Bargaining Cognitive Dissonance to Enjoy Art
Got into a discussion about when you should link to relevant content in your blog, but not all the authors are cool, so should you? Maybe even some of them are problematic, and you no longer want to support them. What do you do?
Well, I don't know, because this post isn't about that. We dove deeper into the topic, and it got me thinking...Is enjoying art a moral act? My question isn't to place judgement or responsibility on any one party but rather to explore the possibility of separating the art and artist. It's become a common phrase when we're met with bad actors in creative spaces. "Separate the art from the artist" they say, but I don't believe it's possible.
For example, Holding the belief that Neil Gaiman is a terrible person but also holding the belief that the Sandman comics are amazing is challenging. It creates a cognitive dissonance that we rationalize and jutsify until we're comfortable. For example, "I won't buy anything by Neil Gaiman again", but it's fine to read and enjoy the comics in the privacy of my home is a line most people draw to allow themselves to continue enjoying the art. They bargain with themselves to get out of the cognitive dissonance.
I imagine most people fall into this category, and this is where I want to pivot to focus on ttrpgs, their creators, and how we as consumers enjoy them.
Enjoying TTRPGs - What does that even mean?
I believe that ttrpgs are an interesting category where the art is interactive and improvisational. These are aspects that we love about them otherwise why would we play them? This makes separating the art and artist trickier, because the ideas shared in a module are passed through the facilitator's filter of their own principles and biases.
First, we must define what is "enjoying art", and we also must define what is moral to some degree. Since this is a blog centered around ttrpgs, then that will be the focus of the definition of "enjoying art". As already stated, it's a little tricky with ttrpgs, because you might not own a ttrpg item that a creator you don't align with. Yet, you may still participate in its consumption, conscious or not. Therefore, the sharing of those ideas are included in this definition.
Morality, on the other hand, is an entirely subjective thing. We have two buckets of morality to consider. First, we have the morality of an individual and the morality of a group or culture. Again, since we're only considering ttrpgs, then that will be our group morality. The individual morality is exactly as it sounds and was briefly discussed in our example above. As a not-philosopher, I'm defining them as the following:
- "enjoying art" - Consumption or sharing of ttrpg works/ideas
- Individual Morality - Your own collection of beliefs and principles
- Group Morality - No AI art and no bigotry are the 2 key pillars I can think of. I know there are more, but to keep it simple, we'll only reference these.
With some real basic definitions under our belt, I wanna look at some specific comments that came up in our discussion. I'm going to highlight some arguments made for the "separating the art from the artist" and include my own thoughts on these.
No Perfect Creator Exists
There's an argument to be made where everyone is fallible, and no perfect creator exists. In this sense, it means there is no one person that can cater and appeal to all audiences. As a society, we've driven ourselves to an extreme in this way because of the internet, specifically social media.
The marketing embedded throughout social media requires us to simultaneously create a bland and unassuming product to be appealing to a large audience while also showcasing its uniqueness and why it's the best option out of the sea of hundreds of thousands of options. This dissonance itself begets creators taking the stance of, "I'm not picking a side, and X isn't political." I would argue that ttrpg creators are already in a niche space and suffer from this less. Instead, we see many modules, or systems, that are hacks of other existing and well known frameworks. To some extent, I appreciate this process, because it does drive interesting innovation for rules.
While not the focus of this post, it is an inherent contributing factor. I urge you to read the essay that coined the phrase "the personal is political".
However, hacking a system, or creating a variant, feeds directly into my next point on how there is more than one way to support a creator.
Support is more than finance
As stated with ttrpgs, there's multiple ways to support a creator. It doesn't have to be purely financial, because sharing the ideas of a creator supports their ideas. Not only does sharing the content support them but so does playing, or consuming, the content.
I think this would also include sharing it on social media unless you're specifically discussing the problems you have with it. This strays into how critiquing a work can oftentimes promote it in ways we don't want. I don't believe there is any way to mitigate this. It's also difficult to create a space where critical analysis can occur, especially on a platform like social media. +1 to the Blogosphere.
The bottom line is we have to be super vigilant in the creators we utilize which sucks. The level of research we as consumers are willing to do is also a component to the bargaining process.
Expanding our Worldview, not our Moral Compass
I took this conversation to my wife who made an excellent point in that one of the reasons we consume art is to expand our worldview, not to be moral. Exposing ourselves to new ideas and other perspectives is a big piece of experiencing art, but I don't think it exists in a vacuum. It can't exist in a vacuum.
Should someone be penalized for exposing themselves to ideas that they, ultimately, don't agree with? How does someone learn they don't align themselves morally with an idea without understanding the problems with that idea? Sure, they could go with the majority of people who dislike X, but that's not someone making the decisions for themselves. I imagine most people behave in this way. If person A discovers a creator is problematic and shares that with person B, then person B isn't required to engage with the creator's work and probably won't.
The question then becomes how much overlap is there between experiencing the art to expand your worldview versus experiencing the art to determine if it morally aligns with you?
This leads us to what I'm calling the Bargaining Equation.
The Bargaining Equation
In the discussion, the recipe for rationalizing our way out of cognitive dissonance always has 4 components to it.
Time, meaning when the problematic event occurred. A better word might be context for its time. Was what this person did considered normal? Was it allowed? That may still not justify it for most. It wouldn't for me, but again to the individual, it might be enough to say, "Oh that happened 20 years ago and everyone did it then." Do you still hold that person accountable even though it's outdated?
Level of Success, meaning are they a high profile creator with billions to their name with a large audience and huge impact on the industry. I believe since money is the largest bargaining chip most people think they have, it's a reason this one is often included. Even though we know that you can support a creator by doing more than simple buy their work, financial support is still a big driving factor.
Research, meaning how much research a person is willing to do on a creator before engaging with their content. This one is the only part of the equation that I view as optional, and it's impacted by both the creator's level of succes as well as what is already known about the creator. Have they been involved in any controversies? Did they do something problematic and were unwilling to change?
Principles, meaning is the value of my principle ranked higher in my internal heirarchy of beliefs to be worth more than the support I could give them. This is the most nebulous of the three as it asks a lot of the individual and their morals. For example, if someone is anti-bigotry and anti-AI but into Crypto, am I still willing to support them?
Conclusion
So what?
I wrote this to breakdown how I myself choose to engage with art that has problematic creators attached to it. I started by asking myself questions like...Is it possible to divorce the art and creator? Does my enjoyment of art change from that information?
When I asked how other people drew their own lines, many did admit that their enjoyment of art from creators who they had issues with was greatly diminished after discovering what problematic behaviors the creators exhibited. I imagine it's hard to enjoy art without thinking about a controversy that's tied to its creator.
Do you think the Bargaining Equation covers everything? Do you think it's possible to separate the art from the artist? Let me know your own thoughts to enjoying art over on BlueSky or Discord.