Imagine a place where even the worst partisan rifts disappear. Dream of a place filled with people completely united by a desire to be awed and a hope that others around them will excel. Think of the possibility of a gathering place filled with people where empathy, resilience and good will dominate. How do you experience such magic consistently and affirmingly?

Go see a musical. Catch the latest dance concert. Visit a gallery. Get tickets to a concert. They happen right here in our communities in high school auditoriums and at Butler’s Little Theatre.

The arts build community, friendships, joy and love. Live performances engage, enlighten and lift us into worlds of possibility, imagination, intelligence, morality and even spur us toward justice — not unlike the plays of Pittsburgh native August Wilson, the art of Diego Rivera, the symphonies of Henryk Górecki or Omar Thomas, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or countless others.

Live performances join us to strangers in exhilaration and admiration. As American novelist and biographer Irving Stone once said, “There are no faster or firmer friendships than those formed between people who love the same books.”

Indeed, the arts have tremendous power to unite and enrich us — if only we let it happen and if we partake in such opportunities within our communities. In this time of a perilously and angrily divided America, the arts offer us a chance to come together without competition or hazard, like gathering around a warm fire on a cold night.

These opportunities beckon us toward greater humanity and shared affection. At the end of May, for example, the Leadership Butler County class sold out the beautifully renovated Penn Theater for a “Dancing with the Stars” competition. No one lost, but the raucous audience laughed and shouted and surprised each other. Community leaders shed inhibitions and, as purely amateur dancers, paired with dance student mentors to raise more than $10,000 to benefit the Butler County Humane Society. Think about how many peoples’ lives are now better from the opportunity to adopt a loving pet.

As in so many other cases, the art of dance built us into a more responsive and warm community of care and possibility. Afterward, Main Street was packed with countless people who went out to extend the evening’s fellowship — local businesses were boosted, and our downtown glowed with joy (as happens so often with the shows that grace that formerly dilapidated space in new life, new civic energy and optimistic progress).

Sadly, our societal journeys away from the physical world and live arts may well be changing our brains for the worse. Research from brain scan data published in The New York Times highlights that teens who habitually check social media show heightened sensitivity and changing activation in reward-processing and salience circuits, akin to transforming us into a kind of Pavlov’s dog.

Closely related Stanford University social media research shows scary implications that clicks release large amounts of dopamine into our brains' reward pathway all at once. The dangerous, addictive effects are similar to those of heroin, meth or alcohol. Social media leads us even further away from each other and away from community storytelling and more healthy solidarity that the arts facilitate so well.

The mental health and academic achievement of youth (and adults) is increased when they develop the creativity and teamwork offered by participating in music and the arts. Young people and adults alike need opportunities to explore creativity, build confidence and develop resilient mindsets and contagious curiosity. These activities spill over into school, careers, churches, civic organizations and happy marriages built on lively interests and upbeat variety.

The arts are an embodiment of the very best intent of any kind of education. They augment cleverness and complexity that help model for us the kind of analysis and questioning that move us toward solving the vexing darkness that plagues us: jealousies, regret, sloth, bigotry and mediocrity. A concert of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra or an opera at a community playhouse can inspire us toward much bolder ambition, closer connections and shared admiration for artistic genius.

Isn’t expansion of one’s likelihood for joy a secret of a happy life? In that regard, the arts are also a giant catalyst for learning new possibilities, new loves and new affinities. Who’s not in favor of such opportunity?

So, get out to a performance or a gallery! In doing so, you help to better “unite” our “United States” into collectives that transcend narrow divides. Best of all, the arts help us aspire to live up to the supportive vision of that great performer Bob Marley: “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.”

After all, great art is just a synonym for the very best kind of love.

Dan Bauer is dean of Slippery Rock University’s College of Liberal Arts and Bailey Library. He has spent the past 30 years of his professional life instilling a love of ideas, curiosity and ambitious perception in students and his community. A former high school teacher and debate coach in a packing-plant town in rural western Iowa, he later earned his Ph.D. in English at New Mexico State University and held faculty positions in New York, Iowa and Georgia before moving to SRU in 2017. He is a member of the Leadership Butler County board of directors, Harrisville Rotary and the board of Blackwood Arts in Harrisville. He and his husband often can be found at performances, lectures and exhibits at SRU and elsewhere.