# What does art reflect and why? and for whom?

Юрий Михайлович Низовцев

For what reason are the products of mass culture so attractive to most of the population, and why is only a certain part of the population, very insignificant, able to engage in creativity, whereas remaining part - just to perceive its products more or less adequate? Is there a limit to improvement in art? What is the reason for the current clear degradation of art? You will find answers to these and some other questions below.

Art is elitist because it demands too much from its victims.

Art is the cutoff of life, and it is all more interesting, the more it is cutting.


Key words: person, art, population, consciousness, life, feelings.


The artificial intelligence has finally resolved the debate over which is more important: reason or sensations.

All its actions have demonstrated that reason, separated from sensations, is nothing more than nothing, since this reason, unlike that of humans, does not sense the passage of time and, therefore, is incapable of experiencing events in the world that are not its own creation.

On the other hand, the ability of a person, unlike animals, to be aware of his feelings and intentions, aimed mainly at an expedient change in his surroundings, separates him from animals, usually focusing on instincts and reflexes in their adaptive reactions to their environment, and therefore possessing a rather meager and monotonous spectrum of experiences about themselves.

Feelings (experiences), in themselves, are the most valuable thing that can be in being. And the more diverse and richer they are in their passions - from tragedy to comedy, the richer and more interesting life becomes, already constituting an object for art, which begins to reflect this event life in individual objects and phenomena in order to better feel and understand both oneself and the course of events.

At that, the most intense experiences are not those of joyful events, which are accepted as a proper adornment of life, but of various kinds of tragedy, in the first place of which are suffering and death, which force a person, understanding his short-term presence in life, not simply to prosper like goats on the lawns of beingness during the time given to them, but to try to come up with something that will destroy the brevity of his life, although A. Schopenhauer, on the contrary, believes that comedy is preferable to tragedy, since comedy allows one to "remain in a good mood under all circumstances," whereas "the tendency of tragedy is to point to the denial, the destruction of the will to live. On the contrary, comedy encourages precisely the continuation and affirmation of this will" [1].

The tools of this elimination of the brevity of life can only be religion and art, not medicine, technologies, and science, which are essentially preoccupied with servicing the inevitably deteriorating body and its various needs.

Therefore, medicine, technology and science cannot claim to create conditions the conditions for the eternal life, although transhumanists believe otherwise, not understanding the relationship between the finite and the infinite, which produce reality through their interaction.

Be that as it may, religion offers hope for life after death, calling on us to strive for goodness and harmony from birth to death in order to earn this life, and that in itself prevents a person from falling into savagery.

Art, however, is interested in life itself, with all its relationships in the flow of events and passions, since its adherents intuitively understand that in eternity, a person will drown, but in this brief life, he will hasten to express himself to the best of his ability, because he knows the length of his allotted time.

This distracts a person from constant thoughts of suffering and death, and he willy-nilly shows in his best creations that the perfection that every person would like is achieved not in eternity, but by striving for the impossible through unthinkable collisions, analogues of which can be seen on stage. Along with that, the amazing creations of Phidias and Leonardo da Vinci demonstrate the true beauty of a person in its extreme harmony.

Literary masterpieces, in turn, very clearly show the duality of human nature - animal and at the same time trying to embrace the immensity, thanks to which only a person in his communities is capable of his development, much faster than other organisms, to show both his sensuality and creativity, demonstrating to himself the meaning of life in the current time, saturated with the events created by him.

Therefore, for example, an outside observer, who accepts all our experiences, is interested in their fullness and diversity, but this requires a struggle of passions, torment, longing, interspersed with rapture of victories, hopes, successes and joy, which always comes to an end, but all this action for the same observer can be resumed over and over again in new scenery.

In other words, dramatic art can offer us all the idea that a life as new is entirely possible if we forget the old and clothe ourselves in new settings on the same stage of the current time, quite successfully competing with religion.

But questions immediately arise.

What does art actually intuitively aspire to when you mean the ratio of art to life?

Who really and why from the population is able to most adequately perceive outstanding works of art, and for what reason the pitiful products of the mass culture so attract most of the population?

