I am in complete agreement with Cheerskep here. Note that a fine writer, Simon Shama, has been bashed for the same crime as Bell in his brand new book on America wherein he gives plain folk examples to illustrate huge, complex, social webs that defy such simplistic summaries -- suited, perhaps, for pop tv but not for serious social history.
Incidentally, when I mentioned U.S. Grant's observation re the madness of John Brown, I used the word sober as a paradoxical term, to suggest both the terse clarity of Grant's observation and the fact that he was much criticized for his excessive drinking. How I love the paradox that condemns the speaker as much as the speakee, not excluding myself often enough. On this list we practice that paradox every time we try for a universal definition of art or the aesthetic experience. wc ________________________________ From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, June 1, 2009 10:25:52 AM Subject: Re: "...In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries[,]...for...the artists and the educated social classes...the exploration of all impulses became an aesthetic norm." William writes: "In any age, in every farm, village, and city there are those who exceed all taboos and trash all standards. To use that as a basis for any conclusion about a generation or era is silly." I agree with William's basic point here. (I don't consider "basic" his too-extreme assertion that every farm has "those who exceed all taboos and trash all standards.") I summoned up John Brown, but I hope William doesn't think I was using Brown as a basis for any conclusion about a generation or era. In effect I was doing just the opposite. Daniel Bell's hollow statement was: "...In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries[,]...for...the artists and the educated social classes...the exploration of all impulses became an aesthetic norm." I protested that Bell's statement had too many undefined terms: e.g. 'exploration', 'impulses', 'aesthetic', 'norms', 'class', 'all'. There was nothing in Bell's lines to exclude the embracing of armed insurrection as an "impulse" (Bell says "ALL" impulses), or to exclude Brown and his followers as a "class". I agree with William's sense of silliness in the air here, and I specifically sniffed it in the notion that there was anything of the "norm" or "aesthetic" about Brown and his impulses either when he pursued them or after he was gone. The stirring gripe behind my protest was a dislike of sociologists' inclination to wield grandiloquent abstractions that are catchy, so generalized as to be faux-universals, and consequentially vacuous. Recall that Bell is the author of THE END OF IDEOLOGY (1960), and THE COMING OF POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY (1973). ************** An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222377040x1201454360/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072&hmpgID=62&; bcd=JuneExcfooterNO62)
