Edward, you scratched the Bear but you know I love ya so don't get your
feelings hurt, I'm just grouchy today.
Ray E. Harrell wrote:
>Welcome to the world of the arts. Out of 5,650 graduates a year in vocal
> performing >arts programs there are about 300 full time jobs. We are told
> by the economists that >making a living at something else means that we
> should be happy to do the art for >free. Welcome to the world of lean and
> agile thought and virtual reality. >Prooducktivity. I wonder who thought
> that one up. So far only Mike Hollinshead has >commented on our Nobel
> Laureate (Friedman) and his fear of having to pay taxes for >the common
> good. Thank you Mike for rising from your sickbed.
> >
>
> Edward answered:
> This is not only happening in the vocal and performing arts. Former
> neighbors or ours both had Ph.D.s, he in microbiology and she in some other
> field of biology. Neither could get full-time work in their professions.
> Both went back to university, he to do an MBA, she to obtain a teacher's
> certificate. Both then got full time work.
This society is definitely more comfortable with hired hands than highly skilled
and cultured minds.
The most clear thought out and intellectual discussions of the current political
situation here in the states are written for the NYTimes by the former theater
critic of the paper, Frank Rich. He is more insightful, a better analyst of
theoretical systems and less afraid to take on the current fads than any of the
other columnists. I wrote the Times after today's column and suggested that
they rotate the theater critic's job amongst their political analysts. A
little bit of sophistication and having to fight off the erudition of the
Critic's critics would do them all a lot of good IMHO. Sam and Cokie think
they have it rough in Washington but politics are a "piece of cake" compared to
the sharks in the New York Art world.
> It would seem that there has been a change of emphasis from specialization
> to flexibility; from the application of skill and knowledge in depth to the
> provision of "just in time" solutions.
You guys think you have just invented the wheel? "Flexible" in the arts is
called "Free Lance" and has existed for 200 years. "Just in time" is what we
call, in an orchestra concert, a "reading" and demands a higher skill if it is
to be merely adaquate. On the other hand, AGILE manufacturing's virtual
product systems are virtually unrecognizable from the plain old movie production
company. The movie industry however, has a lot more experience and thus
integrity around paying their labor than the AGILE companies thus far have
shown.
> To know a little bit about a lot of
> things, as MBA's do, is more valuable than knowing a lot about one thing, as
> microbiologists do.
Unless you need a microbiologist to find out the cause of that bug that has been
dining and releasing his "toxins" inside you for the past several months. The
MBAs have made a shambles of such complexities in this country (HMOs) with more
time lost to sickness this year than any in my memory.
As a result I have gone back to the Veteran's Hospitals who now seem fabulous in
comparison (socialism!) and I have taken to eating only that which is pesticide
and hormone free. I've been much healthier while the great American diet has
never made more people sicker.
It's true the generalists are richer today and many of them are those same
fundamentalist who are remarkably ignorant of the biblical issues of Usury.
MacDonalds to them is haute cuisine and dumber is better. You can have it.
Money can't buy the return of their's or their children's health in about twenty
years.
As an example you should examine the medical profession's "economie of scale"
decision around the omega six polyunsaturated oils that have caused such a rise
in breast cancer in women. It was better for men's hearts and the men were
the breadwinners so the medical profession "pushed" the more economically
oriented omega six oils. It was a purely economic decision and highly immoral,
uncultured and stupid as well.
(At this point I can hear someone complaining that I'm getting "off subject".
No, I'm being general and I learned in fugue class how to relate more than one
strain of thought to another at the same time. Time is not one of those
subjects taught in academics these days. That makes it necessary for them to
hang in with the linear. But there are many lines and knowing how they relate
is, to my way of thinking as an artist, more important.)
> One can visualize a world in which everything the
> microbiologist knows can be stored in a computer, and in which the
> generalist (perhaps an MBA with a microbiology background) who knows how to
> organize it, store it, retrieve it and apply it is the really important guy.
> It is guys like him or her that businesses and governments will increasingly
> want to hire and the universities will increasingly try to turn out.
Sorry Ed, but computers don't make things less complex but more so. You are
mistaking the effects of the accessibility of that knowledge on the job market.
When more knowledge is searchable there will be a leap in sophistication around
the world in all areas. They are already discovering that at Carnegie
Mellon's digital library. Old searchable knowledge is easier and has always
been so. But the computer makes comparisons and systems more easily retrieved
and applied. That doesn't heighten generality but the reverse making the
average person more erudite. But it is the "practiced knowledge" that makes
such material relevant to life. Just because it is old doesn't mean that it
isn't critical for life or fulfillment. Ask those folks who died on those "old
trails" up Dinali last year.