Why did the highest examples of wordless art, in the form of sculpture and architecture, yet more expressive than words, appear in ancient Greece and the Renaissance, while the verbal and musical - in 19th-century Europe?

What is the reason for the degradation of "art" in our time, striking in its primitiveness and meager content?

***

To the question of what limit art strives for, one can say the following.

As early as the 14th century AD, the prominent Armenian philosopher John Vorotnetsi spoke of the relationship between art and life (nature) as follows: "Art cannot create anything without matter, just as a carpenter and a weaver take wood and wool and give them shape and measure... Art, with its capabilities, cannot give products an essential form, but gives them an accidental form... Nature, however, possesses greater capabilities than art, for it requires only a small basis, and to this small basis it adds much. For the basis of nature is pure matter, created by God, without which it can create nothing. Nature, taking pure matter as its basis, adds to it not only a random but also an essential form... But divine power... does not need any basis: it itself creates the basis and imparts to it a random and essential form" [2].

Vorotnetsi, in general, quite adequately places emphasis on the relationship between art and life, but he uses the term "chance" rather inappropriately, linking it with the form of works of art.

Randomness in nature actually serves the need for a long process of natural selection, ultimately ensuring the development of life, since nature has ample time to transform random changes into the most advantageous ones during this selection process, and some of which appear beautiful to us, which in itself indicates the limit of perfection.

Back in ancient Egypt, the essence of this limit was understood, which was later designated the "golden ratio."

The "golden ratio" refers to the sequence discovered by Fibonacci, in the framework of which to one degree or another there are all phenomena and objects in the universe, including galaxies, microcosm, crystals, various natural phenomena in the form of cyclones and thunderstorms, as well as flora and fauna. In accordance with the Fibonacci sequence, branches and leaves of trees grow. In accordance with this sequence are also formed the various parts of the human body and the structure of a DNA molecule. In short, everything in the universe (beingness) follows this sequence, but with varying degrees of convergence to it, the maximum indicator of which is felt by a person as beautiful.

The Fibonacci sequence itself is: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21...

In this numerical sequence, each subsequent number behind 0 and 1 is the sum of the previous two.

The further this series continues, the closer the ratio of neighboring numbers in it to 1.618.

Geometrically, as the ancient Egyptians noticed, this number is obtained if you divide the line into two parts so that the long part correlates with the short one in the same proportion as the entire line correlates with its long part.

In the future, this number was called the golden ratio, since it, both in natural and artificial phenomena, and as this has been shown by practice, even in the case of any complication of a living or inanimate object, leads to flowing various physical processes with minimal energy costs.

For this reason, different living organisms do not develop by chance, but trying to follow the Fibonacci proportion, and the "golden section" gradually appears almost everywhere, which, in our opinion, is the meaning of the evolution of the living, which brings to a self-conscious and independent subject in the form of a personality.

In particular, the DNA molecule is 34 angstroms long and 21 angstroms wide. And these numbers are adjacent in the Fibonacci sequence, and their ratio is 1.618.

All best works and works in the fields of architecture, technology, painting, music, literature, as shown by their analysis in relation to the number 1.618, also followed, according to the thoughts of their authors, consciously or not the Fibonacci proportion.

These facts cannot but point to a clear attempt by living organisms to avoid chaos in their change in order to ensure their own economical and at the same time accelerated growth and development in the form of any degree of complexity, which, in turn, contributes to the development of consciousness in this alive.

Thus, this type of living and non-living objects of beingness in the most economical state of the "golden section" guarantees them maximum stability of development or existence, reducing the likelihood of both decay and stagnation.

In particular, a person who is aware of his own existence in time, unlike other living beings, is able to respond to this expression of the form of things and living organisms, which is maximally far from chaos and stagnation, as perfect, and, therefore, turns out to be capable of creating something similar, that is, to the art of reproducing the beautiful, but at a much faster pace than nature.

A person does not have as much time as nature, and therefore only relatively few succeed in creating beautiful works in their short lives.

