[cousin_it]

Making a living through art is such a strange thing to wish for. I always imagine a prehistoric hunter telling tales around the campfire. Should the hunter think of hunting as his day job? Should he wish for a life where he'd spend all his time perfecting his tales, while other people would feed him? If he spends his life hunting in the days and telling tales in the evenings, is he a failure?

[throw4847285]

When challenged by the dictum that people often confuse nature with history, the response is to abandon arguments from human nature and replace them with a fantasy caveman land.

Caveman land implies human nature without needing to make an argument for it. It is so far in the past that there is limited evidence, and most people you encounter aren't anthropologists. So you can justify all your unexamined assumptions about present society with an appeal to the caveman land.

Ironically, all you need to craft a fantasy caveman land is an imagination. "Picture hunter gatherers, sitting around a campfire, carving rocks into Pokemon cards and trading them." What a great story! Anything is possible in caveman land.

[swiftcoder]

> Should the hunter think of hunting as his day job? Should he wish for a life where he'd spend all his time perfecting his tales, while other people would feed him?

Funny thing how bards/poets/musicians/storytellers are a fixture in every society that has figured out how to produce more calories than each individual personally needs to consume

[cousin_it]

You didn't answer the questions though. Should the hunter dream about stopping hunting? Should he think of himself as a failure if he can't? Is this way of thinking good for his soul or his art? It's not about caloric surplus.

[swiftcoder]

You suggest that the only reason he shouldn't, is that others might have to support him if he stops hunting. I'm saying that the arts (and especially oral traditions in a pre-literate society) are a net benefit to society that do in fact warrant collective investment to support

[brainwad]

Do we have a dearth of writing? If anything, we seem have a massive oversupply.

[RugnirViking]

the traditional answer to this is something along the lines of the idea that writing is not fungible; that is, just because we have a lot of writing, doesn't mean we have enough good writing. What good writing is varies, but clearly there is some level of quality that exists, at least at the bottom end (its not hard to find people to agree on whether a work is objectively bad writing)

unfortunately, precisely defining good writing is difficult, much like good coding. And as such, whether there is enough good writing, or "how much better good writing is to bad writing", or "what the effects of good writing are on the individual or society" are questions that we arent remotely prepared to answer. I imagine many people advocating for support for writers believe on some level both that good writing has very positive effects for the readers and society, and that there also isn't enough of it, or at least that its drowned out by perverse incentives and mountains of bad writing

[swiftcoder]

Bad writing is typically a necessary prerequisite of good writing - it's pretty rare for a Dickinson or a Fitzgerald to just appear fully-formed out of thin air. The more it is viable for folks to spend their time honing their writing skills, the more likely we are to discover great writers.

This is, notably, the exact same argument we make for why tech firms should hire junior engineers. If one doesn't keep subsidising opportunities for the up-and-comers in every field, one quick runs out of experienced candidates.

[owebmaster]

Funny position from someone not hunting but telling stories

[righthand]

Prehistoric men probably weren't capable of self reflection in a philosophical sense? Why is it so "wrong" to tie to to caloric surplus? Your questions might be deeper but the reasoning could be simpler.

[vintagedave]

As an answer, a question could be: why should a hunter need to hunt in the day and only tell tales in the evening?

Why could a society not have a role for bards as well as hunters, as their day job, as their purpose?

[cousin_it]

Because I'd rather hear a tale about hunting told by a hunter, not a tale about hunting told by someone who disdains hunting as a day job and considers himself a failure if he can't get a living from actual hunters for his tales about hunting.

Or in modern times, replace "hunter" with "working class".

[mc32]

Specialization is a modern phenomenon. I have doubts that in ancient societies there was clear division in labor. I would suspect that lots of people were jacks-of-all-trades. One moment the bread-winner, another the reeve, another the witch doctor, another the parent, the story teller, the builder, etc. Obviously some people would have a knack for particular things and would be relied upon to carry out those chores…

[bombcar]

You're getting at the difference between job and work. It's a deep philosophical question.