The thing that music is very good at defining, is the outlines of systems that are found in cultures and eras. We have no problems defining styles and eras. The current branding fashions of the day are the generic tools of every music student and pop musicians are absolute fetishists about it. Now the Harvard Business Review is as well. The abstract arts are good at what the art of politics is not good at, at all. Defining the distinction between the turf of the past the present. The past is simple entertainment and craft, the present requires mastery and creativity. Artists who demean other systems don't fare well in history.
And yet economists from Smith to the present have eliminated whole crucial areas of social knowledge and especially the value and purpose of the arts, as expendable in their systems. (zero utility, not ten, twenty but ZER0 utility according Stanley Jevons.) Meanwhile Peter Senge speaks of the need for systems thought (ART) and for personal mastery in the modern world as a need of business. John Warfield spoke of the need to be able to diminish complexity through personal mastery (VIRTUOSITY) as well. And yet Americans have not grown more intelligent or masterful from Franklin's time to the present. Government is not more masterful. As the culture declines the government freezes. Economics did not flower from Smith forward but limited in order to achieve a system. They gave up ownership of people in order to rent them and have no responsibility for their upkeep as an issue of "personal freedom." They dumbed the general population for dull drone work in factories and today they find their Drones can't do math or science and treat serious computer tools as toys. Its the societies that take mastery and pattern sophistication seriously that are marketing the best students in the world. Today's Americans are the opposite of Franklin who had cross cultural discussions with the native governments over personal responsibility and the responsibility of the government for the general welfare of its citizens. Franklin even had an Iroquois delegation in Philadelphia as advisors at the Constitutional Convention. But Franklin's time and government are not the same system's needs today. The needs are not the same. Today's systems require more virtuosity and performance, not less. Less superstition not more. The development of an education that would fulfill the system's needs is not available from the people who venerate the founding fathers and make the constitution into a second bible. Why not? Why are the most regressive and romantically superstitious the members of the "Federalist Society?" The "Cato" Institute? I admire the constitution and hesitate to change it except in small ways, but it must be adapted to meet the world in the present. We need more masterful governing not less. States clamoring for state's rights have no hope of existing as separate entities in a world economy. The vast cultures of Europe are inadequate to the present but they are more adequate as nations than Alabama, Texas, Florida or Virginia and what kind of a nation would Alaska be? States rights? Without America they are banana republics. Nicaragua is more viable than Oklahoma as a separate state. Oklahoma can't even deal with the diversity in their state population. They need a Federal government just to keep peace as do most of the Southern States. Beethoven and the great Masters are as relevant to the soul of humanity today as they were in their own day. I cannot say the same for the Utilitarian's and their arrogance. I also cannot say the same about the serious but flawed individuals who set up the 1776 system that would continue to own and enslave 40 to 60 million African souls and commit genocide to my own blood line. The systems then and today don't match. The people were flawed and to post the kind of abstract garbage that the libertarians use as justification for grand theft off of the face of the nation is not sustainable. They are simple minded romanticists in the artistic way of thinking. I admire the great artistic systems of 18th and 19th centuries but have no illusions about what would happen to me or my family in the midst of those folk's politics. We didn't have citizenship until the 20th century in their system. Their Artistic systems are benign. We are still fighting the Tory war of 1776 and the states rights battles of 1860. Those folks used to practice their 2nd Amendment rights by lining up ex-slaves and seeing how many one bullet would kill. That we still hear the same lame arguments is not success, that's failure in my eyes. Bach was far more successful and worthy of emulation as a theorition as was the wonderful Jewish composer Gustav Mahler who the New York societal system probably killed. REH -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 10:22 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Political arithmetic I would be the last person to disparage the cultural value of music. But I'm afraid you fall into a kind of imperialism of music, Ray, when you claim that composers are the only people who know what they are talking about. It would be good if someone would read Chastellux or Ben Franklin before passing judgment on how much they knew or didn't know about politics and what they were ore were not trying to tell people with regard to how much government there should be. On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 4:20 PM, Ray Harrell <[email protected]> wrote: > I've begun to rethink all of these folks and their stories about numbers. > The issue of competency and personal mastery is far beyond the simplicity of > numbers. Jefferson's quote about government simply speaks to the fact that > he and others could not comprehend the resolution of complexity in mastering > the art of government. The problem is not to have less of something but to > be able to control virtuosically more, thus reducing complexity in numerical > values to zero. To have less to work with isn't gaining competency but is > the realm of poverty. I've become convinced that the only people who > really knew what they were talking about in the 18th and 19th centuries were > Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Mahler and the students in the great > music studios, etc. Wars have not been fought over the value of artistic > virtuosity but they have been fought over the Art of politics. It would be > good if someone learned how to DO politics before they try to tell people > how much there should be. IMHO. > > REH > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sandwichman > Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 4:00 PM > To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION > Subject: [Futurework] Political arithmetic > > The wealth of nations implies some sort of political arithmetic - the > calculation either of an immense sum or of some descriptive ratio, a > distribution or per capita allotment. Adam Smith referred to "the > distribution of the necessities of life." Benjamin Franklin pondered a > four-hour working day that had been "computed by some political > arithmetician." Thomas Jefferson's friend, the Marquis de Chastellux > proposed a formula for ascertaining public happiness, which Jefferson > summed up as a cautionary tale: "If we can prevent government from > wasting the labors of the people under the pretence of taking care of > them, they must become happy." > > Would an alternative vision of the good society evince a similar > fascination with numbers? I will argue here that it must, if only out > of strategic and transitional necessity. The outline of the kind of > reckoning required was already implied in Chastellux's and Franklin's > speculations and has been a recurrent, if dissident and subterranean, > theme in political economy since the earliest days. Even Adam Smith > somewhat ambivalently upheld "ease of body and peace of mind" as "what > constitutes the real happiness of human life." > > But how does one measure ease of body and peace of mind? We will get > to the question of how presently, but first I would like to explain > why it is crucial to calculate it, not merely to exalt it... > > http://ecologicalheadstand.blogspot.com/p/time-on-ledger-social-accounting-f > or.html > > -- > Sandwichman > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