The fact is that masterpieces require a combination of many factors to be created relatively quickly, the most important of which are a certain combination of natural abilities, including a sufficient degree of creativity, sustained interest, a corresponding willpower, and significant natural talents (primarily the appropriate brain structure) in terms of demonstrated interest, which are, understandably, rare, as well as the proper education and such environment that does not block the creative approach, either subjectively or objectively.

If a creator, despite objective difficulties, purposefully and at the same time with the participation of intuition, and not just understanding, approaches the same "golden ratio," then his work, before the eyes of the astonished viewer, seems to come to life, revealing even those facets that were not noticeable in similar objects in everyday life, which, for example, an attentive viewer clearly senses when looking at the canvases of great artists in a museum.

Every author of the beautiful, thanks to those observers who know how to mark and present this subject to the rest, sooner or later will be recognized the genius, but the severity of this service to the beautiful is that in a short time of life you can create beautiful only almost completely despised consumption, since the time spent on it, to a large extent block creativity.

Only then is it possible to enter the sphere of divine harmony and, with a greater degree of probability, approach the beautiful, which is difficult to access in everyday life, which boils down in almost everything to consumer instincts inherited by man from animals.

Therefore, penetrating the realm of true harmony is by no means accidental. It stems, first and foremost, from the human interests and creativity, which are the result of the presence in a person, unlike animals, of a duality of consciousness-animal-sensory and, at the same time, abstract-rational. This, in particular, allows them to be bold in thought and action, and to admire the beautiful creations that could previously only be contemplated in isolated manifestations of nature: a sunset, stars in the sky, a veil of clouds, birdsong, the chirping of a cricket, the flight of a bumblebee, the fluttering, multicolored wings of a butterfly, the rustling of the surf, the taste of raindrops on wild berries, the scent of jasmine.

***

Who really and why from the population is able to most adequately perceive outstanding works of art, and for what reason, alas, the miserable crafts of mass culture so attract most of the population?

It has long been known that the peoples inhabiting our planet are at different stages of their development, and, moreover, people differ very significantly in their interests. the ability to perceive reality, relationships to life and to each other.

Therefore, it makes sense to consider briefly, representatives of which of the main strata of the population have the desire and ability to more or less adequately perceive what is new that is offered by all artists, including, of course, the creators themselves, which it is inherent in by definition.

Note first that the lower (animal) component of the human consciousness is characterized by three main features: the desire for nutrition, preferably a good one; the urge to reproduce for the sake of preserving themselves in their offspring; the passion for dominating one's own surrounding, giving, with appropriate success, power over fellow tribesmen and maximum comfort.

As for the highest consciousness, or self-consciousness of a person, it separates a person from the primitive and mainly consumer characteristics of the animal component of consciousness, providing man with the opportunity to act purposefully to change the environment in his own interests - the most diverse, including not only the consumption of what is necessary for survival and a pleasant existence, but also the desire to know the world, finding in it something new and interesting both in the technical equipment of his work, and that which seems beautiful to him as a kind of analogue of the perfect creations of nature that he sees before him.

This harmony softens his rough heart, and a person is more or less filled with compassion for the weak and a desire to improve this world of mutual passions, struggle and destruction of each other.

The emerging contradiction between primitive passions, desires and the egocentric essence of the lowest component of consciousness and a certain altruism of the highest consciousness, naturally, removed, only when it is necessary to direct all forces to survival, and otherwise they usually diverge in their aspirations, thus being almost always in the process of confrontation, forcing a person to show They behave most effectively in each area of these forms due to mutual competition.

A positive consequence of this competitive struggle between both components of consciousness is the rapid development of the human communities, compared to the animal communities, to the point of achieving a civilization that is quite comfortable for living, offering numerous opportunities for the development of the abilities of each person through the process of labor efforts, dividing, nevertheless, the entire population, depending on the level of both components of consciousness in accordance with the degree of their dissatisfaction with both themselves and their surroundings, into four main strata: representatives of power structures and other "leaders" (elite); ordinary people (philistines); creative personalities; the middle (educated) class, the most active part of which is the opposition to the ruling elite in the form of informal intellectuals.

