How Orson Welles Faked Public Knowledge in "War of the Worlds"

On Halloween 1938, Orson Welles' Mercury Theater on the Air performed a dramatized version of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. Within 16 minutes of the broadcast, over one million Americans believed Martians had landed in New Jersey. Throngs were calling their local police and fire departments, volunteering for service in the war against the Martians, a man returned to his house to find his wife holding a glass of poison, claiming it was better to die this way than being eaten by the Martians, people in Boston reported being able to see the flames from the Martian heat ray on the horizon. The effect surprised Orson Welles and his fellow actors more than anyone. Below you can see his attempt at making sense of the situation and his apology for the consequences of his broadcast.

How was this possible? How could an otherwise educated and intelligent public become so utterly convinced by such a fantastic story that they let that conviction guide their actions and override their senses?

In “Rhetoric and Public Knowledge,” Lloyd Bitzer defines public knowledge as “a fund of truths, principles, and values which could only characterize a public” and that a public which has such knowledge “is made competent to accredit new truth and value and to authorize decision and action” (68). Essentially, public knowledge becomes a framework out of which we can judge new truths and values. A public also has a set process by which new knowledge is accepted, or “a power of authorization through which some truths and values are accredited” (68). This process, or method, is a kind of rhetoric. “Rhetoric generates truths and values previously unknown to the public” and it “serves as an instrument with which to test public truths and values and justify public means and ends” (68). It both generates and tests truths in a generally acceptable way.

The reason Orson Welles’ broadcast War of the Worlds was so effective in altering the “public knowledge” of its listeners was because it successfully made use of the rhetorical process by which normal truths were introduced and established in the public of that time to introduce and establish a fiction. Perhaps the most pervasive method in this process was the use of phony representatives or spokesmen.

In the rhetorical process to introduce and test public knowledge, Bitzer writes that spokesmen are like prophets (74). We could therefore say that Welles effectively manipulated public knowledge by using false prophets to proclaim a false truth. On one level, there was the medium of the radio itself. As a widely disseminated and highly regulated medium, the radio in 1938 possessed an authority as a receptacle and fountain of truth which few of this age can imagine (Cantril xii). This authority is transferred to the radio announcer, who, without possessing any other credentials, is instantly believable as the transmitter of facts. The credibility of the radio as a source of information is even mentioned in the play, where the radio relinquishes control to serve the army since "radio has a responsibility to serve the public interest in all situations" (Welles).

Next, there is a long list of representatives who speak for the most prominent institutions granted authority to validate truths. As Bitzer writes, "public speakers and audiences . . . stand in for publics" as when "an eminent scientist . . . speaks for science" (73). Professor Pierson becomes the representative of the voice of science in the play, confronting fantastic claims with skepticism (8, 10) and triangulating his observations with those of other scientists and empirical evidence (6, 10), until he is convinced and validates a new truth. In stating this new truth, he acts in his capacity "as a scientist" (Welles) proclaiming with the authorization derived from what we know as "the agreements of experts or of elite persons" (Bitzer 76).

When this truth is summarized by the announcer, he focuses on the process of its discovery and validation: "Incredible as it may seem, both observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars" (Welles). Other public acknowledgments follow from other institutions authorized to validate new truths for the public: the National Guard, military, and finally Secretary of Interior all support this new and terrible truth. This perception of reality is also validated by the masses of people reportedly fleeing from the aliens: "Highways to the north, south, and west are clogged with frantic human traffic" (Welles).

Now, what of all this "knowledge" is public knowledge as defined by Bitzer? If it were real, the Martian invasion would not have been public knowledge in this sense, but rather "private knowledge made general" since it would have existence independent of a public (84). Public knowledge has no existence or at least looks different outside of a public. The public shapes knowledge when, "Purely factual conditions experienced by the public come into relation with shared sentiments, principles, and values that characterize persons not as individuals but as members of the public: and the power of participation transforms those factual conditions into the public's personal facts" (85). Personal facts here means facts which have been colored by emotions and perceptions. In 1938, the factual condition of voices speaking over the radio was transformed into something meaningful when it mixed with the public perception of the radio as transmitter of truth and recognition of titles (which do not exist in the absence of a public) giving the voices authority to establish new truths. This mixture transformed the factual conditions (voices heard on the radio) into the personal fact of a public that said Martians were invading USA.

