Banter 78: Topic TBD - Sunday, Dec. 15, 5pm-7pm

Topic: TBD

Host: Sabine's house

Time: 5-7pm

Banter 77: The Relationship Between Art & Morality

Topic: The Relationship Between Art & Morality

When: Sunday, Nov. 10 at 5pm-7pm

Where: at Lavonne’s in Kalispell. She plans to make a pot of chili. Sabine is bringing guac and chips. Feel welcome to bring drinks or dessert to share as you like.

"The essential function of art is moral. But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind. Changes the blood first. The mind follows later [...]." 

- DH Lawrence

Prep materials (try to glance over each of these ahead of time so we can all pull from overlapping materials & go deeper in the convo):

Here is an introductory overview that may be helpful to conceptualize the long conversation thread about art and morality: https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-art/Mixed-positions

Nia's contributions (this was her topic suggestion):

This piece by Anna Brones on art and resistance (the meat of it starts way down, and it's always worth reading that Le Guin speech in full!): https://creativefuel.substack.com/p/resistance-and-change-often-begin

Le Guin: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/nbf-medal

Lavonne's contributions: 

https://nancyreyner.com/2024/08/15/art-in-society-the-impact-and-influence-of-art-in-culture-and-community/

The Blue Riders (Der Blaue Reiter) in Germany:   https://www.artelino.com/articles/the_blue_rider.asp

The Bridge artists (Die Brücke) in Germany:   https://www.carredartistes.com/en-us/blog/die-brucke-the-emotional-bridge

https://iai.tv/articles/beauty-vs-morality-auid-2074

Mitch's contribution:

When I first read the topic title I went, immediately, to sculpture and painting. Reading the Britannica article, I saw that it focused more on literature, which would be easier to discuss (along w/ music lyrics). I imagine that spoken and written art is where the most robust discussion will come from but, regardless, I am curious about the earliest indigenous visual art and it’s ties to morality…to start at the ‘beginning’. I did not find many materials on that.  If I find some good references to site at banter I will reference them but, below, is a short synapsis of my meandering thoughts and opinions.

The first carvings, paintings and sculptures seemed to be made, largely, to venerate leaders, hunts, battles and gods, or, to associate and identify with a particular tribe, family or custom. With no photography or written language, visual art may have been, largely, a way to keep people, stories and the historical record alive. With those visual depictions, there must have been moral stories told over them that dealt with messages on good (and bad) leadership, ethical hunting and harvesting, stories of encouragement and admonitions from the gods, fables and stories for children and adults to conform to the moral standards of the tribe etc…but the earliest examples of these stories have not been recorded in writing.  

Pre-historic visual art was also used to understand the world, astronomical events, weather and climate patterns, growing seasons, the location of water and food sources etc. Science and religion were more intertwined so, inherently, there were likely moral stories associated with most visual art that depicted natural events. That said, early peoples may not have even viewed ‘morality’ with the same individualistic lens as we do today, putting that in the hands of the gods or the customs of the group. Lastly, I wonder if the earliest human visual art, at least that on public display, was allowed to be ‘in the eye of the beholder’, or, if elders and spiritual leaders were responsible for interpreting any moral messages contained within them to the people. 

The moral stories associated with visual art of the distant past has been lost to time, but I would imagine that much of that art was also just 'art for arts sake', following an innate human need to express creativity, arouse emotions and to show pride and belonging to a community. Like today, a lot of early primitive visual art may have just been for pleasure, decoration, and to express identity.  Wherever early visual art, alone, lies on the spectrum between conveying pure aesthetics to moral stories, our ability to write to it, or about it, probably changed how we view both art, and morality, dramatically.

That was a lot of ‘fluff’ but, hopefully, some fodder for discussion. To wrap my head around the topic I fall back on the earliest forms of visual art and how it may have changed or evolved to convey moral messages. The earliest writing dealt with accounting, politics, laws and religion…all of which contain ‘morality messages’. From that time, since, I feel like, as modern humans, we can ‘read morality’ into almost any form of written art. Visual arts, like painting, instrumental music and sculpture, may simply be art forms that can be more purely aesthetic, and less tainted by moral messages than the written or spoken word?

Blase's contributions:

I'd like to offer the following conversations to our conversation: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cosuyGLWtJA

Lyrics, in case anyone can't make it through the 1:30 of the (above) song.

And this poem.

They might be more alike than not. 

