Often in my travels, I am introduced to interesting people, who ask interesting questions. One such person recently was a lady who was, I am told, raised on a commune as a flower child, and who now works in developing educational materials for schools. Her main work consists of trying to convey philosophical and moral questions to young children in ways that allow them to have meaningful discussions.
One such question, which she related to me, focused on a man she knew tangentially who made pieces of microscopic art. Apparently this man makes paintings roughly the width of a human hair, using tools like insect appendages as paintbrushes. These microscopic paintings are sold to rich collectors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because of their size, they are not viewable without special equipment, and broadly speaking, cannot be put on display.
There is obviously a lot to unpack here. The first question is: Is what this man does art, especially if it cannot be enjoyed? My feeling is yes, for two reasons. First, there is artistic expression taking place on the part of the artist, and more importantly, the artwork itself does have an impact on its consumers, even if the impact is more from the knowledge of the existence of the piece than any direct observation. Secondly, the piecesare by their very existence intellectually stimulating and challenging, in a way that can provoke further questions and discussion.
Certainly they challenge the limits of size as a constraint of artistic medium. And these kinds of challenges, while often motivated by pride and hubris, do often push the boundaries of human progress as a whole, by generating interest and demand for scientific advancement. This criteria of challenging the status quo is what separates my bathroom toilet from Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”. Admittedly, these are fairly subjective criteria, but going any further inevitably turns into a more general debate on what constitutes art; a question which is almost definitionally paradoxical to answer.
The second, and to me, far more interesting question is: is this man’s job, and the amount he makes justifiable? Although few would argue that he is not within his rights to express himself as he pleases, what of the resulting price tag? Is it moral to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on such items that are objectively luxuries, that provide no tangible public good? How should we regard the booming business of this man’s trade: as a quirky niche market enabled by a highly specialized economy and generous patrons willing to indulge ambitious projects, or as wasteful decadence that steals scarce resources to feed the hubris of a disconnected elite?
This points at a question that I keep coming back to in my philosophical analyses, specifically in my efforts to help other people. Is it better to focus resources on smaller incremental projects that affect a wider number of people, or larger, more targeted projects that have a disproportionate impact on a small group?
To illustrate, suppose you have five thousand dollars, and want to do the moral utilitarian thing, and use it to improve overall happiness. There are literally countless ways to do this, but let’s suppose that you want to focus on your community specifically. Let’s also suppose that your community, like my community, is located in a developed country with a generally good standard of living. Life may not always be glamorous for everyone, but everyone has a roof over their head and food on the table, if nothing else.
You have two main options for spending your five thousand dollars.
Option 1: You could choose to give five hundred people each ten dollars. All of these people will enjoy their money as a pleasant gift, though it probably isn’t going to turn anyone’s life around.
Option 2: You could choose to give a single person five thousand dollars all at once.
I’m genuinely torn on this question. The first option is the ostensibly fairer answer, but the actual quality of life increase is marginal. More people benefit, but people probably don’t take away the same stories and memories as the one person would from the payout. The increase in happiness here is basically equivocal, making them a wash from a utilitarian perspective.
This is amplified by two quirks of human psychology. The first is a propensity to remember large events over small events, which makes some sense as a strategy, but has a tendency to distort trends. This is especially true of good things, which tend to be minimized, while bad things tend to be more easily remembered. This is why, for example, Americans readily believe that crime is getting worse, even though statistically, the exact opposite is true.
The second amplifier is the human tendency to judge things in relative terms. Ten dollars, while certainly not nothing, does not make a huge difference relative to an annual salary of $55,000, while $5,000 is a decent chunk of change. Moreover, people will judge based relative to each other, meaning that some perceived happiness may well be lost in giving the same amount of money to more people.
This question comes up in charity all the time. Just think about the Make a Wish Foundation. For the same amount of money, their resources could easily reach far more people through research and more broad quality of life improvements. Yet they chose to focus on achieving individual wishes. Arguably they achieve greater happiness because they focus their resources on a handful of life-changing projects rather than a broader course of universal improvement.
Now, to be clear, this does not negate the impact of inequality, particularly at the levels faced in the modern world. Indeed, such problems only really appear in stable, developed societies where the the value of small gifts is marginal. In reality, while ten dollars may not mean a great deal to myself or my neighbor, it would mean the difference between riches and poverty in a village facing extreme poverty in a developing nation. Also, in reality, we are seldom faced with carefully balanced binary options between two extremes.
The question of the microscopic artist falls into a grey area between the two extremes. As a piece of art, such pieces invariably contribute, even if only incrementally, to the greater corpus of human work, and their creation and existence contributes in meaningful and measurable ways to overall human progress.
There is, of course, the subjective, and probably unanswerable question of to what degree the wealthy collector buyers of these pieces are derive their enjoyment from the artistic piece itself, or from the commodity; that is, whether they own it for artistic sake, or for the sake of owning it. This question is relevant, as it does have some bearing on what can be said to be the overall utilitarian happiness derived from the work, compared to the utilitarian happiness derived from the same sum of resources spent otherwise. Of course, this is unknowable and unprovable.
What, then, can be made of this question? The answer is probably not much, unless one favors punitively interventionist economic policy, or totalitarian restrictions on artistic expression. For my part, I am as unable to conclusively answer this question as I can answer the question of how best to focus charitable efforts. Yet I do think it is worthwhile to always bear in mind the trade offs which are being made.
