The Poor (Entertaining) Relative

 



Never in my life has someone said to me, 'I did the best spreadsheet last night. While doing it I laughed, I cried, I connected with myself, with the world, I felt empathy. I could see myself in that spreadsheet. But I could also see others. It changed my life.'

But I hear almost daily-

I watched the most beautiful film...

I listened to the most amazing song...

Viewed the most moving exhibition...

Watched the most incredible dance...

Saw the most compelling production...

Also a phrase that I've seldom heard is, 'At this institution/government/school/tertiary institution we value empathy, creativity, connectivity and humanity above all else and as such we prioritize the subjects that teach such skills by making the arts as important as the other important aspects that make up our institution.'

How is it that the very things we cannot, as a human race, live without are the very things that are always sidelined? How is it that artists in every single form are still having to fight their cause, unsupported and very often misunderstood, despite the fact that they are the very things that elevate us above the mechanisms of being simply flesh and blood. 

I have noticed that STEM subjects are getting all the kudos at schools these days. The word 'robotics' is now the new catch phrase just as 'entrepreneurship' was when I was in high school. If you're not into Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics are you even clever? Many schools would certainly have you think that. 

Surely the robots (that we're now teaching children to build) will take over all that stuff anyway? I am no major academic but if ChatGPT can write me a 1000000 word essay on worm farming I would imagine that it won't be long before our pioneering STEM subjects will become obsolete because our robots will do them for us. 

Ask any institution that holds at it centre a love and nurturing attitude towards the arts and they will tell you how underfunded they are. One just needs to look at the diabolical state of the Arts and Culture budget in this country for evidence of this. 

And yet one of the only things we South Africans can be vaguely proud of right now is the magnificent dancer Musa Motha and the Mzansi Youth Choir who both got Golden Buzzer Awards on the international stage this week. How ironic that one of our greatest exports, our capacity to perform better that anyone else in the world, is also the most ignored by the powers that be. I see this on a daily micro and macroscopic level. 

I'm tired of being part of a brotherhood of poor relatives - the ones who are looked down on and scorned because somehow engaging in the very form that reminds us that we are vulnerable, feeling, sentient beings is all a bit much, a bit too dramatic. And yet at the same time we must entertain the masses, who, when tired of their non-feeling robots want to feel connected again and who do this though film, music, dance, theatre, art. It's like the old adage - 'dance monkey dance.' But we'll pay you in peanuts.

Well I'm over peanuts. And I want to warn all those obsessed with the left side of their brains that at the end of the day, when robots do everything, the last thing we will have left is our humanity. Our choirs, our dancers, our artists, our musicians, our actors, our humans. You can argue that AI actors will take over cinema. You can argue that a machine can compose music and paint a portrait. But this will never be as powerful. It will never change lives. It will never save lives. At the end of the day our empathy and creativity will be all that stands between us and the machines.