Bitzer writes, "the public is the ground and the authority of all of its personal facts, which count therefore as part of public knowledge" (85). The Martian Invasion in 1938 was an evanescent personal fact of the public. One could say that it was truly public knowledge, since it had absolutely no existence independent of a public. Though systems of public knowledge are faulty and can be tricked, as shown in this instance, we need such systems in order to know things together, which is the necessary foundation for any kind of communal action. Hopefully, such glitches in the system make it clear to us that even these systems have faults, helping us to be humble and vigilant in testing what we know as a society and how we come to know it. Just because the voice you hear on the radio self-identifies as an expert, it doesn't necessarily mean the he or she is anything more than one voice and one opinion among many.

Here is the full broadcast. Masterfully executed, even by today's standards

Newtown, Gun Control, and the Importance of Kairos

On the 28th of March, President Obama assembled parents of the Newtown victims, along with ministers and policemen, to the East Room of the White House and made a passionate plea to the American people, trying to evoke the emotions the nation felt back in December after the Newtown shootings. Among other things, he said, "The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens, and we've moved on to other things -- that's not who we are. Less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. Shame on us if we've forgotten."

"Don't get squishy because time has passed," he said.

But something has changed. Support for stricter gun control laws has dropped from 57% right after the shooting to 47% nationwide and from 78% to 66% among Democrats. The reply from many gun control advocates to the President's speech was, "Too little, too late." http://www.cantonrep.com/opinion/x766890477/Dana-Milbank-On-guns-too-little-too-late
Why does timing make a difference? Irrespective of which side you are on in the debate, this is a situation which shows the importance of a rhetorical principle called kairos.

The ancient Greeks had two main concepts of time: Kronos and Kairos. Kronos is the flow of time from one point to another, as you may recognize in words like "chronology." Kairos, on the other hand is "a concept based on the significance of the moment, the 'opportune moment' or proper time to act" (Hatch 39). It recognizes that in the midst of the flow of time there are decisive moments which have the potential to change the course of history, on a local or global level, such as your wedding day or the battle of Waterloo. "In archery, it (kairos) refers to an opening, or 'opportunity.' . . . Successful passage of a kairos requires . . . that the archer's arrow be fired not only accurately but with enough power for it to penetrate" (Sheridan, Ridolfo, and Michel 6).

Of course, this is not an unfamiliar concept. We often talk about it as being able to "strike while the iron is hot" or "seize the moment." Children often know intuitively that the right time to ask their parents for something is when they are in a particularly good mood. What we often don't recognize however, is that there is a life-cycle for every rhetorical situation, and there is a little opening of time and place where a little rhetorical action can make all the difference. Professor Hatch writes, "To argue effectively, you need to know how to craft a suitable response to the right people under the right circumstances. Knowing how to do this requires that you know something about how rhetorical situations change over time. Such situations are not static; they evolve" (46). A rhetorical situation goes through the stages of origin, maturity, deterioration, and disintegration.

At the point of origin, most people don't know about the issue, or have not made up their minds about it yet. During this stage people look for information to understand the issue. This builds up until the point of maturity. This is where most of the decision makers are engaged, they know what is going on and what is in the balance, they are getting ready to make a decision. This is usually kairos, the opportune moment to strike, the opening the archer has been waiting for, a crack in the armor. A little action, a well-crafted argument at this point can make all the difference. After this, the rhetorical situation enters the stage of deterioration, although the decision may not have been made yet, opinions have congealed, the battle-lines have been drawn, and it is very hard to make the decision makers change their minds. As far as they are concerned, they are now adequately informed to make their decision. The final stage is disintegration. At this point, the process of change has become practically irreversible. Decisions have been made and put into action, and most people have moved on to other issues.

Newtown was such a rhetorical moment with the opportunity for change, or at least it was made to be such a moment by the coverage it received, the way it was presented, and the many public statements which were made in connection to it calling for greater restriction of access to firearms. Although gun control has been a hot topic for decades, the shootings at Newtown shook the nation and made many people reconsider their opinions on gun control. It presented the origin of a new situation, and nobody knew quite how it would be resolved. Searches on terms relevant to the debate skyrocketed, old studies and arguments were brought out from the archives, people were hungry for information, they were open to be persuaded. All news channels ran stories on gun control, gun sales, and all shootings after Newtown received more media attention than they would have received before.

