I said:
>
> > We can start by cleaning up the language of economics that declares
> widgets
> > progressive and symphony orchestras stagnant. Then we can deal with
> such
> > things as productivity and values i.e. only that which is useful has
> utility
> > and utility equals human pleasure, (one of the dumber statements of the
> last
> > three hundred years, don't you think?). Then we can declare a serious
> > study of work and why it is important to both individuals and society
> beyond
> > simple cash payment. Got to go to rehearsal.
> >
> > REH
>
> Ray, I don't think it's quite right to say that economists saw utility as
> being equal to pleasure. It would be more correct to say that they saw it
as
> the source of human satisfaction.
Actually Bentham and Mill used the term pleasure and tried to decide how you
could measure it.
>The more utility, or "utils", accruing to
> someone, the more satisfied he would be, though each util would give him a
> decreasing amount of satisfaction. Utilitarian economists pretended not to
> make moral judgments, but most would probably have restricted what they
> meant by "satisfaction" as relating to the fulfillment of basic needs.
Until the time of Jevons, the opposite was true. The issue of a decline in
pleasure in a piece of music as compared to ownership of a material thing
was a source of grief to JS Mill, especially since Wordsworth had brought
him back from a nervous breakdown through the artistic process.
As for basic needs, these folks were much more cultivated then you are
giving them credit for being. Otherwise why would they have been so
knowledgeable when as the "wretched refuse of their teeming shore" these
walking wounded came to America and the first thing they did was build a
church and a theater. Their knowledge of the classics was far superior to
our audiences today as was their reason for knowing such. You got it
wrong Ed, it was we natives that Milanowski said that our lives were brutish
and short, not the Europeans. He was wrong about us as well. But what
do you expect when everything is remembered in books that go out of print
and disappear. I'm just delighted that people are starting to ask the
basic questions again. The very basic ones, like what forms our lives and
what gives us pleasure. How to discover and create from an inner life.
> "Pleasure" would not likely be viewed as a basic need, at least not for
the
> poor, but of course once basic needs were satisfied, the individual was
free
> to pursue pleasure in any way he saw fit.
So all of those musicians and artists were from the rich? Get serious.
Most were lower middle class and servant classes. They were so good at
music that a servant had to be able to play and sing before they would hire
them to wait tables. Once more I point out that the most expensive seats
in the live theater today were the place where the folks who brought their
lunch and threw it if they didn't like the action on stage, sat. They
also tore up the seats and threw them at the stage as well. They were the
poor and in New Orleans the respected slaves who sat under the dripping
candles in the Orchestra Pit, now just called the Orchestra and where seats
run $200 in New York while the royalty boxes are cheaper.
> In 18th,19th and even early 20th Century Europe, most people were so busy
> simply satisfying their basic needs that they had no time for pleasure.
Are you from the wealthy? I'm from the Indian reservation that is still
the number one toxic waste superfund site in America. When we were hungry
we practiced. We placed musicians in the Chicago Symphony, developed one
of America's greatest composers (and Mickey Mantle) and many other
successful souls. Pleasure is one of the ways you subvert pain and
injustice. This is the economist's myth that has gotten us into this
bizarre situation.
"Only useful activity is valuable, meaningful, moral. Activity that is not
clearly, concretely useful to oneself or to others is worthless,
meaningless, immoral....All value is extrinsic, outside things....Utility,
though a quality of things is no inherent quality....Utility is that abstrac
quality whereby an object serves our purposes, and becomes entitled to rand
as a commodity." William Stanley Jevons
Should I point out in this system that since all meaning is extrinsic so is
all motivation. That is the flaw. No one ever chose to do something as
difficult as creativity in the most abstract of all disciplines, the arts,
in order to satisfy their basic needs unless everyone was poor and willing
to share for a song. Simple fun disappears quickly when a music student
confronts the concentration of sustained practice. It is the inner growth
and confidence of Mastery that gives real satisfaction. The development of
an inner life is usually done inspite of basic needs. But that doesn't
mean that artists should starve in order to create nor that they should be
irresponsible parents. Does attitude create action or does action create
attitude? It depends on how old you are and what your experience.
If you want to know how to control your future you do it by controlling your
environment. What you surround yourself with plus good teachers is always
the answer if you are a willing student. That is why America had so many
success stories in the past. They were freed from such nonsense about what
it took to be creative.
Reality is the issue and real history not a story that creates the belief
that you are correct for sitting in the place you sit. e.g. We had all
kinds of stories about Blacks since they were banned from the reservation.
Almost none of them turned out to be true. But we had to meet a few before
we could find that out. What was it Kant said? "Enlightenment is the
release from one's self-imposed tutelage."
Many
> could not fulfill even the most elementary of needs, so they starved.
Thank
> God you had the rich! Without them, it is very unlikely that the arts
would
> have survived.
The cultural war on the Guilds and the decline of personal craftsmanship are
not things that I personally find attractive. The wealthy harvested a
field of abilities that was there for them to harvest. In the arts it was
provided by the church primarily who trained the children to sing at mass.
In the other professions it was provided by the guildes with their system of
apprentice/journeyman/master which we still do in the vocal arts.
As for the arts surviving, it seems there is a correlation between the
survival of the arts and a general low wage in the rest of the population at
least in the 19th century. William Baumol and his artist wife have done
studies on the support for the arts in Ancient Greece, Shakespeare's London
& Mozart's Vienna to supplement his extensive studies of the arts in
contemporary America. I would recommend them for a cold shower in the heat
of economic passion.
The best thing economists could do is get to know a few Gypsies. They
always make a living at art but will walk away from you if you try to buy
it.
REH
