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This thread on the FDR group is the straw that broke the camel's back. https://www.facebook.com/groups/freedomainradio/permalink/1324697957586491/ This is an idea that's been kicking around in my mind for long enough that I think it may have a shot at being workable in real life. Most people seem to have the emotional view that objective standards (can we call it OBSTANS?), when it comes to the arts, are anywhere between evil, and laughably useless. The defensiveness comes out so readily that it's akin to when you make an argument against the state to an average person. To me, it's a sign of indoctrination. Yet although people have this view that we must never apply objective standards to art, I submit most criticisms of the arts center around some arbitrary combination of them. So we have a dissonance between what people say they want, and what they actually desire. Meanwhile, we see the arts slipping ever farther down an insane rabbit hole of degeneration, with every iteration becoming more "incomprehensible" than the last. The people in the know all pretend to appreciate it, though they've clearly been exposed as bullshitters. We even have generators for their babble now on the internet. If the average person expresses a desire for something they can appreciate, they are called laymen or instructed to respect subjectivity etc. I believe the layer of fear this creates has effectively pushed said laymen aside and let the elite run roughshod over the arts, finally transforming them into yet another vehicle for expressing their toxic anti-human values. Now of course I admit that art is ultimately subjective, and I greatly appreciate that very necessary aspect and have no desire to change it. But a pile of loose bricks is a lousy wall no matter what the intent or interpretation. It takes the application of OBSTANS to make sure that the bricks become something more and better. In turn, you can only churn out so many blank canvases and say its about racism before people are fed up. One argument I've heard is that the objectivists tried this with art already, and it didn't work. If anyone can elaborate on that point, I'd be grateful, as my studies in this realm are somewhat immature. I can see some sticking points though. Art is naturally ever-evolving. People's tastes seem to change very rapidly. The moment you write out some OBSTANS for an artform, they start becoming outdated. You seemingly have to base your standards on great works of the past, which may not provide any insight to the future. Moreover, there may be a mechanism in human taste whereby the next generation summarily dismisses any established standards no matter their objective value. Therefore, purposefully assembling more good things in one space is simply dooming good things to the trash more efficiently when the next generation comes and wipes the slate clean. Maybe art has become a game of not outmaneuvering this mechanism. But after letting subjectivity play out, we do see obvious problems of degeneration becoming painfully apparent. Nobody wants to be that dick who blames subjectivity, but there it is. A big fat correlation that is screaming for somebody to say, yea, it's causation as well. It reminds me of how triggered people become when they hear Ann Coulter's single mom stats. Pushing back is obviously a monumental task, but we do have to stand up and call out the problem in the first place. I'd like to propose a new approach to building OBSTANS. The key here is creators being OK with short-term failure, and with consumers not being chained to the actual OBSTANS. A creator would lay out their best list of standards and work with them in mind. If competition comes along and seems to be poaching interest away, you must evaluate if it is because they used a better set of standards. If so, then incorporate those into your own. But if they are gaining popularity by other means, such as bribery or marketing, then stick to your guns in the face of this setback. Looking at today as an example, if somebody was to create the objective equivalent to the original Star Wars, and Red Letter Media has exhaustively broken down those standards as a gift to us all, there would be singing in the streets. As a lay consumer, your role is to.. not consciously worry about objective standards! In a free-market, artists depend on your business, so they will need to serve your whims. As an elite consumer, like an artist who also consumes art, your job is to hold other artists' feet to the fire; criticize them for trying to sell trash to the people under false pretenses. I'd like to add a lot more to this, but I'm mostly out of energy. I hope for responses so I can make this thing actually robust, or scrap it in the face of good arguments. I realize we have bigger fish to fry than "fixing art," but this could possibly tie into the big picture. It could be that art is a refection of a society perverted by the state, and has become an arm of that state as well. If so, then taking art away from the ruling class could be a step in delegitimizing the state. Like the imminent fall of the mainstream media, we could cut another major line of propaganda, and of course begin using it to our own ends. Look at how integrally the Rap industry is tied to the continual destruction of the black family. What a victory that would be for Humanity to blow up that death star.