Dewey is my man. Boris Shoshensky ---------- Original Message ---------- From: "Mike Mallory" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Subject: Re: "Therebs more alienation andseparation of people in a commodified landscape ... Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2010 20:14:26 -0800
----- Original Message ----- From: "William Conger" <[email protected]> > We have built a post- renaissance > world on the cult of western style > individualism. Does it still work? Its > central myth is the idea of freedom, > personal freedom as the basis of all > achievement. It has worked very well if we > champion a vague sense of > mythologized freedom (that has never been adequately > defined) but what > happens when the world resources become too fragile and scanty > to support > everyone's free individualism? _____________________________________________________________________________ _________ I prefer John Dewey's notion of "freedom", which I will rephrase as "enabling conditions." Dewey rejects the "noble savage" idea that freedom is an original possession winnowed by the limitations of community. The "noble savage" hunting and gathering her way across the Europe 40,000 years ago was not free to catch an airliner to America. In fact the noble savage led a life of very limited options. What allows us the freedom of booking a seat on an airliner is the technology of flight, the development of petroleum based energy production, radar, a system of controlling air traffic and an economic environment allowing the concentration of investment capital into an agent managed enterprise, just to name a few. These are enabling conditions allowing people to fly on an airplane. Freedom, in Dewey's sense is not limited, but originates in social interdependence. For Dewey, democracy is not a way to protect our freedoms, but to develop them through advancement in the conditions that allow greater and more creative choices. Freedom in this sense is tied more closely to communalism than individualism. Dewey argued against the myth of "rugged individualism". +++++++++++++++++++++++++ As to the Max Haiven interview, I suggest that the commodification of art is more serious than either the economic or political implications. Insofar as a Work of Art is intended to communicate an experience (which I have argued is always the case), the commodification of art is the commodification of our experience. As such our meaning is available in the marketplace. Commercial art does not try to persuade us to buy something, it tries to persuade us to be something. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak!" Besides, Haiven fails to explain why a political foundation for creativity is preferable to an economic foundation. I would reject them both. Mike Mallory
