Dear Classmates,
I wrote this post on my blog and decided to post it here since everyone here was involved in today's discussion. I hope that I have not marginalized myself from you and I hope that I have not stained this blog with my oh so controversial opinions. :)
If diversity of thought is healthy, then the art and design world is severely handicapped. The art/design world is homogeneous. I dissent. I am the minority because I believe in freedom over equality. Dissent has positioned me as a different brand than my beloved professor, Adrian Pulfur. Today my design class, Adrian had the students read some very liberal ideas out loud together. He praised the material. He is in a position of authority as our teacher and has the job of teaching and instructing us in things pertaining to design. But, teaching is an interaction which requires presenting both sides and letting the students decide for themselves which ideas are closest to the truth. When only one side is given, teaching ceases and advertising begins. My professor was advertising a particular political view. This is a symptom of the art/design problem that has developed in the 2oth century.
The problem with most modern art has 2 sides, either the art means nothing and the art exists for art's sake alone, or its meaning is too narrow and is presented in a way that violates the viewer's experience and does not allow 2-way interaction with the viewer. The message is shoved down the throat of the viewer and the parameters are narrowed so that the viewer cannot create his own experience. Good art like most renaissance art has meaning but does not force the meaning upon the viewer. The art was like good religion in that it was an offering to the viewer. The problem is manifested in shock art and pornography for the viewer cannot choose his experience as it is forced upon him and literally forces damaging chemical reactions upon the mind and body.
Freedom to choose experience was important to the renaissance artists and it was important to Adrian Pulfur in his design. Today he showed us his work for the SLC Olympics. He fought committees to leave his design pure and not put in big letters "Salt Lake City" on the case of his beautifully designed book for the Salt Lake City Olympics, so that those who received the book could experience the book in a way that allowed the viewer to be interested and persuaded that the book was valuable and worth opening. The message was offered without violating experience by blatantly advertising Salt Lake City. However, the ideas shared in his class undermine the freedom to choose in the political realm.
The rhetoric he shared with us consisted of classic anti-free trade arguments. What is free trade? Free trade is when governments do not intervene with people making mutually agreeable arrangements. Obviously something must be done about negative externalities that come from some of these arrangements, but mostly people trading together of their own free will and choice only makes the 2 parties better off. It is 3rd party outsiders with limited information that would be opposed to such arrangements. For example these 3rd party observers may see inequality, or poor work conditions and think that people making mutually agreeable arrangements is not good enough. Without perspective and proper information, these people turn to government to intervene. They do not believe in freedom, and therefore wish to create bigger government to control people's choices based on their own preferences. Although perhaps well intentioned, these ideas almost always create the exact opposite of the intended objective. For example, in Louisiana, a person can be fined for giving interior design advice without a license. The government as a 3rd party believes that it can make better interior design choices than the average citizen and therefore requires licensure for designers. This will only deter designers at the margin to give up design because they won't want to jump through the government hoops to get a license. Basically, this licensure law will actually decrease design instead of promote it. Another example: If one wants other people to be more self-sufficient, what should he do? Should he call upon government to force people to be self sufficient or should he allow them to be free to choose? The government cannot make people to be self sufficient without taking away their freedom to deal with their fellowmen of any nationality in the way that they see fit for themselves. Our current government as a 3rd party with limited information tried to give more homes to poor people by encouraging banking institutions through organizations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and through the community reinvestment act to give out loans to unqualified people. If the government did not interfere with people's dealings with their fellowmen, the financial crisis would not be as bad as it is today. It was Milton Friedman who won the Nobel Prize for showing that the great depression would have only been a small burp, if government did not intervene in the market by diminishing the money supply. The Great Depression and the current financial crisis are the children of a government that does not believe in freedom. But, these same liberals in government who blame the free-market for our problems are the ones who supported Fannie and Freddie and voted in the community reinvestment act. They blame Bush and the republicans for decreasing regulation when the republicans tried to regulate the housing industry over 12 times in the past 5 years.
These liberal ideas are dangerous to freedom and they rely on rhetoric and conspiracy theories instead of facts. My professor even quoted Presidents of the LDS church to support his ideas. He quoted them as advocates of self sufficiency but used that to mean that trading with other nations is bad. But, the prophets have not counseled us to be isolationist. They clearly mean self sufficient in our families and individual lives. Otherwise, they would not encourage us to get an education and specialize so that we can trade our specialized skills for money. In fact even Harold B. Lee said that the united order would be more capitalistic in nature than any other political system and many presidents such as Ezra Taft Benson have been very pro-capitalism and for free trade.
I know that facts do not convert people as well as ideas convert people. I hope that I did not marginalize myself from my peers by presenting the other side of the story that my professor was sharing because I love my peers and I love my professor. But, in my opinion, the professor was doing too much advertising and not enough teaching and I felt that both sides ought to be offered as to not violate the classroom experience.
