If you’re a young artist who’s feeling really discouraged about the state of things, this post is for you. First of all, for a lot of this, I’ve been right there with you being scared. But I’ve some epiphanies recently that changed my thinking.

There are good reasons not to quit art, and I’m going to tell you what they are.

But first I need to set the stage, so bear with me.

Art appreciation has been in sharp decline for my whole lifetime (turning 30 this year) largely due to late-stage capitalism. As a result of capitalism, society-at-large (outside of dedicated art circles) sees art as a product rather than as capital-A art. The popularization of AI has increased this perception.

I’m going to give a timeline of how I have watched this play out during my lifetime.

• Department stores start selling cheap-ass knock-off art that’s mass-produced. This saturates the market, decreasing the visibility and viabilty of hand-made art in the process.

• Schools start cutting arts programs at the K-12 level.

• The Internet and e-commerce (in tandem) increase intellectual property theft for profit, further devaluing artists/makers in favor of “the product.”

• Universities gradually give way to an education-as-product model, leading to the current situation. If you didn’t know, they are now fully cutting humanities colleges and degrees to consolidate for profit. In the meantime, the quality of education at every level has massively decreased (at least here in the US).

• AI hits the fan. Intellectual property theft is actively encouraged, indicative of how artists are seen by the larger culture. On top of this AI does what mass production does on an even more outrageous scale, saturating the market, and in so doing burying real artists and diminishing their perceived value.

• Artists who do want to continue being artists are finding they have to produce at an insane rate, catering to algorithms and expectations that are set up to produce burn out and poor quality work.

AI is not going away. Even if it is eventually legally regulated, people will continue using it illegally in the same way that people access pirated media or illicit content irregardless of government red tape.

If all of that makes you want to quit—first of all, I’m unsurprised. You’re having a normal reaction to an absurd situation. But here are a few reasons to keep making art yourself.

Artists Are Canaries in Sociopolitical Coal Mines

Most people have heard of the old miner’s trick used to keep workers from perishing to toxic underground gases. When entering the mine, miners would bring a caged Canary bird with them. More sensitive to gases than humans, this species of bird would die more quickly when exposed, alerting miners to danger and allowing them to escape with their lives.

Kurt Vonnegut compared artists and writers to coal mine Canaries because this demographic is highly sensitive to societal changes, political threats, and other such things.

If you think of our sociopolitical world as a coal mine, art is like an alarm system. When the economy is in danger, what is the first thing cut from people’s expenditures?

Art.

The same is true in countless other scenarios (not just surrounding the economy). What’s happening to art and artists at any one time is always a keen indicator of what’s happening (or about to happen) to the wider community. When political strife occurs, art is often used as a rhetorical tool of resistance.

If real artists stop making art (an unlikely future) there will be no more metaphorical Canaries.

Art May Actually Save Your Life, Or Someone Else’s

If you’re anything like, well, most artists, then your mental health may be a bit of a loose thread. While art isn’t a substitute for actual psychiatric treatment (a privilege not everyone has), art has many benefits for the mind and soul. For me and many others, art serves as a cherished means of coping with life’s demons. That is, both creating art, and enjoying it.

Feeling represented by a character or story can be a powerful balm for people feeling alone. In some cases, a story might teach you a word for an experience you thought you were alone in, opening doors to a community where you can be loved or healed. It might even teach you how to stand up to an abuser, or give you the courage to you need to leave an unsafe environment.

Art can show you how to love yourself, and how to love others. So many lives have been saved by poems, books, movies, games, manga and more.

I am of the opinion that art exists because we want connection—with other living humans, not computers. We’ve all had enough of loneliness, haven’t we?

Making Art Promotes Growth

People who favor AI often do so out of desire to win the financial productivity war that capitalism enforces.

Just being duped by AI content can feel like losing a bit of this war (it’s taken our time, and in some cases our money), but it goes much further. Anyone running a business, navigating the job market, or creating content will know the struggle of constantly competing against AI-generated media delivered at an impossible pace.

To meet increasingly impossible deadlines and standards, people cheat. It’s inevitable. But the thing is—when people cut corners to create products and entertainment faster, the results are less ultimately meaningful. Moreover skills are lost (or never learned) in the process.

Art isn’t a product. Yes, we often attach monetary value to art, but it isn’t (I would argue cannot be) the driving force behind truly great art.

If money isn’t the point of art making art, then what is?

The Art!

Art Is Its Own Point.

By engaging with art as a viewer/reader/player/listener, you grow as a person (if you so choose). This is compounded for the artist.

In the process art-making is inherently riddled with failure, problem-solving, and growth that you could not gain by offloading the precious task of art-making to AI. In fact, as you rely on AI, you casually lose skills and abilities over time.

Don’t cease your pursuit of excellence merely because the institutions that once stood for this value now stand for money. Create majesty in spite of them.

Do It Because You Love It

If nothing else I’ve said convinced you, let me just implore you to keep making art from scratch out of love.

Revisit everything that makes art feel magical to you, what makes you feel that urge to create.

Give this pain-addled world something new and beautiful to love (and of course, argue about over tea).

In closing, here’s a poem that I love. It was written by the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski, who experienced great political turmoil in his lifetime. I think it really captures the essence of what I’m trying to say here—that we have to keep making something good out of this hellscape we’re living in. Especially in the dark, we have to try.