***

In any community there are subjects with a somewhat higher level of the animal component of consciousness due to their rather significant degree of dissatisfaction with their position in the environment, which can cause them to desire not only a well-fed, calm and prosperous life, but also dominance among their own kind.

Taking away from the highest consciousness the appropriate share of intelligence, which includes increased ingenuity, and from the lowest consciousness - speed of reaction, quite good strong-willed qualities and energy, skill to communicate, sufficient dexterity, cunning, insidiousness and unprincipledness, these individuals get advantage before the others - more inert members of the community in the form of philistines, highly moral intellectuals of all sorts and other relatively sluggish or anxious with another matters of members of the population, who are not able to deftly push aside or slander a rival, as well as really enjoy the humiliation of the subordinate, and at the same time endure the mockery from the side of their superiors.

The lack of intelligence at the persons, broke into the power elite, is compensated by the involvement of numerous advisers, but because the decisions eventually have to be taken them, insofar they, as the true creators of their own happiness, initially consider their activities from the position of personal (corporate), and not the people's good, with a roll in the direction of retaining power, gaining a greater degree of their own dominance and the acquisition of all kinds of privileges, clogging up in addition to it the various management and economic structures with own mostly incompetent offspring.

For the representatives of the power, a dominant inevitably is the lowest component of consciousness, that is, in their consciousness there is a clear lack of awareness of themselves as self-valuable personalities and not as consumers.

Power and practically the unlimited access to privileges and property belittles them so much that they see in the masses only a source of wealth for themselves and a field for the manifestation of their own low-lying instincts.

Naturally, such individuals, concerned mainly with the acquisition of power and its preservation, from the products of creativity are mostly interested not in masterpieces of art, but in the achievements of science and technology, which can contribute to the victory over competitors, and if they support certain creative personalities in the field of art, then, again, only for the sake of strengthening their own image in front of the masses as true guardians of culture and patrons of masters of art, but deep down having no interest in their works, since the desire for beautiful for them is supplanted by the aspiration for power.

***

The weak development of self-consciousness and the equally weak manifestation of the lowest (animal) consciousness (low level of dissatisfaction of consciousness in both cases), which are in a balanced state, characterize the main on number the group of any communities - the so-called philistines, diverse in professions - from the baker and the farmer to the paramedic and clerk.

The consequence of such weakness is their insignificant interest in any enterprise, that is not directly related to their well-being.

As a rule, high intelligence, which appears not only due to the possession of innate abilities, but is also developed and strengthened by long study, participation in various educational programs, the pursuit of hard-to-reach goals, is not peculiar to such individuals, not only because of their lack of high aspirations,, but also due to the influence of the mediocre or the philistine environment, absent the accessible social elevators, financial means for education and etc.

All members of this most significant layer of each community are guided mainly by their own reason and experience: preoccupied with themselves and their own well-being, they do not aspire to either "high" or "low" goals, limiting themselves to the desire of a hassle-free and well-fed life in which it is desirable see troubles only on the monitor screen.

The philistines do not feel the desire for new, that is, achieving a more comfortable state at the expense of their own efforts, they are seeking a more comfortable state of life from the position of simple acquisition and consumption of finished goods.

This, the most significant part of the population is engaged in daily monotonous work, and practically has no prospects for any other kind of activity, that could contribute to the development of self-awareness among these masses.

The habitual standard dictates to these people to live as everybody, consuming what is, creating around itself an environment of artificial and natural objects in order to regularly to update it, finding satisfaction in this incessant process.

Such persons avoid participation in any social movements, being interested only in own well-being, but avoiding any risk.

They do not resist the authorities and avoid any extremism, but only until their survival is at stake - having realized this, they will sweep away everybody and everyone without any hesitation or reflection.

If to dig more deeply and to assume that own time of each person is process of receiving and information processing in which he more or less consciously participates, then any philistine due to the relatively low cultural and intellectual level, determined by the weak development of the highest consciousness, is inclined to consume information flows corresponding to this level.

Therefore, their novelty is limited to stupid television shows or gossip on the Internet.

Something more complex, new in science, culture, history, technology, which is required not without difficulty to comprehend, the philistines do not allow in their skull box.

