The power to do what?

So I have been doing a lot of thinking and looking and reading and thinking and here's how things are starting to come together in my head.

Shusterman really brought up a lot of good issues and the link to Dewey was a game-changer. I hadn't heard of him really before except that he was a part of the pragmatist circle in America and had a hand in developing theory and practice for the education system. 

Both are saying the same thing: everything is an aesthetic experience because they're pointing to the more scientific approach to aesthetics: natural phenomena variously prepositioned and imbued in the everyday world of physical action, aka the creation process as living, and therefore practicing, individuals and collectives. 

The problem is what we create. The problem is why we create. Adorno, Benjamin, Lukac all pointed to this. Art is not salvific and neither is aesthetics. If we learn to use them for good then that's another story. But that is pie in the sky. Aesthetics creates the Entartete Kunst show in Nazi Germany and Malka Germania in 21st century Berlin. Santiago Zabala argues why art can only save us. I beg to differ. 

Some questions to think about more:

1. Isn't it problematic to say there's an aesthetic reason to sustain life?
   Yes, because the idea to sustain life begs the question, "Who's life?" Why would there be an aesthetic reason to sustain life? In the case of aesthetics, or life experience, interaction with the material world, the world around us, is this the very goal of life? To sustain interaction with the world in ways that create the world and a world for oneself, for others?
   
   
2. The reason for sustaining life has to be beyond aesthetics?
   Yes. Aesthetics is not salvific. Thinking about aesthetics in terms of how John Dewey thought of it as experience, as the process or ongoing process, the means of creative acts, actions, and impulses, to throw one's hat in the ring of making one's world a better place. The dogging question is, "What's better?" It seems some basic principles need to be put into place. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt heal. Kill who. Heal who. For what reasons?
   
   
3. Aesthetic standards or in groups is the problem?
   Yes. To maintain a binary stance, aesthetics can go both ways. Adorno testifies to that. People can try to attest and cement aesthetic standards (Kant I'm looking at you) but the issue is one can do this in order to create harm.

So what are we trying to do with aesthetics? What does identity have to do with it? 

Let's interrogate aesthetics and see how people harness it to create and have experiences, whatever those might be.