IJCAIP blog Arts Crossing Borders/Guest Post
by Bandy X Lee, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry,
Yale School of Medicine
Building a Global
Ethic through Aesthetics
In Ancient China,
apart from hereditary power, there were scholar officials who determined the
affairs of the state. These officials
were in fact artists, theoretically from any background or social status, who
won competitions in poetry, calligraphy, and painting. Of course, learned philosophy came through in
their artwork, but the purpose was to select the greatest humanists, who were
assumed to have the greatest wisdom and therefore an ability to make important
governing decisions. This is the kind of
civilization that has become legend, one that we can only imagine in our
day.
Similarly in Ancient
Africa, political systems often consisted of circles of tribal members, divided
by age group and gender, which would hold discussions, over and over, until a
problem reached its resolution. Other
than that of the chief, political appointments were rare and arose more out of
necessity of situation. This maintained
order in a widely spread, decentralized system, kept solutions at a very human
(and humanistic) level, and probably prevented any individual or entity from
taking over, as has occurred post-Western
influence.
As we emerge from
some political storms in the U.S. and the rest of the world (wherein Europe went
through twelve leadership changes over the past two years), the differences between
our social and political structures come to light. Our system requires such specialized
knowledge to maneuver, that it seems the greater this knowledge, the less room
there will be for a true understanding of human affairs, not to mention human
solutions. A result is that rampant
immorality and injustice are permitted to reign without regard to human and
societal casualty—the kind that any scholar official or tribal member would have
long recognized as antithetical to the purpose of
government.
Instead, our system
allows us to deny almost any problem, some of terrifying proportions: global
climate change, destruction of the planet, erosion of democracy, depletion of
social safety nets, plunder of the poor, and illegal wars, to name just a
few. We are told that the source of our
problems is complex and mysterious, and the solutions beyond the reach of an
average citizen. Meanwhile, we are the
ones tightening our belts in a nation that possesses half the world’s wealth,
and we on the ground are the ones to feel, at a visceral level, the consequences
of decisions that we did not make.
If Plato called for
philosophers to become rulers for global decision-making to carry
thoughtfulness, we might call upon practitioners of creativity for ethical
bearing. While education empowers populations by
alerting them to ways in which oppression can occur, the arts do so by centering
the heart such that one will refuse to accept injustice or untruth (the role of
aesthetics in ethics is not new[1]).
"....what education
achieves cognitively, art does emotionally—and with most problems facing us now
originating in humans, we see that we are in great need of collective emotional
healing. In this context, it does not
help that we marginalize artists from “Bohemia” to misery—a distant cry from the
position of scholar official—for the suffering of artists often foreshadows the
suffering of a whole civilization."
Thus, in developing
a proper perspective for global ethics, those in the creative fields may have a
crucial role to play. Few professions
take on the highest and ultimate of human expression and are sensitive to any
curtailing of human thriving (Henry James, for instance, suffered with a
prescience of the Second World War while everyone was rejoicing the end of the
First and politicians were emitting sighs of relief). Their sensitivity can become a guide for
ethical global governance. Adherence to
basic principles, for example, is how artists maintain coherence in their work,
unlike scientists, who take a more methodological approach of fragmenting the
whole so that the parts can be scrutinized more carefully (which are then added
together to reconstruct the whole; science and other fields, at their best, can
be an art, as is Einstein’s physics or Osler’s medicine). A more artistic approach fosters the
development of judgment and wisdom,
by staying close to the human experience and keeping sight of the whole—and
readily varying method according to overall need.
The artistic
approach, then, might lead to the recognition of principles over rules, like the
African governing circles that brought no concrete formula other than to answer
a specific question. Amid changing
conditions, keeping with original purpose can allow us not to lose sight of the
basic principles that every healthy society seeks (and which keep societies
healthy): harmony, equity, justice, and peace.
We might then work toward true prosperity rather than an ideology of
Capitalism or global domination. We
might actually solve problems and not let rules and procedure trump purpose,
which then require a heaping of more laws and regulations upon them to try to
correct, with ineffectual results.
Retaining a firm vision, far from being impractical, can facilitate
expedient and ethical governance.
Restoring artists and creative individuals to a role in global
governance, far from being unthinkable, may bring back the human sensitivity
that was emblematic of the scholar officials and might perhaps be a step toward
restoring our society into a higher, healthier
civilization.
Bandy X. Lee, MD,
MDiv
Assistant Clinical
Professor
Law and Psychiatry
Division
We thank Dr. Lee for this important contribution to our IJCAIP blog, "Arts Crossing Borders". Dr. Bandy Lee is a violence studies specialist. She trained as a
psychiatrist at Yale and Harvard Universities and focused on
public-sector work as chief resident and was active in anthropological research in
East Africa as a fellow of the National Institute of Mental Health. In
addition, she worked in several maximum-security prisons throughout the
United States, consulted with governments in Ireland and France, and
helped to set up violence prevention programs both in the U.S. and
abroad. She is currently Assistant Clinical Professor, Law and Psychiatry Division, Yale University and teaches students
representing political asylum seekers through Yale Law School. She also
served as Director of Research for the Center for the Study of
Violence, as consultant to the World Health Organization, and as speaker
to the World Economic Forum. Her interests are in public health approaches and
transdisciplinary research/discourse, and she organizes an annual colloquium
series called
'Making Sense,' to bring together the arts, the sciences, and
the practical disciplines.
[1] Cf. Scarry,
Elaine. On Beauty and Being
Just. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999.