Due to the weakness of their own consciousness, ordinary people (philistines) simply overlook sublime works of art, choosing simpler things and those that, without much thought, strike a sensitive chord with their immediate senses. In other words, they prefer to reproduce and entertain themselves in the most primitive ways: at fairs, horse races, watching television shows, interacting on social media, and so on.

In essence, there are no other interests for them than those noted, and only a few of them literally break out of this swamp, the "viscosity" of which is due to the weakness of their consciousness at large.

***

Thus, both power lovers and ordinary people (philistines), due to the above features of their own consciousness, are indifferent to works of art - their interests are closed respectively purely on the consumption of power and what it gives, or goods and procedures that provide the comfort possible in each specific case. Everything else interests them only in terms of their own well-being, that is, they choose from information flows only what corresponds to their narrow interests, but do not produce new information.

However, the development of any community is impossible without constant renewal of the existing one; otherwise, stagnation occurs, with all the ensuing consequences, such as the eventual disintegration and disappearance of that community.

Therefore, development is impossible without individuals who not only consume information but also produce new information, shifting society to new stages of development that are more useful, technologically advanced, and interesting for both individual strata of the population and society as a whole.

Such individuals are those who are always filled with a deep-seated sense of dissatisfaction with their surrounding environment.

This dissatisfaction initially comes to them from the animal component of consciousness in its aspiration to create greater amenities for existence. However, this feeling is combined with their highest consciousness, the dissatisfaction of which by the insufficient social comfort, by the development of science and art, reaching a high degree, requires extending the achievements of civilization and culture to everyone.

But, the animal component of consciousness dominates at that, since the activity of these individuals is manifested mostly instinctively, without much thought, without giving decisive importance to what is known to this day, nevertheless giving the most creative persons of all living.

They, and only they, create new information flows, albeit of varying value, which is primarily determined by their abilities, as well as their skills and education.

The ability to acquire new and, especially, non-obvious knowledge is covered in more detail in my work, " What is the mystery of genius, still unsolved?" [3].

However, the creativity, inherent in every person due to the indispensable dissatisfaction with both forms of consciousness, has a different degree - from the minimum, interested only in transforming incoming information for their consumer needs, to the maximum, when a person is completely immersed in the process of obtaining new things, but success in it depends not only on the degree of his creativity, but also, mainly, from his natural abilities, determined by the corresponding design of the brain, and then his education and upbringing.

For this reason, from the potentially significant number of creative individuals who have a good education, but insufficient natural talent to realize their interests in creating something non-obvious, the so-called middle class is formed for the most part, which includes people engaged in intellectual labor, as well as that portion of individuals who are employed in the service sector, production and management of fairly complex technical systems.

They would all, of course, like to discover new patterns, come up with original approaches to solving current problems, create musical and literary masterpieces, and so on, but, as the saying goes, there's a shortage of talent.

Indeed, it's not enough to be educated, strive for creativity, delve deeply into the problems of a particular artistic movement, and mingle in the relevant surrounding.

Alas, great achievements are attainable by few, as they require the ability to combine intuitive and logical approaches so as to find, in a stream of interesting information, something seemingly unnoticeable, unusual, or random, something never before used in a given field of activity. Then, to logically apply what is known to it, thereby creating not just a new work, but one that reveals new facets of life, thereby astonishing every observer capable of perceiving and appreciating it.

Otherwise, every educated person, if they so desired, could become a discoverer of new, non-obvious knowledge, something that doesn't happen, despite everyone's desire to become great.

Naturally, the ability to perceive and appreciate the new is possessed, unlike the philistines and power-hungry individuals, by those representatives of the middle class who were unable to "jump above their heads" in the process of creating something fundamentally new, possessing the potential that allows them to express themselves merely in imitation of the greats or in combinatorial work, for example, by composing simple songs or obscure suites, painting realistic pictures that are more like photographs, pouring from empty to void in poetic form and fiction.