It is hard to say when this situation came to maturity, but my estimate would be sometime in late January or early February. New York and Connecticut were able to pass tough gun control legislations during this time, and won praise for it from the media and most of the public in those states. However, President Obama chose to send Joe Biden off to conduct a study, which had obvious outcomes and served only to delay time and give Biden time to make a few more awkward remarks. As Dana Millibank writes in The Washington Post, "White House press secretary Jay Carney said there was no hurry. He predicted that 'in a few weeks or a few months,' the pain from Newtown will 'still be incredibly intense.' Not intense enough, apparently."

For better or for worse I, and most other analysts, believe the moment has gone. The rhetorical situation is already in the process of deterioration. Harry Reid has already cancelled a vote on a renewed "Assault Weapons Ban" by Senator Feinstein, and does not have the votes or push from public opinion now to pass any significant changes except perhaps the expanded background checks. Public opinion in general has reverted back to the old battle-lines on the issue and the old arguments, with the conservative ones summed up in this 7 minute "State of the Union" address by "Virtual President" Bill Whittle.

One of the arguments he makes is that every person killed because they did not have guns to defend themselves is "just as precious, just as important, and just as irreplaceable as those little children killed at Newtown." On April 1st Gene Healy of the Cato Institute gave his rebuttal to the president in his article "Shame On Us If Newtown Panic Leads to Unwise Gun Laws" where he writes, "Fear and loathing were appropriate reactions to the Newtown atrocity, but they make for a spectacularly lousy mindset for evaluating legislation. Given some of the destructive proposals Congress has entertained post-Newtown, it's good that we've got a little distance on the horror and can bring sober judgment to bear."
http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/gene-healy-shame-on-us-if-newtown-panic-leads-to-unwise-gun-laws/article/2525972/?page=1&referrer=http://t.co/9E1YdSk7eq

Fair enough, but these arguments could not have been made effectively right after Newtown. The lives of those 20 children in the moment felt more precious to us, more vulnerable, and more innocent than the many thousands of children that die each year in the US or the millions of children that die each year around the world. Whether or not that is fair or makes logical sense, it was true that it set the nation in a different state of mind. Now, it has become a small part of a much larger statistic of violent deaths at a young age. By this summer, the rhetorical situation will probably be in disintegration, and new crises and partisan battles will dominate the news coverage and attention. It may be that Obama and his allies can mount an effective push to bring the issue back to a state of maturity, but I doubt if anything but a new Newtown could do that. It's kind of like driving past a car wreck: you slow down for a while, realize that could have been you, drive a bit more defensively for a while, perhaps even below the speed limit. Then, 10 miles later, you are back to normal speed and level of attention. The moment has passed into memory.

And perhaps that's good. If every crash had a life-changing effect on us, we probably wouldn't dare to leave the house after a while. The point is that there are moments of kairos in each of our lives, and in the lives of each family community, and nation, and "those who understand the power of language to shape and respond to significant moments in time (kairos) can gain some power over their circumstances and expand their individual freedom and influence. They become agents--those who can act--rather than those who are acted upon" (Hatch 50-51). 

The Aesthetic Situation

Why do we need art? Every human society abounds with stories, images, sayings, and music. Some are passed down through the ages; others are created seemingly spontaneously in any community. There will be funny incidences which are retold to those who did not witness the event; seemingly inexplicable behaviors of some which people will try to explain; and happy moments of summer, which people will recall during a dreary winter. The list goes on. Such a universal phenomenon indicates the existence of some sustained and recurring question or need to which it is the answer. This is similar to what Lloyd Bitzer refers to as an “exigency.” In “The Rhetorical Situation,” Bitzer describes an exigency as “an imperfection marked by urgency; it is a defect, an obstacle, something waiting to be done, a thing which is other than it should be” (6). I contend that we need art because of the universal exigency caused by living in the midst of uncertainty.

