Re:Leonardo da Vinci was a hopeless procrastinator.
by biohacker42 on Wednesday February 25, 2009 @10:52AM
(#494476)
I should have been more specific. Clearly almost every people has created art.
It's hard to dig almost anywhere in the world and not at some point hit some magical amulet or wonderfully decorated pottery art, or something like that.
My point was about the rather unusual situation of Leonardo, and even more so, jonmc12 question on how to allow more people the same freedom Leonardo had.
The large degree of time and effort devoted to art, by a large part of the population, is unusual.
Clearly every society has art, and often individuals, shamans, singers, etc, can be full time so to speak. But it's rare that most people can devote most of their time, to activities other then survival.
Granted, the jungle is also plentiful (altho hazardous.)
But the masses of people who have to walk hours for water, in Africa and parts of the Middle East, is also a modern thing. Before modernish times, that would be totally untenable. Either they would move on, or they would all die, rather than this in-between state they occupy now.
The majority of cultures since the Great Leap Forward seemed to have created quite a bit of art, music and myths, but many of them were trasient and impermanent and so left no trace. And apparently a lot of it was "practical," in terms of beautiful clothing, vessels, "magical" items and weapons.
But I don't think I'd call those things uncreative because they were also useful.