Be that as it may, in their attempts to understand the world, or at least to grasp certain explanations of its functioning, they can all recognize the importance of art, which offers them the opportunity to distance themselves from the harsh reality of everyday concerns and immerse themselves in an ideal world of harmony in music, literature, and architecture. Or, conversely, to be captivated by unexpected, exaggerated clashes in the stage dramas, and operatic passions, that capture the breathtaking imagination and reveal the uniqueness and depth of life's conflicts.

All this allows this middle class to transcend their own, often petty, experiences into the expanse of global passions and to feel like the heroes of works of art, which, among other things, gives them consolation in their short life akin to a religious one.

***

As for the highest examples of art, which throughout the history of civilization in their most concentrated form have been appeared only in three relatively short periods - ancient Greece, the Renaissance of the Middle Ages, and Europe together with Russia of the 19th century - this phenomenon can be explained with the maximum approximation to the beautiful only from the position of the duality of the human consciousness in its animal and humanistic (self-consciousness) components, which automatically stratify the human community in the course of its development within the framework of civilization into the following main strata: the ruling elite with its adjacent service personnel; the creative individuals interested in activities in the fields of science, technology and art, incoming in the middle class; as well as the rest of the population, although in the majority of cases working, but represented for the most part by ordinary people (philistines), whose limitation are reflected in their lock-in on consumption, and not on their own development.

Since art, at least in its highest examples, cannot but represent a creative process, that is, a striving for novelty, interesting both to the creators themselves in the sense of its achievement, and to the observers of this process and the users of its products, to that extent people who succeed in this process constitute, in particular in the sphere of culture, suppliers of life values marked by them in their own original interpretation, who seek to reflect in their works dissatisfaction with current life into the pursuit of the most perfect images and patterns.

Of course, they all reflect what is, but by hyperbolizing what is available, they strive with varying degrees of success for the beautiful, intuitively starting either from the divinely-harmonious, which they imagine, or from the tragic, which must be overcome.

During a period of relatively successful democratic development in ancient Greece (close to the time of Pericles), the creative individuals' quest for perfection and harmony was fostered by a unique type of religious belief, which produced a host of gods.

These gods reflected the fundamental structural features of the societies of the time - from Demeter, the goddess of fertility and agriculture, and Dionysus, the god of wine and theater, to Poseidon, the god of the seas and earthquakes, Hera, the patroness of marriage and family, and Zeus, the supreme god of thunder. They were imagined as omnipotent and perfect, yet directly interacting with people - helping them or, conversely, hindering their intentions.

Therefore, artists, typically sculptors and architects, sought to reflect precisely this beautiful, so close to them in appearance and deeds, in their works, concentrating on creating a perfect physical form, corresponding in their imagination to the heavenly guides, and in the realm of architecture, creating slender temples that soared upward, as if connecting people with the divine realm.

Naturally, this striving for perfection, fostered by all free citizens, supported by already the accumulated skills of sculptors and architects through their long-term prior exposure to the cultural achievements and technologies of the geographically adjacent ancient civilizations of Egypt and Western Asia, led them, during the cultural heyday of ancient Greece, to creations that closely resembled the golden ratio in their proportions.

Similar picture emerged during the Renaissance, when the divine, as inaccessible yet perfect and alluring, began to emerge from the minimalist shadows of the Dark Ages into the minds and sensibilities of artists. Under the patronage of the "holy fathers," they could reproduce the beauty of the human body by depicting synclitus of angels, archangels, and the Holy Family, achieving, as before, the "golden ratio" in their finest works.

But, like everything else in this world, this period of flourishing is comparatively short-lived. Favorable circumstances gave way to others, and gradually the Inquisition blocked the refinements of painters, sculptors, and architects.

The 19th century is unique for art in that, as a number of countries transitioned from feudalism to capitalism and a certain shift away from religion, the artists have gained a greater degree of creative freedom, expressed in the opportunity to turn not only to sculpture, architecture, and painting, but also to an intense and predominantly spiritual verbal reflection of life, intuitively demonstrating in their best works that the turmoil of emotion undoubtedly prevails over reason.

