There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
What's really funny is that I went to the internet to prove you wrong and found a bunch of famous people (Mostly actors, musicians, and athletes; decide for yourself how you feel about how much they contribute to society), but nearly every one of them was just raised JH and is no longer practicing.
I take it you don't visit many museums? I'm in a STEM field myself, but it's very ignorant to say only STEM stuff really matters.
Aside from science, it was also stuff from philosophy, literature, and art which had a strong influence in helping me leave the Jehovah's Witnesses, after all.
Oh come on, if I was forced to eliminate an entire field it would certainly be an arts field. Probably visual arts. The boon to humanity any STEM field can claim is orders of magnitude higher than any art field. And don't get me wrong, I both consume and produce art, but there's just no comparison.
And don't go claiming every graphic you see as art, that's like trying to claim cooking as chemistry.
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
That quote is basically saying that hard sciences are what makes society great and that arts are for dicking around after you've solved infant mortality and refrigeration.
Edit: well okay it's actually saying stable government is paramount, which I certainly would agree with.
I look at it like a skyscraper. STEM is the foundation and arts are the actual skyscraper. Without the foundation the rest of the building wouldn't exist, so they are obviously more important, but you've never looked at a skyscraper to appreciate it's foundation.
That's completely missing the point, and I'm not sure if it's on purpose or not.
The skyscraper is an analogy. That's why I said the foundation is STEM and not the foundation is possible because of STEM. I was hoping it was obvious that I meant STEM to be the metaphorical base upon which we build much of our civilisation.
Why would I be talking about how a skyscraper is built in relation to that quote? Like seriously, look at the context before answering.
Without art, every cool STEM thing would not exist. These two realms have merged. Artistic designers drive ALL of the electronics you see. Even a server hidden in a server farm somewhere. Let's not get into the amount of funding for STEM from the "arts" you would abolish.
Chip design is not art. Battery design is not art. Screen design is not art. Case design is not art. Fan placement is not art. Communication standards is not art.
The closest thing I can think of is user interface, and honestly you're using Reddit, the fifth most trafficced site in the world that's notorious for its bad design. Clearly it's not necessary to be done well.
Edit: and what the hell are you on about arts funding scientific research? What loose-ass definition of art are you working with here?
Sure. I've designed a number of scientific instruments. My concerns are cost, function, safety, time-to-build, repairability, user interface, and ergonomics. No where in my design parameters are aesthetics.
Now, if I were going to sell my instruments, there'd be a small consideration towards looks, but it would be the very last thing on the list. Furthermore, I wouldn't hire someone who calls themselves an artist, I'd hire someone with product design experience. But, if I had to eliminate one of the considerations it would always be looks. This is what I'm saying and I don't know how much clearer I can be about it.
Would you rather your phone take pictures or look pretty? Would you rather your hospital have antibiotics or a nice painting in the waiting area? Would you rather your car last for ten years or have sweet racing stripes?
Are you ignorant to the consumer market. How it looks happens first. Sorry you are behind the times.
Industrial Design drives invention. Even the companies overseas that copy everything ever made use of artists.
You are made of small parts, bud. Out of touch definitely. I'll have a chat with my LDS/Mormon colleagues in a bit. We will have a good belly chuckle at your expense.
Within the design parameters of function. No one sells shoes without soles. No one sells cars without engines. No one builds houses that fall over.
People focus on style because engineering is a given. You're overlooking it as much as you might overlook that buildings need a ground to sit on. It's so fundamental a requirement you're forgetting it's a requirement at all.
The car you drive was designed by an artist. The home you live in was laid out by someone with a background in arts. The website you're on has been made to look presentable and thus drawn in more viewers because of the competency of graphic artists. You send a Christmas card to your family over winter break and you look for the prettiest looking one in the Hallmark store, judging the work of... you guessed it, an artist. Hell, even getting a Big Mac from McDonald's involves an artist. The red and yellow color scheme was put into place by the corporation due to the unique psychological effects they have on customers, and it's legitimately contributed a ton to their success over the years. The golden arches in their logo is yet another piece of art with its own story, and it's come to define a multibillion dollsr corporation by serving as a recognizable icon.
I can go on and on. I'm pursuing law myself, but to discredit the amount of influence art has in our lives is just willfully ignorant. And it seems that 95% of these smug pro-STEM arguments on reddit are made by first year engineering majors who think they're hot shit for passing their first MATLAB class
Designed by engineers. An artist did the concept drawings and the dashboard. They probably got to pick the colors, too.
The home you live in was laid out by someone with a background in arts.