As human beings we live in uncertainty just as fish live in water. The amount of what we can really know and understand from everything that happens to us and our surroundings is actually very limited, and yet we still need to make decisions every day based on this limited information. This situation calls forth different exigencies. We want some explanation of the complexity around us and how we should interact with the world based on that explanation. The situation is well described by John Dewey in Art as Experience:

Order cannot but be admirable in a world constantly threatened with disorder—in a world where living creatures can go on living only by taking advantage of whatever order exists about them, incorporating it into themselves. In a world like ours, every living creature that attains sensibility welcomes order with a response of harmonious feeling whenever it finds a congruous order about it. (13)

          These exigencies are answered by the aesthetic and rhetorical abilities we have by virtue of our ability to use symbols. Art orders experience into what Kenneth Burke calls “a pattern of experience” or “an interpretation of life.” As he describes in Counter-Statement, “[The work of art] can, by its function as name and definition, give simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity. It provides a terminology of thoughts, actions, emotions, attitudes for codifying a pattern of experience” (154). Rhetoric traditionally negotiates uncertainty, but the aesthetic replaces uncertainty with an interpretation of life; a pattern by which one can sort and select the complexity of reality. Kenneth Burke and John Dewey help us to understand the process by which we as humans organize experience, and how art replicates this organized pattern. John Dewey fills in more of the process, and Kenneth Burke provides us a vocabulary by which we can detect and analyze the structure of experience in art and in our own lives.

Living with Uncertainty and Aesthetic Response

          In Art as Experience, John Dewey explains why the situation of uncertainty nurtures the aesthetic reflexes of mankind, and why both ignorance and complete knowledge make aesthetic experience impossible:

There are two sorts of possible worlds in which esthetic experience would not occur. In a world of mere flux, change would not be cumulative; it would not move towards a close. Stability and rest would have no being. Equally is it true, however, that a world that is finished, ended, would have no traits of suspense and crisis, and would offer no opportunity for resolution. Where everything is already complete, there is no fulfillment. (16)

For Dewey, aesthetic experience comes when, after struggles and conflict a being reaches “a stable, even though moving, equilibrium” (13), and this can only happen in a world that lends itself at least somewhat to interpretation which establishes some structure and rules. To have an aesthetic experience one has to be able to see a pattern in what one observes, which is what makes change “cumulative” and moves it towards a “close.” There also has to be some uncertainty concerning the outcome to allow for suspense and crisis which can be resolved. The aesthetic does not exist in ignorance (constant flux with no pattern emerging) or in complete knowledge (no change, thus no conflict or fulfillment/resolution), but in the realms of uncertainty the aesthetic fulfills a need for purpose and structure to a world which lends itself to explanations, but usually ones that are incomplete.

          At its very core the aesthetic is an embodiment of man’s search for order, and it is a natural response to the situation of general uncertainty in which mankind finds itself in life. John Dewey and Kenneth Burke give similar explanations about how mankind adjusts to its surrounding and establishes some form of order. Dewey writes, “The first great consideration is that life goes on in an environment; not merely in it, but because of it, through interaction with it,” and that mankind, in order to live, “must adjust itself [to it], by accommodation and defense, but also by conquest” (12). The experience of living inevitably challenges our adjustment to our environment and threatens our equilibrium or temporary sense of order and predictability. This creates a gap which we must then try to bridge somehow. Dewey describes the process as follows, “If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism, with those of the conditions under which it lives” (13). The organism loses equilibrium by a disruption, and regains it through conflict and finer adjustment to the environment. The final equilibrium is not simply a return to the first. Through the process, the organism has changed and now is able to encompass elements of greater complexity within its new equilibrium. This could describe the basic structure of almost any story. These experiences of life are “akin to the esthetic” (14) and their conditions become “the material out of which he [man] forms purposes” (14).

            Because these experiences of disruption of equilibrium, conflict, and resolution (or the gaining of a new equilibrium) are so common in human experience, they become a pattern by which we interpret the meaning of the world. I believe this is one of the reasons why experiences are only acknowledged as meaningful in our lives when they fit into this pattern, with a beginning, middle (conflict), and end (resolution). Experiences which fit this pattern become what Dewey calls “an experience” rather than just experience:

We have an experience when the material experienced runs its course to fulfillment. Then and then only is it integrated within and demarcated in the general stream of experience from other experiences . . . a situation . . . is so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation. Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience. (36-37)

Only such experiences have formative power and become part of our understanding of life. Our understanding of life is formed by the cumulative power of many such complete experiences. These experiences may function both as disruptions of our equilibrium and as tools in the construction of our new equilibrium, but only complete experiences which have their “individualizing quality and self-sufficiency” are likely to have such formative power over us.