However, it is usually that which is unknown that defines complexity. Nothing
is complex to someone who knows how to accomplish it. Unfortunately there is a
pedagogical error in all of this that states that "Understanding" is
sufficient. It is "Knowledge" that is sufficient, Understanding is only "on the
way to" relevant knowledge. Knowledge means an instantaineous conscious
successful response to a situation. Our world is not less complex but more
so. Thus Knowledge and mastery is more important than ever.
I would suggest going to the video and renting that South African movie about
the bushman. I believe the title was "The Gods Must be Crazy." The
comparison between the Bushman and the Urban "civilization" that opens the movie
is a good humorous exploration of the above.
> As for the performing arts, turning on our TVs, renting videos, and buying
> CDs does seem to have disposed of the need to get dressed, get in the car,
> and go to the theater, all at considerably greater expense.
MacDonald's anyone?
> Think of it --
> with a good CD player you can now hear the best voices and orchestras, and
> you can even shut your eyes and use earphones if you want to be alone.
> There are still things that you have to go and see or hear because there is
> no other satisfactory way of accessing them -- stage plays for example --
> but they are diminishing in type and number.
If you think that movies are not a satisfactory substitute for live theater and
yet believe the CD can substitute for live music then we are speaking of an
issue of erudition. Recordings are an art form but they are nothing more than
a record of a particular moment or (in the recording practice of today) they are
a series of moments strung together with little formal reference while giving
the most importance to electronic acoustical values. In the case of today's
CDs they are little more than "trailers" that point to what the real thing might
be like. The whole is greater than the sum of all the parts.
You should have the experience of your work and proportionalities being left on
the cutting room floor and finding the formal cohesion destroyed all in the name
of expediency. I rarely listen to such things (CDs) except to acquaint myself
with something that I later will do in more depth. Most are a hopeless
mishmash of values.
> The problem appears to that, in the not too distant past, someone,
> somewhere, linked the performing arts to the economy. This worked for
> awhile because the economy was localized and the type of technology
> available today was either non-existent or existed in a rudimentary form.
Nonsense, Economies of Scale need consumers who LACK discrimination around "one
of a kind" products. The biggest fraud of modern economics is the supposed link
between creativity and today's market. I would suggest you listen to some of
the other lists on the net concerned with consultants talking about quality and
arriving at conclusions that make their work intolerable because they just
became too sophisticated to accept mass produced mediocrity.
Most of them were hired for their imagination and were promised a creative
environment. Unfortunately an environment tied to the bottom line rarely has
enough time to accomplish anything of a serious complexity. That is why there
has never been a single chip-fab laboratory developed apart from government
intervention like Sema-tech. Such things are too complicated for generalists
or free marketers. So is most art or winning a war.
> Two things appear to have happened since: the economy has become
> "globalized" (how I hate that word but there does not seem to be another!)
> and the ability to distribute and consume (good economic words) artistic
> performances via gadgetry has exploded.
Where have you been? Music has been globalized for 100 years as has the
performing arts.The cold hard facts is that modern economics has not dealt , in
any profession, with the issue of labor and productivity. I thought that was
why we had a "future of work" list!
You guys (economists) are just crying in your beer about something that you
have given artists all kinds of abuse about since the 1920s. Well you were
wrong and now you are getting a taste of your version of "folk music" and "rock
and roll" that we have had to deal with since the 29 crash and the arts were
written out of the "canon of needs." Unfortunately, in this climate, when one
becomes more discriminate they eventually pay through the nose for the rise in
their sophistication. When there is less product it costs more.
More artists create better, more sophisticated perceptions and expression. It
is also cheaper when there is a lot of it. But, the start up costs and skills
are very expensive. Live performance is a full time job. The great Wagnerian
Kirstin Flagstad said, "the first day I don't practice, I know it. The second
day, my butler knows it and the third day the audience knows it."
> There is no need to pay all of the
> artists, even if they are better than mediocre. Let them go back to singing
> in church!
Actually there is little need to pay anyone once the computer is complete and
the factories are modernized, but that is what we have been speaking of isn't
it? Sounds like we have arrived at the "Star Trek" level of art. There
are great works of art that deal with the issues in a much more satisfying
manner and that explore the issues more completely.
Rather than go to church for music I would be more interested in the kind of
economics in the church that were examined seriously at the beginning of the
banking systems. Break out all of those old treatises on Usury and let's get
down and dirty.
REH
