Self Comes to Mind

increase over generations. 14
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    The idea that there are two broad classes of homeostasis, basic and sociocultural, should not be taken to mean that the latter is a purely “cultural” construction, while the former is “biological.” Biology and culture are thoroughly interactive. Sociocultural homeostasis is shaped by the workings of many minds whose brains have first been constructed in a certain way under the guidance of specific genomes. Intriguingly, there is growing evidence that cultural developments can lead to profound modifications in the human genome. For example, the invention of dairy farming and the availability of milk in the diet has led to changes in the genes that permit lactose tolerance. 15
    I suspect that precisely the same homeostatic impulse that shaped the development of myths and religions was behind the emergence of the arts, aided by the same intellectual curiosity and explanatory drive. This may sound ironic given that Freud regarded the arts as an antidote to the neuroses caused by religions, but I mean no irony. The same conditions could indeed give rise to these two developments. If the need to manage life was one of the reasons music, dance, painting, and sculpting first emerged, then the ability to improve communication and organize social life were two other strong reasons and gave the arts additional staying power.
    Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine humans of long ago, perhaps even before language made its appearance but mindful and conscious, already equipped with emotions and feelings, already aware of what it is to be sad or to be joyful, to be in danger or to be in safety and comfort, to enjoy gain or suffer loss, to have pleasure or pain. And now imagine how they would have expressed those states of which they were mindful. Perhaps they would intone calls of danger or calls of greeting, calls of gathering, calls of joy, calls of mourning. Perhaps they would hum or even sing, since the human vocal system is an inbuilt musical instrument. Or, for that matter, imagine drumming, given that the chest cavity is a natural drum. Imagine drumming as a mind-concentrating device or as a social organizing tool—a drum to order, a drum to arms—or imagine blowing on a primitive bone flute as a means of magic enchantment, seduction, consolation, playful merriment. It is not Mozart yet, and it is not Tristan and Isolde , but a way had been found. Dream some more.
    At the birth of arts such as music, dance, and painting, people probably intended to communicate to others information about threats and opportunities, about their own sadness or joy, and about shaping social behavior. But in parallel to communication, the arts would also have produced a homeostatic compensation. If they had not, would they have prevailed? All of this even before the marvelous discovery that when humans were able to produce words and string them together in sentences, not all sounds sounded alike. The sounds had natural accents, and the accents could have relationships in time. Accents could create rhythms, and certain rhythms would create pleasure. Poetry could begin, and the technique could eventually feed back into the practice of music and dance.
    The arts could emerge only once brains acquired certain mental features that in all likelihood became established over a long evolutionary period, again the Pleistocene. There are many examples of such features. They include the emotive reaction of pleasure to certain shapes and certain pigments, present in natural objects but applicable to human-made objects as well as to body decoration; the pleasurable reaction to certain features of sounds and to certain kinds of organization of sounds in relation to timbres, to pitches and their relationships, as well as to rhythms. Similarly for the emotive reaction to certain kinds of spatial organization and to landscapes that include open vistas and proximity to water and vegetation. 16
    Art may have begun as a homeostatic device for artist and recipient and as a means of communication. Eventually on the side of the artist and on the side of the audience, the uses became quite varied. Art became a privileged means to transact factual and emotional information deemed to be important for individuals and society, something established in early epic poems, theater, and sculpture. Art also became a means to induce nourishing emotions and feelings, something at which music has excelled through the ages. No less