            I had my own experience with the power of an experience last summer. I was visiting my brother-in-law in the DC area together with my family. Before we left to go back home, my wife persuaded me to take a visit by myself to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. As a Norwegian I subscribed to a general European distrust and dislike of America, and especially of its foreign policy. The museum in general had little impact upon me, until I went to a section called Americans at War. In this exhibit there was a small theater where they were showing a movie about the Americans who had died on battlefields all over the earth the last 100 years. The movie was brief and simply showed graves of American soldiers in graveyards all over the globe with some quotes from Abraham Lincoln and other presidents and poets. I initially engaged this movie with my perception about the world and the role America had played in it. By the time the movie had ended I was in a conflict within myself. I started questioning some of the assumptions underlying my understanding of the world. The film had resonated with me, and the emotional response I had was that of gratitude and a certain shame for the ingratitude I had formerly shown. I was experiencing the disruption of a part of my equilibrium. Sitting in the subway on the way back my mind was racing to reconcile what I knew and thought before with what I had just experienced. Finally my mind settled on a new understanding. My former understanding saw American foreign policy as arrogant, selfish, and often a great threat to the world. The film presented a reality where American soldiers had given their lives all around the world as a bulwark and defense against all manner of menacing forces, even though they didn’t have to get involved. The concrete example of the thousands of graves had a strong emotional impact. By the time I had reached my brother-in-law’s house, I had decided on a synthesis of the two realities. I decided that even though the US had made mistakes and had at times been arrogant, there were thousands of Americans who had given their lives and been willing to risk their lives in the fight against the Axis powers and the Soviet Union, and tamed the ambitions of many a ruthless ruler around the world. I thought about what my world and my life would be like today without that sacrifice, and that in turn filled me with gratitude for what these thousands of people had given. That was my new equilibrium, where the experience both caused it by functioning as a disruption and at the end helped determine the state of the new equilibrium.

This is a similar movie, though not quite as powerful:

 

             Kenneth Burke’s explanation is very similar to that of John Dewey, but Burke has a special focus on literature and on methods of analysis. Kenneth Burke does also address the idea of universal experiences and patterns, such as arousing and fulfilling expectations and the climactic nature of many of our physical experiences, which highlights useful points that Dewey does not address, but I want to focus on Burke’s theory of individuation and how individual patterns of experience are formed. I do this because Burke was not only interested in the formation but also the criticism of patterns of experience, and I believe he developed a helpful method to uncover these in all language usage.

In Counter-Statement, Kenneth Burke explains that every person forms a “pattern of experience” which is based on their adjustment to their environment or situation: “Any such specific environmental condition calls forth and stresses certain of the universal experiences as being more relevant to it, with a slighting of those less relevant. Such selections are ‘patterns of experience’” (151). This ‘pattern of experience’ influences how each person engages with the world, and traces of it will be found in the terminology this person uses. In “The Philosophy of Literary Form,” Burke writes, “The ‘symbolism’ of a word consists in the fact that no one quite uses the word in its mere dictionary sense. And the overtones of a usage are revealed ‘by the company it keeps’ in the utterances of a given speaker or writer” (35). Every person connects words with each other in a different way in their personal vocabulary, because we don’t have the same emotional connections to all terms. John Dewey describes this process for experience, but it is just as applicable to vocabulary: “Emotion is the moving and cementing force. It selects what is congruous and dyes what is selected with its color, thereby giving qualitative unity to materials externally disparate and dissimilar” (44). This “emotional connective” endows terms with their meaning based on the other words that they are connected with. In Burke’s explanation then, patterns of experience are created by selections and connections which come from the adjustment of an organism to its environment. These connections (what Kenneth Burke would call equations) work together to form an interpretation of how the world works and how the separate elements in the world are connected (158-159).

