From art to religion to sex, instrumentalisation has drained away intrinsic value. But life is about more than material benefits

by Julian Baggini  BIO

Photo by Michael Nguyen/NurPhoto/Getty Images

is a writer and philosopher. His latest books are How to Think Like a Philosopher (2023) and How the World Eats (2024).

For decades, films out of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios have opened with Leo the roaring lion, garlanded with the motto Ars gratia artis: art for art’s sake. Given that MGM is a money-making behemoth, we might doubt the sincerity of this high-minded sentiment. Still, along with the contested goal of moral improvement, it certainly expresses one of the few legitimate reasons why people should make movies. Art for the sake of anything else – profit, self-promotion, propaganda – isn’t really art at all, or at least not in its purest sense.

It therefore came as a bit of a shock to see a recent advert for the National Art Pass, which gives holders free or discounted entry to galleries and museums around the United Kingdom. The tag line ‘See more. Live more’ sounded right: art does indeed enrich our lives. But it turned out that the ‘more’ here was purely quantitative, not qualitative. ‘Grow some years onto your life with art,’ proclaimed the main slogan, followed by: ‘Spending time in galleries and museums could help you live longer.’ Art not for art’s sake, but for your heart’s sake, the fleshy not the spiritual one at that. This messaging around the arts has become ubiquitous, with Arts Council England promoting the idea that ‘engaging in creative and cultural activities has proven health benefits for individuals and communities.’

Walking Man II (1960) by Alberto Giacometti at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Courtesy Billy Liar/Flickr

I may have been shocked by the poster, but I was not surprised by it. For a long time, I have been privately lamenting the instrumentalisation of everything: how nothing seems to be of value in itself anymore but is only seen as useful in the service of some utilitarian function. I first got wind of this lamentable trend in 2010, when I had the misfortune to review Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project (2009), an account of a year in relentless pursuit of the happy life. One passage struck me so hard I can almost recall it word for word today. A day with her husband gets off to a sticky start but, following an apology, Rubin writes: ‘We hugged – for at least six seconds, which, I happened to know from my research, is the minimum time necessary to promote the flow of oxytocin and serotonin, mood-boosting chemicals that promote bonding. The moment of tension passed.’

I was left with the chilling image of a woman holding her husband not only out of love or affection but in order to release hormones and reduce her stress. Those sentences highlighted how her happiness project had led her to do everything with the improvement of her mood in mind. Nothing else seemed to matter as much, even truth. At the end of her year-long experiment in treating herself as a felicific machine, she reflected on what had or had not changed. ‘Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see,’ she wondered, only to add: ‘Maybe, but who cares?’ Whatever makes you feel better, true or not.

In the years between witnessing hugging for happiness and creativity for longevity, I have seen countless other examples of all that is good in life being promoted not for their own sake but for the material benefits they bring. This instrumentalisation has become normalised so insidiously that we don’t even notice that it is odd, let alone wrong. Nor do we seem to be aware of quite how pervasive it is. Yet its effects are profound, leading us to lose sight again and again of what is truly of value in life.

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Before offering a diagnosis for what has gone wrong and how to cure it, I need to defend the seemingly hyperbolic claim that everything is becoming instrumentalised. Far from being a rhetorical exaggeration, I genuinely find it difficult to think of anything worthwhile that at least some people have not been advocating for its utilitarian benefits before mentioning any of its intrinsic merits. Take churchgoing. Most believers hold that worship is a devotional duty rather than a pragmatic means of getting into heaven. Today, however, it is not uncommon to hear even Christians, such as Deborah Jenkins in Premier Christianity magazine, pointing to research that: ‘Being part of a church community can lengthen life, reduce depression and promote positive mental health.’ A book I flicked through today advocated prayer for physical health, pointing to a study that ‘found significant medical benefits on the cardiovascular system, blood, as well as muscle and bone resulting from the solat daily prayer.’ Of course, if challenged, none would say these are the best reasons to practise religion. But it doesn’t stop them offering these reasons as very good ones. Furthermore, they are more credible and certainly more scientific than claims that an all-loving creator god really thinks it’s important how you spend your Sunday mornings.

More profanely, we are even given instrumental reasons to orgasm. A headline from The Telegraph in 2015 – ‘An Orgasm A Day Could Keep Prostate Cancer Away, Scientists Claim’ – summed up a now-widely shared belief that one of the best reasons for a man to have sex or masturbate is not pleasure, intimacy or the release of sexual tension but to protect his health.

You could play a very long game of suggesting things people value in their own right in the hope of finding one that hasn’t been praised for its health, wealth or wellbeing advantages. Your search would be in vain. The Opera North website lists 10 benefits of singing, and only one – it lets you express yourself – has anything to do with art and creativity. The others include ‘makes you feel better’, ‘enhances lung function’, ‘helps you beat stress and relax’, ‘helps improve memory’, ‘can help when life gets tough’ and ‘boosts your confidence’.

We increasingly ask not what is good about an activity but what good it can do for us

Many people who advocate for reconnecting with nature do so with reasons that are designed to appeal to the very same utilitarian, self-centred hedonism that is to blame for humanity losing touch with the Earth in the first place. The National Trust talks of how ‘walking in nature can help wellbeing’ while the growing popularity of ‘forest bathing’ encourages us to use woodland as though it were a kind of literal walk-in clinic. These would-be advocates for nature seem to miss the irony that if we go out among the trees because of what they can do for us, we’re going with the same exploitative, extractive mindset as those who log them.

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