Guest opinion: Arts deserve budget line

There is a popular story about two campers discussing the possibility of running into a bear. One says to the other, “Well, I’ll just drop my backpack and run for the hills.” “I don’t think you can outrun a bear,” the other camper says. “Oh, I don’t have to outrun the bear,” says the first camper. “I only have to outrun you.”

As budgets shrink, we no longer simply argue that our values are important, but that they are more important than other values. Creating a successful budget doesn’t just mean cutting back on luxuries; it means cutting out priorities. For many programs, the budget meeting is a fight to the death – a phrase I don’t use as a figure of speech. This is particularly difficult for advocates of more intangible values that are not easily quantified through a system of pre-established metrics. As an advocate for the arts, I often find myself being asked very precise questions about practical applications by fellow campers outrunning the bear.

At the end of the day, the issue for most people is that they have not yet been convinced that the arts serve a purpose. They feel that the targeted objective is still unclear, that all the benefits – as numerous and substantial as they are – are tangential. We are a goal-minded people, and we like a plan, and no matter how we try to get our arms around the issue, it seems that art is lacking in strategy. It is lacking in certainty. We want to know why we should support any endeavor that isn’t a sure thing.

One of my favorite scenes from the TV series “The West Wing” is a discussion between politicians and a scientist. The scientist is trying to acquire funding for a “superconducting supercollider,” which would fling particles together at the speed of light. The politicians are searching for a way to explain the purpose of the supercollider, but there is no clear answer. “But what is it for?” an exasperated politician finally demands. As it dawns on him, another responds, “Discovery. That’s what it’s for. It’s for discovery.”

While the arts and science seem like opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum, they share a common purpose: discovery. Science is largely concerned with discovering the physical world around us. The arts are concerned with discovering ourselves, through which we discover each other. Discovery starts the process. It comes before. Discovering ourselves and discovering each other is the unifying force in the birth of community long before there are any discussions about budgets or programs or services. The community supports education and infrastructure, but it is the arts that foster community.

I am no scientist, but what little I know of quantum physics suggests that the interaction of the observer with the observed has a much greater influence than we had ever anticipated. It may even be that the observed does not exist until the observer is there to observe it. This is the essence of the arts, through which we confirm our own experience – our own existence. We observe each other the same way. Through the arts, we all enter the world – together.