The human need to create.

When human nature spills out onto the page.

Hello everybody,

This week, we’re looking at human creativity and the need for art with neuroscientist Rachel Barr.

You can find the companion article here: The cold-plunge fallacy: Why some fads may never work for you

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Three tied tales

It’s 1877, and a young boy is left alone in the house. Dad is away; no one knows where. Mom’s out at the shops, but she’ll stop off for a drink on her way back. With nobody else to hear, he sits at the piano. He can read the sheet music on the stand, but he’s not here to play someone else’s tune. His hands move, and he sings a sad song. No human ear will ever hear this song. No one else will ever know this melody and its words. This is a song for the young boy left alone in the house.

In 1927, an old lady is drawing. She’s painting her husband, who lies sleeping in a chair. He’s cranky in the mornings and puts too much salt in his food. He’s warty, wrinkly, and farts all the time, but he’s still great on the piano. As he lies in that chair, drooling and snoring, the old lady smiles. She has never seen anything so beautiful. She takes out her paper and pencil, and she needs to draw him. She thinks about showing it to her daughter one day, but she ends up keeping it to herself.

In 1944, Julia keeps a diary. She went to a good school and knows how to write well. “An author in the making,” her teacher told her parents. “Well, there’s art in your blood,” her mum told her when she got home. But the Second World War hasn’t much time for authors. And so, Julia keeps a diary about putting her brother to bed, working in the factory, and war. It’s far better written than it needs to be. It’s a rich, evocative, powerful piece of literature that she one day hopes to send to that editor who lives three streets over. But she never does. A bomb in March stops that.

This week, we look at the human need to create art.

Rachel (L) “Humans need art to express our complex inner lives”; Jonny (R) with a complex inner life.

The ink that you cannot bottle

A composer spends many months hard at work creating what he considers to be his masterpiece. He gathers a friend to come and listen — the first audience for his greatest piece. He plays the piano, fingers flourishing this way and that, and after a lot of panting and sweating, he sits back.

“Lovely, lovely,” his friend says, politely clapping, “but what does it mean?”

The composer frowns, takes a deep breath, and starts playing it again.

The story of the composer is so often told that it’s basically folklore now. But as with all folklore, it’s told so often because it gets to the heart of an important philosophical point. Humans are obsessed with meaning. We want to know why things exist and how we can use them. “But what is the point of it?” we say about a thing, and “What have you been put on this planet to do?”

It’s not fair to say that this obsession with use and practicality is an entirely modern thing. It’s as old as the human brain that needs to operate in a world before it has time to contemplate it. But it is also true that we have made a particular fetish of “What’s the point?” these days. Measuring education by job opportunities, countries by GDP, and human happiness by wealth, status, or power is all part of the point-system mindset. Do this thing, get these points. The point is to collect points.

But where does art fit into the game? What is the point of art?

Now, I don’t think anyone can be so idealistic as to argue that art is always and everywhere without utilitarian considerations. I write for a living. I’m an “artist” of sorts, and I get paid. I use my art to pay my mortgage, buy food for the family, and visit Disneyland Paris more often than is socially appropriate. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel on commission, various royals patronized Bach, and I’m sure Oasis aren’t back on tour just for the love of “Wonderwall.” Art is a job for many people and, like all jobs, sometimes you’ve just gotta turn up and do your hours.

But in this week’s Mini Philosophy interview, neuroscientist Rachel Barr offers an interesting perspective on art, and over our conversation, we explore the very human need to create.

The issue came up as we were discussing AI art. In the near future, it’s highly likely that AI will be able to produce artistic wonders: concertos, epic novels, and Oscar-worthy movies. It’ll be able to create a lasting classic in the time it takes you to sing “Happy Birthday.” AI could fill museums and art galleries all over the world with aesthetic masterpieces — the Louvre without the queues.

But Barr asks an important question: Why would an AI bother to do so? At the moment, the only time an LLM produces a work of art is because we, the human agent, tell it to.

“Write me a short story about true love in the style of Toni Morrison.”

“Draw a picture of a huge spider in the style of Tim Burton.”

An AI can produce a wonderful, powerful, evocative, flawless piece of artistic output, but there is no reason or motivation to do so. When our young boy sings a song to an empty house, it’s because he wants to. When the old lady draws her dozing husband, it’s because she needs to. When Julia writes her diary entry, it’s because all the bubbling currents of her complex inner world spill out into her writing. This is how Barr puts it, and I couldn’t say it better myself:

“Humans create because it's innate. We have very complex inner worlds. We went through all that social evolution that gave us detailed, rich, episodic memories, and these very complex emotional landscapes. So, we need to figure out what we're feeling and express it. And art and creative activities are the language we use to do that. You're taking what is often inarticulable about human experience and turning it into something that's tangible, that you can look at and understand. Better yet, you can show it to somebody else. This is what I'm feeling.

And there are those among us who are very skilled at that. Artists are skilled at that creation, taking thoughts and feelings and putting them into something. They give us a shared language. You know, how many of us have shared song lyrics or poems because we felt that it described our feelings better than we could?

We create because we have to. We must, we need to, express ourselves.”

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IN YOUR OPINION

Inspired by the title of Barr’s new book, How to Make Your Brain Your Best Friend, this week I asked you: “What reframing or new perspective has made you happier?”

Of course, I was inundated with gems of wisdom. Here are what I — utterly subjectively — deemed to be the top five:

1. I can’t control what happens, only how I respond.

2. The actor Tom Holland’s dad told him to turn nervousness into excitement. Like a rollercoaster.

3. Seeing moods as weather patterns in the brain.

4. My kids don’t need a perfect dad—just a present one.

5. “Negative” feelings aren’t problems to fix but signals to listen to.

Next week, we’re exploring humans in post-apocalyptia with Ian McEwan and so I’m asking:

What is your favorite piece of post-apocalyptic fiction?

Send me your thoughts via email or comment below.

MINI READING LIST

• Apocalypse philosophy: What science fiction teaches us about existence

• Ian interviewed by my favorite podcaster, Adam Buxton.

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RESOURCES

This newsletter contains my reflection on the topic at hand. Here is a list of the material shared in this email, as well as extra content about the topic that I've shared on my other social platforms:

• The companion article inspired by my conversation with Rachel Barr.

• My short video exploring the human need to create art, featured on Mini Philosophy's Instagram page

• The full, unedited audio interview with Rachel Barr:

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Jonny is the creator of the Mini Philosophy social network. He’s an internationally bestselling author of three books and the resident philosopher at Big Think. He's known all over the world for making philosophy accessible, relatable, and fun.

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