Audience\n\nBeta: OK. Now, I read a book and feel compassion toward a hero. Let\u2019s\nsay Tom Sawyer again \u2026 or wait, \u2026 a thought is sneaking around.\nOK, give me a second \u2026\n\nAlpha: And what are we going to do while Beta is chasing his sneaky\nthought?\n\nKappa: I\u2019m tired.\n\nBeta: Actually, I\u2019m ready. Remember the last thing I said, that we don\u2019t\nknow what really affects our minds, whether it is the person who is\narguing in favor of an idea or the idea itself affects us?\n\nDelta: Well, it was not exactly that, but in a sense, yes, you said that.\n\nAlpha: Huh? So it\u2019s not enough for you all to treat literary personages\nlike real people! Now you want an idea to be like a person too?\n\nTeacher: Let\u2019s call it a quasi-personality.\n\nAlpha: Are you serious?\n\nGamma: Let Beta tell us his new story.\n\nBeta: Thanks. Quite frankly, it is not that clear to me yet.\n\nTeacher: That\u2019s all right. Go on.\n\nBeta: OK. As I said, I don\u2019t have a theory, just a kind of a feeling.\n\nKappa: Go ahead.\n\nBeta: Say I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I feel like Tom Sawyer.\nI relate to other characters. I feel compassion toward some of them,\nanger at others. I get scared, make up my mind about something \u2026\n\nAlpha: Those are not new discoveries.\n\nBeta: No, they are not. I am trying to grasp a theme here. And I understand\nthat Mark Twain likes this boy and makes us like him as well.\n\nKappa: Yes, exactly! He does not teach us a thing! He just makes us\nlike him! That\u2019s it. That\u2019s precisely it. He makes us feel something!\n\nDelta: Does Mark Twain like Sid?\n\nGamma: I\u2019m not sure, but it seems to me that an author cannot dislike\nhis characters.\n\nKappa: Thus, Mark Twain likes Sid and Indian Joe?\n\nGamma: I believe so.\n\nKappa: Do they like him?\n\nAlpha: What? People! You\u2019ve gotten completely derailed.\n\nBeta: Why? Remember, I said I felt like Tom Sawyer was coming\nalive in my mind. He still is. The more we talk, the more alive he\nbecomes.\n\nAlpha: Ah, I remember. He was knocking on your skull. He did succeed,\nI admit.\n\nDelta: Well, Alpha, if he did succeed then he is alive after all?\n\nKappa: All right, is everyone done joking? I am not sure Beta finished\nhis idea.\n\nBeta: I didn\u2019t. . . . Where did I stop?\n\nTeacher: You said Mark Twain made us like Tom Sawyer.\n\nBeta: Oh yes, I remember. Now, when I said that ideas affect us like\npeople do, I did not actually know what I meant. It just jumped off\nmy tongue. But now, I\u2019m starting to see it better. I want to move on\nto The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.\n\nAlpha: Just the same . . .\n\nBeta: Not quite, but I want to single out one moment\u2014the time when\ntwo crooks sold Jim back into slavery for forty bucks. I felt as if I\nwas going to cry along with Huck!\n\nAlpha: OK, slavery is evil. What\u2019s your point?\n\nBeta: My point now is closer to yours in a way. It is not that Mark Twain\ntaught me that slavery is bad, but he made me feel really, really,\nreally bad about slavery at that moment. I felt despair. So now, I do\nnot just love Huck, but I started thinking about slavery, and believe\nme, it still bothers me.\n\nGamma: I think I owe you all another summary now. The Last Summary\n\nTeacher: Go ahead, Gamma.\n\nGamma: Look, uh . . . remember how we were talking about the\npresident and how his journalist-made image is real to us while we\nknow nothing about the physical man? I now think that everything\nwe love or hate in this life is clarified and taught by the art.\n\nAlpha: Told you.\n\nGamma: No, not like you said. It is not about teaching, exactly.\nHuckleberry Finn made us feel kind of guilty about the enslaved\nJim. Do you see the difference?\n\nAlpha: Between what and what?\n\nKappa: Between knowledge and feelings! Understand?\n\nTeacher: So, Gamma, are you ready for your statement?\n\nGamma: Almost. It feels kind of scary. Let\u2019s talk a little more.\n\nAlpha: Are you scared of your own fantasy?\n\nGamma: You bet. OK, we are sure now that arts do have a big influence\non us. They form the way we think and the way we feel.\n\nBeta: They actually form the way itself.\n\nDelta: What is the way?\n\nBeta: It is talking. . . . It is the process of talking both to others and to ourselves.\n\nKappa: The arts transport actors into all our conversations.\n\nBeta: And ideas also are transported.\n\nGamma: And scenarios too.\n\nTeacher: Do you think you have proven this?\n\nBeta: No, we have not, but these ideas have just emerged! And I can\u2019t\nput forth anything else.\n\nGamma: OK, I get it. Our minds are entirely shaped by the arts.\n\nTeacher: Wow!\nTo My Reader\n\nI had planned to summarize the ideas that my first graders would come up with. I had wanted to stress the \u201cright\u201d points, underline unanswered questions, provide some extra logic. But in the end, I saw no reason to do this. All the time I listened to their conversation I wanted to jump in. The subject began to become slightly clearer to me, and at the same time, my head was on fire. I felt a lot of energy and desire to continue, discuss, think, write, and read. This was the best thing that happened to me. I went on writing but did not get too far by the time we had our next conversation. Here are just a few notes.\nTwo Notions from Child Psychology\n\nThese topics were not discussed by the students. Still, they obviously are closely related to our last conversation.\n\nChild Greediness\n\nThere is a certain phenomenon in child behavior commonly regarded as \u201cgreediness.\u201d Children have a hard time sharing things they are attached to. This attachment can appear suddenly, like love at first sight. Often parents regard this behavior as greediness, so they try hard to disapprove of and \u201cfix\u201d it. In reality, what happens is that adults damage the normal psychological development of the child. The phenomenon we are discussing herein is entirely different. It is not an ethical issue but one of the pure \u201cconstruction\u201d of the child psyche. In the early years, consciousness is not the same as that of an adult. It is constructed primarily from \u201cone\u2019s things\u201d: habitual clothes, toys, furniture\u2014all the familiar things surrounding the child. When adults try to remove something \u201caccepted\u201d by the child, they plainly damage the child\u2019s consciousness. If the child gets used to letting go of things easily, he or she will never be a normal person capable of \u201cattachment\u201d to other people, ideas, and values. What results is a person with, in a sense, a reduced soul.\n\nChild Aping\n\nThere is another phenomenon in child behavior regarded by some as \u201caping,\u201d i.e. mimicking, repeating, mocking. Children tend to copy each other. This is often regarded as something not quite positive while in reality it is just another vital part of child development. It is a way of acquiring ideas, expressions, activities, skills, etc. There is no way for the psyche to develop normally without \u201caping.\u201d","title":"Culture vs. Copyright/Chapter 3","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":3478}