It is also interesting that almost all the best creations of pen masters boil down to describing life conflicts and tragic situations that occur due to human imperfection, envy and malice, and not relations between pleasant, hardworking and intelligent people.

It was precisely in this thankless task of describing positive characters that the brilliant Nikolai Gogol failed when composing the second volume of "Dead Souls".

All this testifies to the fact that the outstanding writers and poets of the time, while composing their works, intuitively sensed the impossibility of harmony in the current time.

Take, for example, Fyodor Dostoevsky, with his analysis of human behavior in extreme situations bordering on despair and hopelessness; Leo Tolstoy, who attempted to connect life with goodness in his moral treatises in complete contradiction to his own brilliant insights in the description of the true tragedy of life of Anna Karenina; Gustave Flaubert, with his hopeless torments in the person of Madame Bovary

All these literary masterpieces were reflected-and repeatedly-in music, which thereby became imbued with their tragically sublime content and have reflected, in a wave-like, frequency-like form that so astounds the person through earing, the feelings that possessed the authors of these masterpieces.

Indeed, this is precisely why 19th-century music acquired such a majestic structure and exerted such a powerful influence on the human consciousness, one that remains enduring to this day, unlike modern musical artifacts.

That is, all great creators intuitively sensed the presence of some highest, something we must strive for, no matter what, because there is beautiful in the world, and the most striking thing in it is a person, with all his imperfections, because without him, there is and cannot be any true world.

Only a person is able to understand both himself and his aspirations, feel them and transfer them outside.

Thus, in all these three eras of the heyday of art in the form that it was capable of in its reflection of the current time, in the foreground came to the fore was not the rational, with its pursuit of cognition alone, but a sensual reflection of life in the desire to approach the unattainable. And some of them succeeded. This can be judged by the proportions of their creations, surprisingly close to the Fibonacci number - 1, 618.

***

The degradation of art, if, of course, this activity can be called art nowadays, is caused mainly by the natural process of elimination of the middle class, which is significantly facilitated by artificial intelligence, which is capable of replacing not only all service workers, but also those artists and writers who do not produce something new, but only comment on it or imitate it.

On the one hand, it seems that art is being purged of parasites, but, as the saying goes, throwing out the baby with the bathwater is easy. The baby here is the artistic atmosphere itself, with its many relationships, often defying logical analysis but fostering creative development, strange as it may seem to many, in overcoming various obstacles and limitations imposed by bureaucrats and envious people. This only spurred artists on in their quest for perfection, preventing them from relaxing. In this competitive struggle with rivals and haters, they can fully demonstrate their will to win and their best talents.

Favorable conditions for creativity too often relax true creators and give free rein to imitators of creativity, who simply profit from a public ignorant of the creative process.

The falsity of such imitative works has been vividly demonstrated by artificial intelligence, which hasn't so much helped artists as hindered them from expressing their creativity with prompts that offer nothing new, other than pleasing combinations of what's already known.

The elimination of the middle class, which alone is capable of adequately perceiving creativity and attempting to attract the rest of the population to its fruits, leads to the most primitive thing - the division of society into a ruling elite with its servants and the mass of the impoverished population, deprived of all rights and doomed, in the isolation from culture, to drag out a miserable existence at the mercy of artificial intelligence, realizing own worthlessness and therefore quickly dying out.

The elite, in turn, in accordance with their predominantly animalistic nature, leading a meaningless, pleasant existence in the flow of all sorts of material goods without struggle or passion, will quite quickly and inevitably, as the end of the Roman Empire demonstrated, descend into marasmus and disappear.

What will remain?

Nothing but a small group of feral individuals who, nevertheless, will retain the genes of self-consciousness and can begin the process of humanization anew, leading to the formation of a new civilization.

Bibliography

1. A. Schopenhauer. Parerga and paralipomena. Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. 2014.

2. Hovhannes Vorotnetsi. On the interpretation of Aristotle. Publishing Department of Echmiadzin. Volume IV of "Church Chronicle": speeches of St. John Vorotnesiu come out. 2009.

3. Nizovtsev. Yu. M. What is the mystery of genius, still unsolved? 2022. [Electronic resource]. Access mode: Amazon.