Art and Music

As I sat listening to a concert at the Electronic Music Midwest festival this morning, I thought about the definitions of art and music I have worked so hard over the years to develop, which shape and guide my ability to be addressed by art and music. It occurred to me that there is a troubling disconnect between artistically trained people's thoughtful reflection on the meaning and value of art and music, and the most bourgeois understandings of what constitute them. My own definition of art: "Any object of cognitive or material composition, human action or linguistic metaphor that evokes human experience apart from verbal description." A conventional definition of art: "Any visual piece that represents a pleasing human visual perspective on the material world." My definition of music: "Sound organized on a perceived time continuum for appreciating the sound, the principles and techniques of its organization, and its effect on listeners." A traditional definition of music: "Pleasing sonic pieces that conform to broadly established conventions of tonal, rhythmic, and formal organization." These differences are at least partially attributable to the disconnect between art and music produced and marketed as consumable commodities, and art and music produced as human expression in the broadest sense. Outside higher education, to which most people have limited or no access, how do we teach children and young people to appreciate and be addressed by art and music (beyond being merely mass-produced vehicles of profit for the already super-wealthy), so that it fulfills its broad and important function of human expression, rather than being perceived as useless, pretentious, and self-referential to small groups of insiders at best, and a threat to the social order at worst? Hmm…

On Never Forgetting

Walking to the gym for my workout this morning, I saw a banner encouraging people to "Never Forget" 9/11. It occurred to me that there are several kinds of 'never forgetting'. One kind involves creating and transmitting histories for understanding and learning from what precipitates such terrible events so we do not repeat what precipitated them in the future. I agree with this kind of never forgetting. Another kind involves holding sacred and institutionalizing the blessed memory of fellow human beings who perished as a result. I also agree with this kind of never forgetting.

Yet another kind involves holding a grudge, projecting our fears onto others, externalizing and seeking to control those fears in a way that can never work, by perpetrating violence against whole classes of people who were not and are not responsible. This kind of never forgetting is highly dysfunctional, for individuals and for the societies of which they are part, because it perpetuates the very violence to which individuals and society have already been subject. I wonder how much of the rhetoric of never forgetting is about that kind of memory, under cover of the others. We have a moral obligation to take great care in how we 'never forget', being sure it does not perpetuate the horror we ourselves have had to face. Our responses in the years since September 11, 2001 show a painful lack of skill in this regard.

Dumb Debate

Newsflash: There is no real conflict between science and religion. There are, however, way too many people in modern societies still struggling with philosophical questions from 500 years ago. It doesn't help that this 'issue' provides a perennial sensation that might help cause someone to consume the usual mass-mediated, meaningless bullshit that makes the rich richer. It also doesn't help that much of the leadership of the very social institutions that might help people learn to distinguish between, say, empirical reality as a vehicle of material truth via scientific processes, and metaphorical reality as a vehicle of—for lack of a better term—spiritual, or subconscious truth via religious faith or other spiritual practices (and understand how these inform each other), are as underdeveloped and ignorant as the rest about how these might integrate into overall human cognitive experience. How possible is it that we should evolve societies and cultures that serve human development and long-term wellbeing, rather than being based solely on the needs and interests of profitmongers, fundamentalists, and obedient consumebots?

The Tea Party

I blogged my thoughts on Libertarianism's view of individual vs. collective, and then later on the line between individual freedom and collective responsibility. Now there is an excellent opinion piece in the New York Times that addresses the U.S. American myth of individual autonomy and its significance to the Tea Party movement. It touches on both Cartesian notions of individual subjectivity and Hegelian ideas on the relationship between subjectivity and interdependence. The piece:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/

Faith

It seems to me the most muscular form of faith would be one that involves a conscious choice to presuppose the objects of faith—to live as though they were true—while still remaining aware that they themselves may have no actualization in the material world. This would be a complete faith, exercised by choice and aware of non-actuality. Its impact would still register in every facet of reality, including the material, without its being literal. Immature faith conflates the objects of faith with the material world, and believes them in a literal way. The ironic corollary to this conflation is separation—a dichotomy and a dualism between the mundane and the spiritual. Just as ironically, to separate the objects of faith from their material actualization, allowing objects of faith and the laws of the material world each to be free and functional in their own right and part of a larger whole, evaporates the dichotomy between them and frees one to enjoy the impact of faith on life without needing to strive any longer—inwardly or outwardly—over the material actuality of objects of faith themselves. 'Go your way; your faith has made you whole.'

Individual and Collective

I lost a 13-year-old nephew this past weekend. He was riding a little ATV on private land without a helmet, was thrown from it, and died instantly of a head injury. There is no sense pointing any fingers. It happened, and we all have to make sense of it on every level.

