We seem to have brought up one of the oldest issues known to man here: the self versus the group. Heinlein summed it up pretty well: "Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let’s play that over again, too. Who decides?"
It's a logical nightmare one way, and a massive bootstrapping issue the other. How can "everybody" be right when nobody agrees unanimously on anything? How can one person be said to be right when nobody will ever reach a universal consensus on it? Defining art just falls into that same trap. Social art is gladly ignored by the elitist since it doesn't fit the definition they've personally crafted, while the mainstream by and large just takes the elitists' word for it when the elitists proclaim something to be art, not really putting any stock into the claim or even caring.
Me, I tend to favor the solution that gives everybody a voice in cases like this. It may end up being a cacophony, but you're far more likely to find the truth if you ask a million than if you ask just one. The real trick, of course, is figuring out which one is the truth...
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
