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The aesthetics (art, music, drama, and literature) are rational pursuits that add important increments of emotional fuel and psychuous pleasures to a person's life. Moreover, aesthetic pleasures are important to the growth of one's psychological and spiritual[ 12 ] well-being. Aesthetics reflect a person's most important values in a concrete way, providing powerful emotional fuel to seek ever greater personal growth and achievements.
A false but common belief is that a person's response to art (music, literature, fine arts, performing arts) is a mystical experience that has no basis in reality and serves no practical purpose. But the opposite is true. A positive response to art is a phenomenon of reality that reflects a person's deepest, most important values. Those values can be either objective or neurotic values. For example, destructive people can respond positively to art that reflects neurotic values, nonvalues, or even value destruction.
Another false belief is that art is entirely subjective and cannot be evaluated on an objective basis. With sufficient knowledge, all art can be judged by precise, objective standards. Objective evaluation can include sense of life, the theme expressed by the artist, execution skill, overt style, presentation integrity.
Psychological pleasure derived from an art work comes from the similarity of the artist's values and sense of life to one's own values. Admiration of an art work, on the other hand, comes from the viewer's evaluation of the artist's skill, style, and integrity. An individual can dislike the values, the sense of life, or the theme of an art work, but can admire the artist's skill or style.
One dominant myth propagates that most great, universal artists (i.e., composers, painters, sculptors, novelists) lived in poverty and were not recognized during their lifetimes. Indeed, that myth serves as a handy excuse for pseudo, dilettante, or government-sponsored "artists" who never put forth the great learning, training, and execution efforts needed to develop the ability to produce works of art saleable in free markets.
With few exceptions, most universally enduring artists throughout history were fully recognized during their lifetimes, often early in their careers. Most great, objectively creative artists collected and enjoyed their earned financial and emotional rewards throughout much of their professional lives. Their work was objectively valuable and recognized as such, making their products highly marketable not only in their lifetimes but throughout the ages. Furthermore, the objective value of an artist's work is almost always in direct proportion to the rational thought and effort that artist put into developing and executing his skill. ...Success as the result of being naturally gifted or of being lucky is a myth promoted by envious mystics, neocheaters, and other losers.
Still another myth about art is that if a person dislikes a work of art, then the person does not understand the work. In most cases, if a person does not like or enjoy a work of art, the work is either (1) poorly executed or (2) contradicts that person's inner values.
And a final misconception is that poetry is an art form that enhances love and the quality of one's life. Poetry is generally an invalid art form that can be destructive to romantic love, prosperity, and long-range happiness [Re: Concept 136, Neo-Tech Reference Encyclopedia; also see Neo-Tech Advantage 104 in this volume].
As a concluding note: Since art can reflect powerfully emotional values to the beholder, art can be loved, appreciated, and enjoyed for those values. The art work itself, however, is an extension of the artist and thus can never be spiritually possessed or owned by anyone else, even though the physical ownership and copyrights can be transferred or sold.
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[ 12 ] The word spiritual as used throughout Neo-Tech has no mystical or religious connotations. Spiritual means one's sense or view of life combined with one's assertiveness toward living.
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