Jordan Wylie

Thanks so much for having me, David.

I'm excited to chat.

Yeah, I mean, it's a really interesting question and it's at the heart of what we were interested in.

There does seem to be some tension between being like a moral person in the world all of the time.

Morality is full of rules and obligations that we have and being like maybe true to yourself and who you are.

Some of that seems like it requires that you kind of like break the rules a little bit here and there.

And we're certainly not condoning, you know, rule breaking as like, you know, the only way people can feel they're, you know, true to who they are.

But I do think that that tension suggests that, like, maybe there are some spaces that actually help support us feeling like our true self, some spaces where rule breaking and bending conventions are more natural.

And so we've thought a lot about that.

the role of art and the aesthetic domain in providing like a safe space for you to like kind of explore the edges of your personality, which might kind of clash with everyday moral obligations.

Yeah.

So I think that there are a ton of examples in the art world in particular.

So the example that I really like to use is the example of Gauguin.

So somebody who...

If you're not familiar, Gauguin is a famous painter who had a family, you know, so many moral obligations surrounding, you know, family life and children and, you know, spouses.

And he sort of pushed those things aside and then went to French Tahiti and, you

like developed his art into something that like previously it just, it didn't quite reach.

And in doing so, you know, did a lot of morally bad things, including just abandoning one's family.

So this is an example of like really pushing aside.

And then it's, you know, at least it's my intuition that like in exploring his art in that way, he was really exploring, you know, like truly who he was deep down and his art really benefited from it.