Sabine's contributions: 

Six minute video of two photographers' works side by side:

• Calls into question whose morality? or the overall problematic nature of morality in general to be, at times, directly tied to oppression even in the hands of artists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFBh2tTWc5A&t=286s

Short, corresponding article that will help situate the context and problematic moralism of Edward Curtis' photography of early 1900s' Natives:   https://www.cascadepbs.org/2018/06/viewing-edward-curtis-photos-through-todays-lens

Banter 76: Timefulness and deep time

 Topic: Timefulness and deep time (geology pov)

Host: Blase's house 

Date: Sunday, October 6th at 6pm

Dinner plan: soup, salad, and bread/cheese

Prep materials about our topic, Timefulness: 

https://humansandnature.org/timefulness-interview-with-marcia-bjornerud/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=7VRMebi9vdM
https://christianscholars.com/introducing-timefulness/

The full book, which I highly recommend: 
https://www.powells.com/book/-9780691202631/1-7?srsltid=AfmBOoqJzvYF1uf87g5dks3cFJc7D5Wwd-sbVHHYYJ5M1lZfysMApdo_

Kinds of time: 
https://www.themarginalian.org/2024/09/18/chronodiversity/?mc_cid=4cf527ceef&mc_eid=19b43203a0

Banter 75: Memories - their variability, reliability, malleability

Topic: Memories - what impacts their varying qualities, reliability, and malleability (for you)?

Host: Sabine's house 

Date: Sunday, May 5th at 6pm

Bring: Potluck taco party for Cinco de Mayo

Our prep reading:  https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/we-change-our-memories-each-time-we-recall-them-but-that-doesnt-mean-were-l

Or, here is the related documentary on CBC (set up free account to view & be in Canada via vpn or in actuality): https://gem.cbc.ca/the-nature-of-things/s58e06?autoplay=1  (45 mins. Very good!!)

Elvis singing "Memories" (1968)

Banter 74 - Radiolab podcast "The Living Room"

Mystery Topic

Date: February 18th, 6 pm

Location: Mitch's in Kalispell (see email for directions)

We are going to try something a little different for this banter.

We will all listen, together, to a 20 minute podcast segment. 

The episode will remain a mystery....no prep work or submissions needed for this one.

The podcast is a story that is quite visual, with a number of different threads to discuss.

So that you know what the gist is, the segment is described as 'bearing witness to something that, maybe, we weren't supposed to'. It has some funny moments, some adult themes, and some sad moments.

It will, likely, bring up different thoughts from each participant. After listening, we will each discuss the primary 'thread' of the story that we were stuck with at the end, and why.

We don't want to 'seed' too many ideas in advance, but possible topics that could come from it are, eavesdropping, passive observation, caring for people we have never met, love, and grief.

Being Valentines month, the thought was to find a 'love' related topic. There is 'love' in this one, but it is nuanced and should make for good conversation.

After going around the circle, we will pick a theme or two and discuss them in more depth.

It should be fun. The last time we listened to a podcast together the topic was laughter, and lots of that ensued.

_________________

Podcast was: "The Living Room" on Radiolab: https://radiolab.org/podcast/living-room-2401/transcript

Related film suggestion: Rear Window (1954) with Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly

Banter 73 - What is the point or purpose of asking philosophical questions?

 Wednesday, January 10th at 6pm

at Lavonne's lovely home in Kalispell

Here are some prep materials to get us considering this topic from some overlapping vantage points:

From Mitch:

This seems like a hard topic to find materials on and to prep for as our discussions may come down to personal experience and opinion. I like those kind of discussions. I read the topic as ‘what is the point or purpose of asking ourselves philosophical questions?'. Maybe it is meant to be broader and encompass humanity philosophizing as a whole? Either way, I was a little stumped when it came to researching and gathering material. 

Two questions I kept coming back to were ‘what, exactly, is a philosophical question (is it different for different individuals)?’, and, ‘is getting an answer important, or is the process of critical thinking itself the greatest value?’.

I saw a cartoon somewhere, that I can’t locate, that showed some scientists discussing a group of philosophers across the room saying something like, ’all they do is talk about thinking about thinking’. I’ve included another one that implies a schism between science and philosophy. Knowledge vs. wisdom?  Stephen Hawking declared that ‘philosophy is dead’ (at least in terms of being able to make knowledge claims). I don’t want us to rabbit hole on that debate for banter, but am bringing it up in regards to ‘answers’ as the plays into ‘what is the purpose or point’.

