In this lecture, Brian Eno aimed to answer two questions. "Is art a luxury?" and "Is there a way to create a situation where the arts flourish?". These questions were based on the education secretary's comment discouraging students not pursue the humanity and arts sector, as there are not as many job prospects compared to the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The idea that STEM is much like a STEM and that the arts branch off from it.
He identifies that one of the main problems about why there is a discouragement of the arts is that it has too many variations for the definition of what the purpose of art is. STEM is favoured over the arts because its contribution to the country can be represented by a single number. Governments want sectors that help boost the economy and country as a whole. Therefore there is a desire to make the art world an industry in order to legitimize its usefulness to the government.
So he defines what the arts is for us, "art is everything you don't have to do". We stylize everything that we do, from our hair to the way we communicate. People invest a lot of time and effort into how they stylize themselves, and more importantly we don't do it randomly. We don't need to do it, but we do because of our ability to imagine and that is what separates us from animals. Our imagination makes us empathetic and it makes us human. By immersing ourselves in imaginary worlds we grow stronger in our ability to empathize, imagine and to compare our real ones to the ones created.
Therefore he believes that the arts are worth pursuing for because of how important the imagination is to our lives. He doesn't think that creativity bursts out from people randomly. New ideas articulated by individuals but generated by the community. Often times we celebrate the individuals rather than the source they're drawing from. He comments on how we're moving from an era of scarcity to abundance. Productivity will rise however humans will be ever more disconnected due to automation and robotics. We live in a world of ultra fast change and now people will have to stay coherent and constantly be involved to re-sync with one another, imagining to understand things and connect things together. He feels that it is important that we think collectively and share ideas.
Therefore you get a sense that from our ability to imagine things and thus stylize everything, the arts is completely and utterly intertwined within our nature and society. It is not an add on but a central thing that we all do and that connects us with one another.
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