Artists should have a say on governance, first because all
citizens should have a say, and second because the fundamental role of the
artist is not to entertain (this is a secondary goal) but to use art to comment
on society and seek to improve it where possible.
The problem with celebrity,
some would argue, is that many times the public gives more credence to artists
than to others who really do understand an issue better.
This is a legitimate
argument, but it tends to support media types rather than the citizenry.
On an even deeper level, art is not just the arena of
artists.
Tocqueville found it interesting that in early America there were few
celebrity artists but that most of the citizens took personal part in artistic
endeavors and tended to think artistically.
Another way to say this is that they thought metaphorically
in the broad sense:
1) they clearly saw the connections between fields of
knowledge and the application of ideas in one arena to many others,
2) they
understood the interrelations of disparate ideas without having to literally
spell things out, and
3) they immediately applied the stories and lessons of
history, art and literature to current challenges.
Another major characteristic Tocqueville noted in early
American culture was its entrepreneurial spirit, initiative, ingenuity and
widespread leadership--especially in the colonial North and West, but not nearly
so much in the brutal, aristocratic, slave-culture South of the 1830s.
Freedom
and entrepreneurialism are natural allies, as are creative, metaphorical
thinking and effective initiative and wise risk-taking.
~Oliver DeMille
