08-27-2016, 01:43 AM
[quote pid='7845' dateline='1472251144']
But except to hear the great symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and even Bruckner as they were originally performed would one want to return in a time machine to Vienna in their time? A warning that one blogger said of traveling to parts of the Third World
"Sadness will follow you everywhere you go"
applied to places now generally recognized as sophisticated and wealthy, like Florence, Paris, and Vienna today.
Of course culture is wonderful! The conservative part of me recognizes that the entertainment 'culture' of our time offers entertainment as the opiate of the masses. We need culture more than we need entertainment. We need remember that William Shakespeare]s plays had competition for the entertainment coin of the time -- animal-baiting. Dogs tearing bears and bulls apart?
My concept of Paradise is one great Chautauqua, maybe alternating some great visual art, opera, symphony, ballet, and drama with some hikes in nature, horseback riding, and sailing... but that is my idea. (Horseback riding and sailing have never been part of my life, but they sound very good). But that is my concept. For many people such would be Hell. They would alternate between rock concerts and motorcycle riding. Maybe they would love to see dogs ripping livestock and wildlife to death.
Yes. Quality matters, and the Good Stuff has not all been created in western Europe and America.
If one speaks of Western Civilization, one must recognize that the largest part of Western Civilization is to the south of San Diego, El Paso, Brownsville, and Key West. Let's also remember that defining peoples as decadent denies one the opportunity to enjoy some great achievements in culture, but even worse pu7ts such people at risk of dispossession, exile, enslavement, and even extermination.
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Much greatness is synthesis. The greatest achievers in culture typically make their national and 'racial' origins irrelevant.
Eric the Green Wrote:Reading that interesting article, I am struck by this paragraph:
Quote:"The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt, includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions."
Hmmm. I'm reading this article because I am curious about this new unfamiliar term "alt.right" and the ideas and people it represents...... I don't know, it might be better for me to be wary.
Quote:"For natural conservatives, culture, not economic efficiency, is the paramount value. More specifically, they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting."
Hmmm, I can agree there, but....
But except to hear the great symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and even Bruckner as they were originally performed would one want to return in a time machine to Vienna in their time? A warning that one blogger said of traveling to parts of the Third World
"Sadness will follow you everywhere you go"
applied to places now generally recognized as sophisticated and wealthy, like Florence, Paris, and Vienna today.
Of course culture is wonderful! The conservative part of me recognizes that the entertainment 'culture' of our time offers entertainment as the opiate of the masses. We need culture more than we need entertainment. We need remember that William Shakespeare]s plays had competition for the entertainment coin of the time -- animal-baiting. Dogs tearing bears and bulls apart?
My concept of Paradise is one great Chautauqua, maybe alternating some great visual art, opera, symphony, ballet, and drama with some hikes in nature, horseback riding, and sailing... but that is my idea. (Horseback riding and sailing have never been part of my life, but they sound very good). But that is my concept. For many people such would be Hell. They would alternate between rock concerts and motorcycle riding. Maybe they would love to see dogs ripping livestock and wildlife to death.
Quote:Quote:"just as they are inclined to prioritise the interests of their tribe, they recognise that other groups – Mexicans, African-Americans or Muslims – are likely to do the same. As communities become comprised of different peoples, the culture and politics of those communities become an expression of their constituent peoples.
You’ll often encounter doomsday rhetoric in alt-right online communities: that’s because many of them instinctively feel that once large enough and ethnically distinct enough groups are brought together, they will inevitably come to blows. In short, they doubt that full “integration” is ever possible. If it is, it won’t be successful in the “kumbaya” sense. Border walls are a much safer option.
The alt-right’s intellectuals would also argue that culture is inseparable from race. The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved. A Mosque next to an English street full of houses bearing the flag of St. George, according to alt-righters, is neither an English street nor a Muslim street — separation is necessary for distinctiveness."
I totally disagree, as someone who thinks that the quality of cultural expression is to some degree objective, and that good and bad culture exists. I disagree with Taramarie and others on this. But just as I as a white person can appreciate some black jazz artists and Motown and other black musicians, and the elaborate designs on Muslim mosques, and the amazing spiritual power of Buddhist and Hindu arts and temples, and the colorful weavings of Mayan artists, and so on and so on, and am influenced by them and want to preserve them, I am sure that Asians and Africans and Muslims and Latinos and whoever can appreciate Bach and Beethoven and Chartres Cathedral and Michaelangelo, etc., and want to preserve and be influenced by them and perform them and support them, and so on.
Yes. Quality matters, and the Good Stuff has not all been created in western Europe and America.
If one speaks of Western Civilization, one must recognize that the largest part of Western Civilization is to the south of San Diego, El Paso, Brownsville, and Key West. Let's also remember that defining peoples as decadent denies one the opportunity to enjoy some great achievements in culture, but even worse pu7ts such people at risk of dispossession, exile, enslavement, and even extermination.
Quote:Separation is not necessary for distinctiveness at all. In fact, you trace the history of any culture back far enough, and you find other cultures at their roots. And cross cultural stimulation is often what creates the best culture. No, I prefer kumbaya; although specifically I would not choose it as one of the best songs everOr "Imagine" either, for that matter. But I like the sentiments expressed!
War, such as the alt-right thinks is the natural result of non-separation, results from their own attitudes of tribalism. It's this that causes war, just as it did 60 and 100 years ago, as if these alt-righters seem to have forgotten the most unforgettable and horrible history.
No, the real trend of today is toward one people on one earth, and it's silly and foolish to resist it. We are each inheritors of all the traditions of humankind. That's exactly what makes our age special.
And the best culture is not a product of race, or of separate, distinct peoples. It's the product of spiritual inspiration, and/or physical energy, and/or heart-felt emotions (IOW, "Oooh Eee OOh Ah-AAH" read my page if you don't get the meaning). Another special quality of our time is how much more freely more people are open to and receive these inspirations than in past times when most peoples' noses were strictly confined to their grindstones. Or, at least, such is the case during or near to the times of Awakening/2T periods.
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Much greatness is synthesis. The greatest achievers in culture typically make their national and 'racial' origins irrelevant.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.