>>17814018
All representation is language, its sole purpose is to evoke a concept in the mind of the viewer.

Got that?

A picture is really a different kind of word. A poem is a kind of word. Eye contact is a word. These have no purpose other than to further the compounding intellect of humanity by cross-confirming ideas. New people always start from zero but the program, successful or not, is to have overall growth toward a greater understanding. It's easy to argue the modern world is more advanced than the renaissance, and has more art, but what really makes change feasible is the intellectual advancements made by fine art, which still exist. No one physically touches marble, but the words and concepts remain. Repeating them endlessly isn't the point, the conversation inevitably leads somewhere else if you're doing it right.

That being said, it's also a metric you can use to measure the degeneration of average citizens from certain peak moments of human competency. People can't read or write at that level, including complex words like art and poetry, because the cutting-edge is advancing to more stimuli and action rather than deep contemplation of what already exists. There's absolutely an argument that society should push back autism and make greater concepts of life the priority, rather than greater life. Turn everyone into artists, or theater kids with highly developed human interactions. There are a million different directions to go, it's exciting.

>>17794846
>four thousand years later
>Egypt, Yemen, Canaan, and China still exist
stop