PROBLEM 0008: In Praise of Generalization

In which the author gives the other side of Problem 0007. In which generalization is praised. Then denigrated again. And where facts are idealistically eschewed for the specific details of certain humanity.

Problem 0007 wasn’t very nice to generalization. Now it’s time to praise it for a moment. One can’t generalize generalization without committing the crime it speaks against. It may sound complicated, but it’s super simple. I swear. It’s as easy as coffee at 10pm. You make it, you drink it, and then you can’t go to sleep. So easy.

FUN GAME: can you count the generalities in the following post?

So here’s the problem with my problem with generalization. Without generalization, our brains don’t seem to do so well with raw information. I’ve watched my infant daughter pick up concepts (like daddy loves mommy) much quicker than she picks up facts like “this is our anniversary, leave us alone.” What is she supposed to do with something like “A is for Apple” when she’s only just learned that letters are how words are made? Or that sounds can be represented by letters? Or that words are what we talk? Or that talking is how you get what you want? Or that you can write what you want and then get what you want? Only later do the specific letters become useful. Until you see someone cook, the food comes readymade from the heavens. Until you observe an artist closely or create something for yourself, art is magic. 

When I first became obsessed with art (and aesthetics and literature and film history etc), I had to begin with the easy stuff. Take film. For instance, I could look at two movies and make the brilliant distinction this is a blockbuster, that is an art film. But my brain couldn’t really distinguish between the two movies apart from the suspicion that blockbusters were exciting and a grand waste, and art films made me think sad thoughts and occasionally get to see some naked people. Alright, totally got that concept down cold. But then comes curiosity and afterward comes a long list of auteurs cribbed from some book at the library or the small lists one finds all over the freaking internet (did you ever notice that everybody on the internet writes the same lists? You could be excused for thinking there were only a handful of great filmmakers out there): "art film" filmmakers like Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Tarkovsky, etc. What the hell were those names all about? At the simplest, more general level, they were ciphers representing something beyond the blockbuster, the “movie”, the good time moment, the time killer, the money maker. As ciphers they were obviously too general: the films those men made were nothing alike (unless you were American, which means they were all foreign and thus boring). They are similar only as far as they are not blockbuster movies that you watch on a date (unless you subscribe to a certain sadistic style of love making, which is awesome in its own way) or after a long day of work. However, the list of names was a place to start for the curious.

Or take books. In general, I love ("love") Nabokov’s writing. But that has nothing to do with the specific books and only lets you know that I've read something, which isn't much of an accomplishment to speak of. Lolita is the quintessential Nabokov until you read Ada or Pale Fire. Pnin is gloriously pathetic and Transparent Things super sublime. Speak, Memory is all memory-heart and Look at the Harlequins is all wicked brain. Mary is a glimpse into Nabokov’s young, human side while Laughter in the Dark is Nabokov at his most pleasurably bitter. 

But oh my god look what I did in that paragraph. I didn’t actually say anything about any of Nabokov’s novels or about Nabokov himself. I pointlessly reduced the literary labors of a master into several words each. Worse than that, I used a sentence structure that tricked us into thinking I said something important about each one. This is a return to the dark side of generalization.

So how do we use "generality" in our quest to like art? I think we use it as a means of formulating our earliest ideas through the first tremors of curiosity. As those ideas gain in strength (or slowly shed their stupidity), they become buttressed not by facts but by specific details of human engagement. 

“Art is a religion” is an idea, and as such it is pretty worthless (guilty as charged). But if it causes the speaker to turn an inward eye upon his or her own experience with that concept, open to the possibility that it can be proven wrong, then that general statement was far more valuable than its apparent worthlessness would indicate. 

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