Come Together, Right Now: How art can save the world from itself

by Max Wyman

Why did I call this talk Come Together, Right Now: How art can save the world from itself? Because I believe with all my being that it is critically urgent that we change the way we conduct our lives together—and that art and culture can open up a clear path to the change we hope to make.

We’re in such a mess, the human race, right now, aren’t we? The COVID-19 pandemic shook loose everything we thought was stable in society—health, work, community, family. Huge swaths of humanity feel threatened and exploited and excluded. We treat the planet as if we’re house-guests who don’t have to clean up after ourselves or restock the pantry. Lies dominate our lives. Our leaders wear mediocrity and disgrace without shame. Inhuman atrocity is so commonplace it barely makes the news. Here in Canada we’re struggling to come to terms with decades of injustice and disenfranchisement and unconscious privilege. Mutual trust has evaporated like the morning dew. We shout when we should be listening. Polarization has calcified our thought processes.

It’s clear that change on the scale the world needs now won’t happen—can’t happen—until we ratchet down the anger and the fear, dismantle the barriers between us, and rehumanize our lives together.

Art and culture, engagement with each other through creative expression, offers a path to that middle ground of generosity and shared humanity where we can come together, right now, to imagine a more inclusive, more just, more humane society.

That may sound like an outrageous claim. Many people—politicians in particular—consider art and culture nothing more than an entertainment, a frill.

But its value for modern society goes far beyond an evening at the theatre or a visit to an art gallery.

We can measure that value in many ways.

The benefits it brings to education, for instance. Multiple studies have shown that the arts are crucially important to the development of engaged, thoughtful, generous adults who can come to grips with the moral and social dilemmas of the coming century—but the modern educational curriculum reflects a widespread belief that the arts are less important than the sciences. It is vital that the arts and humanities are given equal time alongside the sciences—adding A for arts to change STEM to STEAM.

In the area of human health, recent neuroscience is expanding what we know about the usefulness of art and culture in treating non-medical conditions like loneliness and depression, and hastening recovery from illness and trauma … so much so that doctors—right here—are actually prescribing, for their patients, non-medical experiences like visiting art galleries and going to the theatre.

You know of course that more people attend arts events than sports events by a significant margin … but in terms of the economy in general the cultural sector punches far above its weight in terms of return on public money invested and its contribution to social wealth through job-creation in fields far outside the arts, as well as its broader long-term effects on social cohesion and community.

Engaging with art is like holding ideas and feelings up like prisms and seeing what happens when light that someone else has generated shines through them.

All these arguments are in my new book, The Compassionate Imagination: How the arts are central to a functioning democracy. The book even contains a detailed blueprint of how we can restructure our society to give art and culture its proper place at the centre of things.

But while we can make all the scientific and academic and bureaucratic arguments we like on behalf of arts and culture in society, the fact remains that its effect on the human heart is what makes the difference.

Seeing the world through someone else’s eyes, by the simple act of reading a book, watching a movie, listening to a song, is the first step away from fear and demonization of The Other. Engaging with art is like holding ideas and feelings up like prisms and seeing what happens when light that someone else has generated shines through them. Sharing someone else’s vulnerability—recognizing their humanity, their reality—encourages us to show ours, and trust has a chance to flower.

We’ve seen a fragment of the world, or of a life, through someone else’s eyes. It can be disturbing or moving; it can make us exultant and cheerful or wistful and melancholic. It can make us think or want; it can make us angry or indignant or glad to be alive. But we realize we are not alone in what we feel, and that sense of sharing gives us reassurance and comfort and engenders compassion.

The world is filled with people looking for justification, even a hint of explanation would do, for the life we have been given, and for the lives that are taken away. Most of us, somewhere in us, long for a connection with the numinous, the non-material mysteries of the spirit and the imagination. For an inkling of personal grace. We all hope to make a difference, however slight, however threatened hope may seem.

Max Wyman at the Chancellor’s Dinner 2024 | Photo by Christopher Sanford Beck

Art takes you by the hand and walks you through the spiritual maze of existence. We discover—rediscover—the innate grace in the human particular.

It also encourages us to step aside from the hurtling everyday and pay attention. Art plucks our sleeves and says: Stop. Look. Listen. Feel. It invites us to do what the American poet Mary Oliver describes as the work that matters—“which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished”—to be enchanted by the gifts we have been given, to rediscover the pleasure of wonder … the kind of wonder that Tolkien said represents love and respect for what he called the “delightful, beautiful, wonderful, even glorious” otherness of things. We find new ways to imagine, new ways to ask “what if?”

No, before you ask, I don’t think reading a book or going to the ballet or wandering round an art gallery or watching a play in itself will change the world. But the potential seems clear to me.

If we allow art and art-making, in all its glorious variety, to bring us together, to love one another more, human understanding and compassion will flourish more easily and—to return to the point I made at the beginning—we will rediscover that middle ground of generosity and shared humanity where we can come together to imagine a more inclusive, more just, more humane society.

Max Wyman (OC) is a prominent Canadian cultural commentator, talented writer, and member of the Order of Canada whose criticisms and analysis have been quietly shaping the nation for decades. He has served on the boards of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Commission of UNESCO. The Compassionate Imagination: How the arts are central to a functioning democracy (Cormorant Books, 2023) is available for purchase online and wherever books are sold.

This article is adapted from Max Wyman’s keynote address at the 2024 Chancellor’s Dinner.