Renowned Photographer Jeff Mitchum's Masterpiece "Third Day" Sells For $1.8 Million

Shadowblade wrote in post #16877832
But, had toilets and plumbing never been invented, how society interacts would be very different.

How society interacts is not the only thing that affects society.

benji25 wrote in post #16877992
How society interacts is not the only thing that affects society.

Of course it is. Interaction is society and civilisation. Everything else is just individuals.

Shadowblade wrote in post #16877802
And I have yet to see a single example of human expression - the 'how' and 'why' of an image, not simply the 'what' - making a difference in the course humanity took.

I take it you didn't believe what I said about Brave New World, and the "how" of writing in general, and you still believe that an essay would have had the impact the novel had?

Shadowblade wrote in post #16877376
It also wasn't pictures as art that had that impact. It was pictures as evidence of the existence of these beautiful places that had impact.

A picture made artfully will convey the beauty of a place when a picture made without skill and thought won't. You speak of pictures as if they functioned only to transmit information.

What I see here is that you're more comfortable dealing with higher-order abstractions than with humans considered as ends in themselves. If that's the whole story behind your dismissal of effects on individuals as unimportant, it doesn't suffice to justify that dismissal. It's simply a fact about the way you think.

The point has been made repeatedly that music is important because it enhances many people's lives. You have agreed that people love music, but you don't agree that access to what a person loves is important. (If music hadn't spurred the iPod, something else would have, you say, or maybe not, given that an iPod designed to enable users to hear Morse code all day would have had too few buyers.) Evidently, in your world, human well-being doesn't matter unless it has large-scale consequences, such as moving national boundaries or changing a nation's economy. Whatever doesn't show up on a graph and doesn't get into the history books is beneath notice. But what is the importance of the things that do show up on graphs and do get into the history books? I would say they are important because they affect individuals. What other source of meaningfulness could they possibly have?

Who cares about the growth of cities and the moving center of power except insofar as individuals were affected?

Shadowblade wrote in post #16877411
Hence, it didn't drive the change or social movement. It merely reinforced what people already believed - or they couldn't have been created in the first place. In short, music merely reflected, rather than drove, changes in society.

No, the music and literature of a culture or subculture affect members' morale, clarify grievances and goals, and serve as acts of communication in other ways. All you're doing is contradicting my previous statement without offering evidence.

The path that humanity has taken does what, exactly, independent of the effects on individuals? "Humanity" isn't a sentient being. A person is.

You found time today to reply to several posts but not to mine. I get tired of having to ask the same questions twice.

My god this debate is like a battle of attrition!!!

Somebloke wrote in post #16878403
My god this debate is like a battle of attrition!!!

crazy - not sure now what the "battle" is about

Move this discussion to http:/toilet-discussions-on-the.net

...please.