Tag: human race

Art is quite useless

Posted on by philipdodson


“All art is quite useless” said Oscar Wilde. 

Art could be music, poems, written word, spoken word, paintings, sculptures, pictures and many other things we create. 

Is it of use?

It’s not practical or useful and seemingly non-essential like say a knife or a fridge or a computer. 

So why do art? Does it have to be useful?

Many things that matter in life are non-essential, the magic of life is neither functional or logical. It is often something we can not put into words. 

Art can visually explain something we can not verbalise. 

Art is a narrative of the human story, it binds our culture and reflects it. 

Art is love. That’s why humans choose to create it. 

Art has no use but life without it would be useless. 

Sometimes it has to be uncomfortable

Posted on by philipdodson

Sometimes as humans we need to discuss awkward and uncomfortable things.

We can choose to head to Netflix or pretend they are not there, but that is ducking out of our responsibility to our fellow humans and is letting ourselves down too.

We all form the world that we live in and that means that each and every one of us needs to be part of the dialogue.

There is a great Facebook Live with Brene Brown, whose work I am a great fan of, and she is discussing the very touchy subject of race and it is well worth a 20-minute watch – click here. This clearly demonstrates the point and she puts it with greater depth and eloquence.

We need to discuss, not hate or criticise, difficult topics, as that is the only way to move forward as a human race. We’ve tried the authoritarian and hate approach and it has been a miserable failure so far.

Next time there is a challenging and uncomfortable thing to discuss, we need to step up and get involved, why wouldn’t you?