This post is about the art instinct. Conservative ideologue and salonista Denis Dutton recently published a book that sought to explain aesthetics in terms of evolutionary necessity; this commentary is Carles's apparent reaction to the premise that sexual selection undergirds the urge toward aesthetic expression. He reveals economically how evolutionary theories such as Dutton's have the effect of negating feminism and presuppose a female subservience to the needs of the species. "I am in a weird mood this weekend. I feel like seeing some avant garde art/music/performances, but at the same time, I feel like doing something that objectifies women, like going to a strip club or something." In Dutton's view, these impulses are essentially synonymous, and the purest artistic expression is the exposed gyrating rump of the female simulating estrus.
If art is merely a matter of pursing evolutionary advantages, then nothing is to prevent Carles from drawing the reductio ad absurdem: "Part of me feels like ‘artists are bullshit people who want attention.’" Without anything more useful to contribute to human survival, artists try to beguile potential sexual partners with their sensory parlor tricks. And sexualized art will inevitably force out -- through natural selection -- art that has achieved a sublimiation of the sexual instincts: "Part of me wants to see Tom Morello with a bunch of sweet Effectz Pedals,
but a bigger part of me wants to see a woman on all-fours without a shirt on with sweet pedals."
Carles then dismisses theories that would explain "the real reasons" why we do things with this sarcastic swat: "I am not sure who I am any more. I am not sure why I do anything any more." Carles still believes in agency and subjectivity, in a consciousness that is not entirely determined or programmed by biological imperatives. For that, he remains a philosophical beacon in a ocean of reductive evo psych theory.
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