(11-27-2016, 06:37 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(11-27-2016, 08:00 AM)pbrower2 Wrote: [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue#cite_note-LarsonDefn-4][/url]
That sounds familiar. I expect that as unpleasant as it is for me to hear or see Donald Trump already, it will only get worse. Obama is getting boring, but at least he doesn't intrude on every aspect of life. I wonder whether life will shut down so that we can hear the speeches of the Great and Glorious Leader. After all, his pronouncements are more profound than Turandot or the Seventh Symphony of Anton Bruckner, works that only un-American people can appreciate. Think at the level of the writing of the National Inquirer if you want to be a real member of the American People.
No. I am a rootless cosmopolitan in contrast to you, Classic X'er. I outgrew the mass low culture when I was a teenager. To be sure, mass culture (think of Mark Twain, Big Band music, George Gershwin, ragtime, the three great ballets associated with Tchaikovsky, maybe some animated films that anyone can watch and enjoy... Shakespeare and Mozart, of course, in their times) can have an omnibus appeal which suggests genuine mastery in achievement. I don't have a problem with folk culture; it has its validity through its purity. If some American wants to write some structured music with some widespread appeal, then maybe he might want to start by taking a good listening to some old-fashioned fiddling and banjo playing so that his works can have some melodic coherence and some national character. Bach's Art of Fugue and Beethoven's late quartets are incredibly rich, but they are decidedly not for everyone.
I may not be an intellectual (I only play one on the Web). That play looks as if it could become very dangerous very fast in America, where survival may soon depend on how satisfied one can be with a 'dumb' culture. I'm guessing that Donald Trump's America will be one in which one works and is expected to accept either religion or mass low culture (most people will be far poorer, so forget consumerism as America rushes headlong into the social realities of the Gilded Age; forget anything 'intellectual, for thought will be understood as the highest form of treachery). I expect to thoroughly hate life in Trump's America. I am not sure that I can survive it. I am beginning to regret that I took care of myself as I did instead of chain-smoking, drinking myself into cirrhosis, or having reckless sex.
All that I expect to live for during the Trump Presidency is resisting it by participating in demonstrations and protests... and outlasting it. Maybe I will have some wisdom to impart. Education? it's back to the liberal arts, and expand it to at least K-14 as a norm so that youth can learn how to judge what is offered as information. We need to ensure that those who graduate from college and become leaders and creators have some values that allow one to make humane choices instead of thinking of sex, bureaucratic power, and material indulgence. We need to recognize that if one is alienated from the detritus of mas low culture that a high culture (no, not LSD!) has much to offer. Politics? Shore up the existing Constitution to remove the seams that allow ruthless people to consolidate dictatorial power or replace it with something still workable. Economics? Probably tax the super-rich heavily to support an economy in which people can work and still live comfortably (volunteering, creative activity not for swift gain, imparting culture to youth even if one is not a formal teacher) without having an obvious employer. If we are stuck with robotic production that cuts into the need for a paid workforce, then maybe those who profit from the robot workforce can share the bounties with us -- let they be unable to sell what those robots produce to people too destitute to buy the stuff.
We cannot put the technological genie back in the lamp. We will be unable to go back to the electronics of even twenty years ago. We cannot undo the wealth of information (and disinformation) on the Internet. We simply are handling it badly, and Donald Trump is a symptom of people who can fall for anything in a culture that offers everything and no means of sorting it out.
You're a rootless wannabe cosmopolitan stuck some where in rural America. I'm a rooted suburbanite (I have no desire to live anywhere else) who is a good old country boy at heart. I love being in the outdoors. I love to hunt and fish. I like and I'm able to relate to most of the regular country folks. I'm not one to impose or bother or interrupt someone's life. So, I not the one who knocks on a farmers door to ask if we can hunt on their land. However, I'm the one who the farmer ends of talking to and getting to know and makes his decision on whether or not he/she allows us to hunt his/her land. Values, understanding the values people who own land that you'd like an opportunity to hunt. The farmer didn't see a cosmopolitan decked out in fancy hunting clothes, a city slicker attitude, who has soft hands who wasn't all that interested in listening to him/her or their rules who didn't seem to value or appreciate anything they owned. The farmer saw a man whose clothes were obviously worn who didn't have a city slicker attitude, who had an attitude more like them, whose hands were a bit rough, who listened to them with respect, who'd ask questions relating to the rules associated with the use of their property who showed interest in them and an appreciation for their land and for them as people as well. Could you learn a valuable thing or two from me ? Probably. Bob doesn't mean all that much to me. Bob's academic degree doesn't mean that much to me. Bob's negative view and opinions of me doesn't mean that much to me. I'm not here to cozy up and snuggle with Bob to gain his support or friendship. I'm not here to impress people like yourself or Bob with uppity liberal talk and uppity liberal values associated with uppity liberal who live in blue bubbles. Intellectual play grounds don't accomplish very much but interesting to screw around in while nothing important is needed to be done.
I enjoy hiking. If someone ever introduced me to fly fishing I might enjoy it. I like it quiet. The thrill of trying to reel in a big fish that thought it got an hors d'oeuvre and instead of a hook with me reeling it in? That sounds exciting.
Hunting? Probably not. But I respect the sport hunter, usually a good citizen. I enjoy a nice venison steak, by the way. Te heavily-worn hunting clothes indicate age more than anything else of the clothes. But note well: sport hunters are pro-environment. Hikers, boaters, bird-watchers, and sport hunters might have something in common should President Trump choose to ravage the environment for quick profits and leave a mess behind.
I notice your contempt for the soft hands of 'city slickers'. That's how the Commies often thought that they could find people not from among the 'workers and peasants' that they so claimed to love -- before taking away all dignity from them. Of course they killed the people with soft hands, the obvious exploiters.
I have spent time in the big city; I have lived in the suburbs; I now live in a rural area that has only one objective attraction: a fairly-good live theater. One needs really -strong family ties to find life good here or else be from a real Hell-hole. I recognize how complicated the relationships are in a small town, and one keeps them all one's life or one never fits in again.
But back to the validity of education. We have a plethora of entertainment, culture, and alleged information. I can tell people that if they want to feel good about themselves without having done anything wrong, then see some great art. It gives me a sense of peace that few other things can. It's more powerful than prayer. Music? Allow me to suggest that when I see great art in silence I often feel music in my brain; when I hear great music without much to see I get visions of great art of one kind or another. Of course, esthetic judgments are entirely subjective, perhaps reflecting what environment one grew up in.
Most people are going to work less -- much less -- than they used to because of automation. We will have more leisure -- and that may do more to define us than our economic roles. It's just as well. We can use our leisure to enrich our lives or to mess up badly. If we are going to mess life up badly in our free time, then we might as well just work.
But truth and falsehood are not subjective. Both can be tempting. Even as a strictly practical value we need to have the wisdom to avoid doing things that hurt us -- like getting involved in abusive cults, succumbing to addiction, falling for get-rich-quick schemes, or resorting to quack medicine. Oh yes -- voting for demagogues. The better that we know formal logic, the less gullible we are. The more that we can accept that there's no such thing as a free lunch the less likely we are to fall for something too-good-to-be-true... that is neither good nor true. The more that we know about psychology the less likely we are to accept the claims of a sociopath. Knowing what one must know to make informed judgments and to make sure that such risks that one takes are wise risks. We might even get more satisfaction in life.
At the best, intellectuals are the tour guides to the good life. That's not to say that all intellectuals are honorable and trustworthy -- but the better educated we are, the more readily we can sort that out.
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.