If art is important to building empathy, our problems might stem from art's recent pivot to shock over beauty and virtue signaling over the cultivation of virtue.
And yet, many "copious displays of Christian faith, piety, and family values," even from some divorced cheaters, as well as the left-wing style, are actually genuine.
Very often, the introduction of the phrase "virtue signaling" comes off as a blanket dismissal of the other party.
The Soviet Union had that sort of "virtue cultivating" art and it sure as hell didn't promote either their "virtures" or actual virtue.
Maybe there's nihilism & destruction etc. in some art, but by far it does not appear to be a dominant theme.
I would not be so sure. Plenty of art was not like that - purely practical portraits, paintings depicting wars, beheadings, fires and other historical events. Medieval nun with dick tree and running dog eating penis (google it), medieval texts that are about disgusting behavior.
Plenty of old tales are basically about violence with no influence on sensibilities nor much virtues. Even in Homer Odyssey is quite debatable about how much it is virtue inspiring and what kind of virtue.
> Art today is often nihilistic and destructive, obsessed with subverting a world it cannot stand.
Classical books are often depicting destructive and nihilistic characters and caused controversies in their own time for being too close to home.
To be clear, I don't buy any of the misogynistic criticisms of the last star wars film. but I did think it was a poor story.
my instincts say that such a change in "art" matters, but I don't really have good evidence to show how it does. much less that the arrow of causality points the way I think it does.