How Art Imitates Structured Experience

Both John Dewey and Kenneth Burke saw art as an artificially structured experience which may be even better than our own structures of experience. Kenneth Burke’s writing is rather cautionary on this subject. The artist is an expert in their own pattern of experience, and as such they know how to make it convincing to the reader. Burke writes, “By thoroughness he [the author] should be able to overwhelm his reader to accept his interpretations. For a pattern of experience is an interpretation of life” (176). The reader may resist at first, but he is now in the world created by the rules of the author and operating by the author’s logic:

The thoroughness of the artist’s attack can ‘wear down’ the reader until he accepts the artist’s interpretation, the pattern of experience underlying the Symbol. He may, when the book is finished, return to his own contrary patterns of experience (but during the reading the evidence has been rigorously selected, it ‘points’ as steadily in one direction as the contentions of a debater). (176-177)

The structured experience can be transmitted so thoroughly that everything in it connects and supports everything else, and so the direction the author takes the reader is at once logical (according to the internal logic in the text) and aesthetically appealing. The work of art contains its own equations and internal structure, and this structure imitates the idiosyncratic vocabulary of an articulated pattern of experience. In this way, the thoroughness of the artist’s vocabulary can co-opt the reader’s own pattern of experience.

In Art as Experience, John Dewey writes about the experience of art: “What is evoked is a substance so formed that it can enter into the experiences of others and enable them to have more intense and more fully rounded out experiences of their own” (113). The work of art “enters” into the experience of the audience by making them participants in the experience. For example, rather than conveying the information of tragedy, the work of art evokes emotions of pity and fear by taking the audience through a tragic aesthetic reality. The appeal for the audience is that they can have “more intense and more fully rounded out experiences” because of how the artist invites a complete experience rather than the disordered bits and pieces of events which occur in normal life. As Dewey goes on to write, “That is what it is to have form. It marks a way of envisaging, of feeling, and of presenting experienced matter so that it most readily and effectively becomes material for the construction of adequate experience on the part of those less gifted than the original creator” (113-114). This is exactly why the artist can overwhelm the reader with his pattern of experience, because the artist can form experienced matter more completely than the reader himself, and thus gives him a more intense experience than what he could form by himself. It is implied that the more complete and intense an experience is, the more convincing and, I would claim, formative it will be. It is, as mentioned earlier an experience. It is partially by completeness and intensity that we measure the meaning and importance of our experiences because these can be found in true experiences that stand out in our lives as meaningful.

Thus, it may be through experiencing the art someone else has made that we define our

lives or frame our experiences. This is what happens in different degrees whenever one is effectively influenced by a work of art. As Burke writes, “[The work of art] can, by its function as name and definition, give simplicity and order to an otherwise unclarified complexity. It provides a terminology of thoughts, actions, emotions, attitudes for codifying a pattern of experience” (154). The work of art can do the work of structuring experiences for us. Although Kenneth Burke warned about the potential subversive effects this could have, he also said this simply is the way we learn most things about the world. As he writes in “Art as a Rough Draft of Life,” “For our sense of reality is shaped largely not by our own immediate sensory experience, but by what others tell us, in theologies, philosophies, textbooks, stories, poems, dramas, news, gossip, and the like” (158), and he goes on to recommend this as a method of learning: “In these days of much uncertainty, when each of us individually can experiment but somewhat, by ranging through the field of the arts in general we can personally consider many more possibilities than we could otherwise” (162).

            As humans we respond to the complexity and uncertainty around us by constructing structured experiences which become the foundations of our generalizations about the world or our interpretations of life. These are of necessity imperfect, but they are an attempt to capture the complexity of the world into a structure that makes sense and is unified. As Kenneth Burke writes, “We might get the truest slant on ourselves by thinking of our lives as a first drafts, as hastily organized essays that we never have a chance to revise” (161). As Dewey mentions, these structured experiences are formed by processes of disruption and reunion by synthesis which recur in different ways throughout our lives. They also connect different elements of life in a complex structure of interrelated terms and concepts which work together to form a complete, as Burke pointed out. Art is an attempt to imitate these structures in such a way that we can experience the pattern of experience it embodies without having to experience it in real life. There is a risk of accepting this new pattern of experience without question, and the human state of uncertainty may make this especially alluring. However, if we see art as other drafts of life, attempts to account for the complexity around us, then we can use it to test and revise the rough draft we have for life. By doing this, we may be able to improve our understanding of life, and by implication, improve our way of living.