My mind running on as usual, it put me in mind of things like helmet laws (none applied in this case), and any regulation of private behaviors with outcomes that can be statistically tracked as collective phenomena, and are therefore signficant to the public common good. There are people who do not have well developed senses of collective reality and resent certain types of regulation as the 'gummint' trying to take away their freedom. It seems like a difficult question—the line between individual freedom and collective well-being.

All abstract thorizing about individual and collective aside, we lost a sweet, young nephew, cousin, grandson, brother, son, and friend, and it hurts.

Songs of Zion

We have the start of a major theological shift recorded in one of the ancient Hebrew tehillim. A translation of this post-exilic Psalm reads in part:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.

There on the poplars
we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

How can we sing the songs of Adonai
while in a foreign land?
...

During their nomadic existence the ancient Hebrews conceived of a God who lived in an elaborate tent that was pitched for him. After their multi-tribal coalition had been formed into a kingdom, the same concept applied to the temple—a permanent house built for their God in the capital city. Now that the city had been sacked and the temple was in ruins, now that God's 'house' had been destroyed, where was God? The songs they sang about God dwelling in his house on the holy mountain of Zion made no sense because the circumstances had completely changed. They could and would make a major shift in theology to conceptualize a God who was everywhere at once, who came to dwell whenever and wherever there was a 'together-bringing' (a syn-agogue) happening. This same concept was and is applied to the Christian ekklesia. The theological shift goes hand-in-hand with shifts in cognitive function and social identification—from concrete-operational to formal-operational thought (Piaget), from categorical to cross-categorical cognition (Keagan), from nationalistic land-based to diasporic ethnicity-based social identification, from concrete to abstract.

Of course, the older ways of thinking still exist. There are Jewish, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists who maintain what in the modern world amounts to a grossly underdeveloped combination of theology, cognition and social identity. But what about the rest of us? Isn't another major shift in theology long overdue? What new shifts would be appropriate for people who are cognitively and socially developed beyond the very minimum for adulthood? Can we, with subtle reasoning and global social identity stand apart from and look back on the conscious choice to engage in that quintessentially human practice of belief irrespective of evidence (faith), and conceive of God as metaphor for what in our consciousness cannot be named? Here we are again with religious institutions that are at best largely useless and at worst violently dysfunctional. Are thinking people who value spiritual practice not just as much in exile as those ancients?

With 'props' to John Shelby Spong

To blog...

It occurred to me that with Summer on, and a sabbatical plus another Summer to follow, I won't have a daily commute during which to 'chew'. I realized I was 'chewing' over morning coffee yesterday, so I still have things to blog (above).

Libertarians

It strikes me that Libertarianism can be associated with a level of human cognitive and social development that is rather adolescent in character, in that it focuses on individual initiative, responsibility, gain and loss, without regard for, or even cognizance of, a human collective supporting such individual functions, toward which the individual has material and social obligations. As long as individual human beings have to develop from square one, there will always be adults in human societies who are parked at this level of development. How do we honor who and where they are, and integrate them into our societies, while still maintaining collective levels of social, cultural, material and spiritual development that are in keeping with the broad individual range and overall collective potential for human development?

And later this same day, what should appear but an an op-ed in the NYT about Libertarians in general and Rand Paul in particular:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24douthat.html?hp

Diffferent Worlds

The cold-war divisions of 'first', 'second' and 'third' worlds made some sense on geopolitical grounds, however ethnocentric the order might have been. No question the world can still be roughly divided according to levels of industrial and economic development. There are certainly correlations between levels of income and economic, industrial, and human development. But, I have a problem with uncritical use of the term 'developing' world where it assumes a common trajectory for all nations toward fully industrialized, high-income, advanced economies. The underlying presupposition is that wealth and the capacity to generate it are infinite. Ultimately, all wealth is based in the material world, which for our purposes is most certainly finite. Overall wealth can increase greatly—to a point, and certainly has, human and ecological costs notwithstanding, but it is still finite. Up to now the flow of wealth has been away from those who already have less toward those who already have more. At some point, with more economies 'developing', that flow will have to reverse. Such equalization of wealth should be understood as just as much a part of human social evolution as the increasing of wealth. Can the term 'developing' be used with critical awareness of this big picture?

Everything is on fire

We watched The Buddha last night. I was reminded of his third discourse where he explained how the senses, the mind, and all the objects they observe, are 'on fire' with desire, hatred and ignorance. Our mindfulness of and equanimity toward all the longing, loathing and ditziness that arise and pass in our moment-to-moment experiences are the 'base camp' on the way to the 'summit' of enlightenment.

To blog...

Here goes. If I'm going to blog what I've been thinking about, I'll have to remember it long enough to write it. Strikes me as a little like remembering dreams long enough to journalize them. I think out loud on my 40-minute commute, so a good time to write might be right when I get to work or right when I get home.