Denis Dutton’s reverse engineering of why and what he find beautiful is absolutely fascinating. Admittedly, I am a sucker for a logical progression where I can’t foresee the ending from the start, and for anyone who knows their history, but his analysis and conclusions are spot on. The idea that art originated long before language is mildly shocking. However, the manner in which it was presented was not only logical, but probable. Dutton begins his case by listing all of the things we find beautiful; sculptures and paintings, movies and theater, music, nature, sports excellence. Dutton sums this up by stating, “We find beauty in something done well.” Ironically enough, I find beauty in the accuracy and simplicity of that statement. It was very insightful to learn that most landscapes have very similar features no matter the cultural background of the artist; short grass plains, a medium amount of dispersed trees (especially if they fork low to the ground), an availability of water, a presence of animal life and possibly a path leading off into the distance. From a hunter/gatherer standpoint this is the ideal setting for a nice couple weeks of survival. He ties this all together by claiming, “beauty is natures way of acting at a distance.”
Detractors of Dutton might claim that beauty in nature might be cultural universal, but art that we create is much more diverse. To combat this, Dutton brings up the earliest works of art, long before cave drawings and atomically accurate sculptures, there was the hand ax. Two and a half million years ago, man made his first permanent tool. An incredibly useful teardrop shaped sharp stone with hundreds of uses from hunting to shelter construction to self defense. But the problem is, there are far more hand axes found than could have ever been used by our prehistoric ancestors, and many showed no signs of wear and some were too big to be functional. Dutton postulates, I think correctly, that these were used as a mate acquisition tool. A finely crafted hand ax made out of a semi-precious stone showed; craftsmanship, higher cognition, access to fine stones and excess time to spend on non survival oriented tasks, inferring proficiency at survival. Therefore, the hand axes were our very first sculptures and art. In the end, Dutton leaves us with the parting thought that perhaps our affinity for that diamond ring has little to do with our cultural indoctrination and a lot more to do with very deep inherited traits.
I leave you with these two questions:
What things do we have occur in our society that may go against natural survival, but arise because they are pleasing to the mating choices of our females?
What are some things or traits that we find attractive currently that do not have any direct correlation to positive evolutionary traits, but might have much deeper and removed connections?
I want to respond to your first question. I think there are many things that we have that go against natural survival. The example of the peacock flaunting his feathers for the peahen is a natural example of sexual drives in animals. In my opinion, I feel like with humans makeup is an example of going against nature. We are technically changing our appearance to be more appealing to the opposite sex. I think this goes against natural survival because we are changing ourselves from our natural state. I watched a TED Talk once too about how humans are not meant to be monogamous; the speaker believed we are naturally born to have many mates and have as many children as possible to continue our genetic line, as well as for the sake of survival. Do you think monogamy goes against natural survival?
First of all, thank you for responding to my post. In my opinion, make-up doesn’t necessarily fit into this category because it is a tool humans use to minimize “less desirable” qualities and highlight “more desirable” aspects of the human form (i.e. the flushed cheeks and lips that happen during arousal). Monogamy is an interesting point. While on one hand, a child raised with the protection of two parents versus one would theoretically have a higher chance of survival, in a more primitive system, diversifying the chances of your offspring’s survival (with several mates) theoretically could lead to a higher chance of success. Anthropologically speaking, in a hunter gatherer society, monogamy benefits the female more because she is bound by certain physical limitations (only being able to bear offspring roughly once a year). While a male with several mates, is only limited by the number of mates. Therefore, monogamy creates a higher chance for the particular female’s offspring to succeed, whereas if the male is solely concerned with passing on his genes, with no regard to who he passes them along to, polygamy would be better suited for this endeavor.