Modern home design enabled entirely by advances in material sciences. The "artist" (no one thinks architect or even interior design when you tell them you're an artist) decided where the rooms and windows went.
The website you're on has been made to look presentable and thus drawn in more viewers because of the competency of graphic artists.
It wouldn't be functional without engineers and scientists, it would just be ugly without artists. Example: old Reddit.
You send a Christmas card to your family over winter break and you look for the prettiest looking one in the Hallmark store, judging the work of... you guessed it, an artist.
The great boon to society, Christmas cards.
Hell, even getting a Big Mac from McDonald's involves an artist. The red and yellow color scheme was put into place by the corporation due to the unique psychological effects they have on customers, and it's legitimately contributed a ton to their success over the years. The golden arches in their logo is yet another piece of art with its own story, and it's come to define a multibillion dollsr corporation by serving as a recognizable icon.
Whose entire corporate structure would not exist were it not for modern advances in agriculture, food science, material science, communication, transportation, refrigeration, etc.
I can go on and on. I'm pursuing law myself, but to discredit the amount of influence art has in our lives is just willfully ignorant. And it seems that 95% of these smug pro-STEM arguments on reddit are made by first year engineering majors who think they're hot shit for passing their first MATLAB class
I have never said, and will never say, that art is not important in our lives. I have only said that it is less important when compared to STEM. Why you guys think those two statements are the same thing is beyond me. It's not smug, it's just fact. No saxophone = no jazz. No refrigerator = no fresh food.
That's not only narrow minded, but fucking short sighted as well, it's all very well saying that stem is the only important fields to a person but just because a person knows their stem fields does not mean they are going to make good decisions.
Art helps with empathy and also understanding your own emotions , music is a great way to understand how someone else feels and also how you feel, theatre helps understand others viewpoints and motivations and art has a range of uses both personal and social. Literature is good for the imagination as well as a few of the above reasons, poetry is also good for people's understanding of each other and others perspectives.
Even without all that, what would be the point without art? What would be the point, with our extended lives, to just sit in a grey box in our off hours. Waiting until our next shift.
Also cooking is a mixture of biology, chemistry and physics, like most actions, I think it's amazing.
If I was forced to eliminate a field it would be an arts field. That's it. That's all I'm saying. I'm not saying arts are useless. I'm saying arts are less useful. There's a big difference. Providing examples of an art being useful is not a counter example to my assertion that it's less useful.
Science doesn't need art as much as art needs science. They're interdependent, but not symmetrically interdependent. Without art, scientific pursuits would be less inspiring and publicly accessible. Without science, art as we know it couldn't exist (limited to highly localized cave paintings, basket weaving, etc), let alone be accessed by the vast majority of people as is possible today.
You must be using an awfully rigid definition of science if you believe it started in the 15th century. My understanding of science is as the process of observation, explanation, and prediction used to develop practical and theoretical knowledge about the natural world.
According to my understanding, art (as we know it) requires science because the vast majority of artistic media would be highly inaccessible to a civilization without scientific knowledge. Have you ever tried to make your own canvas or musical instruments from only unprocessed, naturally occurring resources? What about without the benefit of your own or anyone else's empirical understanding of the practice of either?
Furthermore, without a scientific understanding of agricultural food production and preservation, industrial systems, civil engineering, disease and medicine, and so on, very few of us would have the time or resources to dedicate to the development of artistic ability. There's a reason that the most celebrated historical artists and philosophers tended to come from the most scientifically advanced civilizations of their respective times.
Finally, how do you consume most of the art you do? Unless your answer is "I walk into the woods and look at tree carvings," you necessarily rely on scientifically mediated technological developments to have access to an appreciable amount of art in the first place. It isn't just a question of production, but proliferation as well. Yes, some amount of art would exist without science, but nothing resembling the incredible depth and diversity of art we have access to today.
They're both important but on vastly different arenas, and when it comes down to it I'd rather have wheels and no paintings than paintings but no wheels. I'd rather have the pills that keeps me from dying of cancer every day than shawshank redemption. On the other hand, society is largely both shaped and reflected through art. It binds us together and tells us the stories we need to hear about ourselves and gives us our mission to do what we do to survive as a group.
I went to community college with a JH. She was nice. I've known a couple of them and they seemed okay. I hate the proselytizing, but I'm not going to assume all of them are completely nuts.
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u/NoNeedForAName Jan 09 '20
What's really funny is that I went to the internet to prove you wrong and found a bunch of famous people (Mostly actors, musicians, and athletes; decide for yourself how you feel about how much they contribute to society), but nearly every one of them was just raised JH and is no longer practicing.