In looking around the internet I kept coming to a 2009 paper by Bourget and Chalmers who conducted an extensive survey of thousands of professional philosophers in the English speaking world, and their views on philosophical questions. In short, it seems that, even among the best philosophical minds, there is little agreement on any answers. The survey was redone in 2020 and provides a nice list of professional philosopher questions (though I’m hoping we will banter on more informal dorm room philosophy) with the results on the ‘answers’ (beliefs?) that were given.  It’s worth a quick skim of the survey results at the link, below, and, if you want to dive deeper into the research and papers, you can skim through a lot more info on the lefthand menu.

https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all

I know that what professional philosopher's' consensus is, somewhat, off topic, but a big part of what I’d like to banter about is if philosophy can provide answers or is it, often, a case of the journey being more important than the destination?

From Sabine:

The comics produced by the Existential Comics illustrators are pretty great, such as the "Why did you want to do philosophy at all?" one above and the Nietzsche one above. Also, this one:

And a longer one with Kierkegaard running a help line at this link made me laugh for a while:  https://existentialcomics.com/comic/347

This made me consider that answering our banter topic will be rooted in really thinking about a number of foundational or contemporary philosophers & the specific questions or conditions they are grappling with. So, I think we should all do a little bit more poking around into 2, 3, 5 philosophers each. What is the point or purpose of asking the philosophical questions that Marx did? has a whole different feel than What is the point or purpose of asking the philosophical questions that Fiona Woollard is? (Fyi, she's one of my fav. contemporary philosophers that I've listened in on in person & read, not that you need to know her or read her.)

Looking into that for ourselves will be good, but so will considering What is the point or purpose of me or my favorite family members or my best friends asking philosophical questions when we're together? As in, what does us asking these questions and going on about them with each other (instead of all the other things we could be talking about or focusing on) do for us? 

And my third angle on this topic loops back to these comics again - this shit is just funny & minds like this are fun & funny (think back to when we read The Symposium - Greek definitions and stories of "Love/Eros") to read, observe, engage with, and self-cultivate. With the time I've got, unless I'm on a mountain top or in an art museum (and well, actually in those locations too) I don't honestly see the point of doing much of anything else with my weird human mind but asking philosophical questions & trying to get other people around me to talk about them too (thus this banter group!). And when I come across people who try to have a normal conversation with me, I'm at a loss & seem kind of socially inept.  😂 

Banter 72: Hygge

Date: Sunday, November 19th at 6pm

Location: Sabine's house

Zoom option: Zoom link emailed out (or ask Sabine if you can't find it)

With some trepidation about sounding new agey, as we northern hemisphere dwellers shift into the tilt away from the sun & the dark hours grow long, our patterns and moods change. Some people like the shut-in, hibernation quality of this portion of our year, while others stay buoyant through strapping skis or skates to feet for as many hours as they can fit in. Sauna culture is another angle on making winter and coldness feel fun vs. something to merely survive. 

Hygge - a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture) - isn’t reserved for fall and winter only, though it surely comes to mind more then. Not surprisingly, this developed among some fellow northern hemisphere residents. Most / all? cultures that deal with extended winter (incl. south hemisphere dwellers) surely have their hyggelig practices and customs. We know that mental health struggles increase greatly for humans in the winter months, with sad self-harm statistics in Montana being all too well known to most of us, along with great increases in alcohol consumption this time of year and other trends that indicate attempts at coping. 

Well before hygge was a trendy hipster / bourgeoisie concept in the US, ski bum Whitefish, for example, was hanging twinkle lights along rooftops not just for Christmas but Nov-March to alight the streets with cozy factor, gathering in roasty warm pubs (for the alcohol load, yes, but also for the camaraderie and closeness), holing up with friends and family at potlucks, meeting at the Moose lodge for bingo nights, having 7am coffee at a cordoned-off corner table at the Buff, taking part in ski torch parades & lining nordic paths with lanterns at night, hanging feed for the townie birds and squirrels, baking muffins, lighting old world candle chimes, and all the things we each do to help each other to arrive to the long-lit, effortlessly joyous days of summer once again. 

So, we gather in hyggelig manner this second most dark month of the year. 

Some mellow prep materials on the topic:

• "Indian take on Danish hygge" - short stand up comedy act: https://youtu.be/cHocWPV7HL8?feature=shared

• A New Yorker article, "The Glossary of Happiness" - https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-glossary-of-happiness