Art & Economics: Towards a Cultural Ecology

In this age, increasingly shaped by communications and technology,humanity is becoming acutely sensitive to its frail security. The rationalism of science continues to accelerate the conflict between global mind and local body. Energy and information are now our major exchangeable natural resources. They constitute the primary components of the value system in a newly emerging economic structure.

Within the broad framework of information theory, the arts are recognized for their communicative efficiency and transcendence. The processes of creativity, though elusive, have lead mankind through historical mazes of uncertainty. In an information based society, cultural development may assume an economic value comparable to that of the military in an industrialized society. Having learned to recognize the complex ecological interdependence of living systems and the environment, artists ought now to produce models of a sustaining cultural ecology.

Stateof the Arts 

The arts, reflecting the state of the larger political, economic and social environment, are in serious trouble.

Too many artists are playing it safe, today. The role of the arts in this society, is now largely shaped by confused intellectualism; selfish, vested-interest capitalism; and absent-minded, fashionably crafted artificiality. There must be more.

There is, of course. There are many artists and cultural institutions working with deep, sincere integrity and dedication. Their creative life, admittedly, is proceeding at odds with a more dominant social momentum. Their perseverance and efforts are to be encouraged.

This essay, however, hopes to provoke thought and discussion aimed at clarifying certain issues that are at the core of our human-environment relationship; and at the heart of our valuation of culture and creative action, for a more intelligent and sustainable society. There is a need and an all-important opportunity for creative people, artists, to take full advantage of the great independence and freedom inherent in their calling, to take a more active personal responsibility to be proponents of a true sense of ecology; a cultural ecology.

A DECEPTION IS BEING PERPETRATED. 
IT IS NOT AN OVERT DECEPTION. 
IT IS NOT A COVERT DECEPTION. 
IT IS THE EVOLUTION OF MISCONCEPTION.