Hi Alex: I am sending you this because I think you might like it. it is a discussion of simplicity, art and many other things. Ray is a native american who lives in NYC and does something in music. Keith is kind of an all round English idiot. I like what Ray writes a great deal.
Tell me what you think Michael ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Ray Evans Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 3:00 PM Subject: Re: Appendix: Distance-working/Low-rise buildings Hi Keith, > Hi Ray, > At 10:08 01/10/01 -0400, Ray Harrell wrote: > >Keith the last two posts I've sent to Futurework have gotten through only to > >the people on the list that I CCed. So this may be only between the two > >of us. > > No -- this came via FW too. Interesting, I haven't been getting any of the posts that I've sent to FW returned as posts. But if you all are, then I guess that works, sort of. > >Questions: snip Keith said: > . . . and the larger the city, the greater the rate of innovation within > it. And this, I suppose, is the reason why there are such dense clusterings > of specializations within cities -- such as financial services in > Manhattan. Such also have the benefits of easier recruitment of specialist > staff. But the costs are very great, too (pollution, travel costs, hours of > commuting time at both ends of the day, etc, etc) and other potential > constraints will loom larger as clustering grows -- quite besides the > possibility of further terrorist attacks on skyscrapers. Coming from the countryside, I love the city. The occasional terrorist doesn't bother me nearly as much as the occasional tremor from the faults knowing that there is no preparation for the big one. I used to dream that I was falling out the window onto Broadway when I had a loft bed that was five feet up in the air and against the window. But I conquered that even as my eyes began to give me vertigo from my age. But, I will not give up the mix of cultures, the conversations with people from places I will never see and the art and expressions of incredible thinkers and seers from all over the planet. > (snip) > (REH) > >Note how afraid people on > >this list are to examining seriously the claims of the fanatics that blew up > >a segment of the city. > (KH) > As far as I'm concerned, it's not a matter of being afraid of discussing > these sorts of issues. I'm fascinated by them but I wouldn't dream of > raising or discussing them here because it would produce too much emotion > and take us away from the basic purpose of this List -- the nature/future > of jobs. I regard this as the probably the most important problem of them > all -- and always has been throughout history -- upon which all other > important human issues rest. Yes, -- even things like music, art and culture! See I don't think that the future of jobs IS the future of work. Artists often work for little or nothing to solve a problem and open a door. Many like Edgar Varese and Charles Ives never got paid more than a pittance for work that showed the future what their world was like with all of its beauty in the midst of what seemed drivel. Central Park in the Dark, a Church tent meeting or a Fourth of July Overture, in a masterpiece that the head of the NYPhilharmonic told Ives should never have been written at the time. I WOULD like to talk about a society that considers itself a serious alternative to the West but oppresses artists and women and limits the possibilities of human endeavor while practicing religious purity in their own home land and yet complains that the world is prejudiced against them when they complain about Jews doing the same in their Sacred City. We Indians have a similar situation with Mountain Climbers climbing through our ceremonials and sacred places just to prove that they can and that their view of natural life has more political power than ours to protect our sacred places. We complain about China with Tibet but the Yarok here have the same running religion as is practiced in certain areas of Tibet. Runners run at night up Mountain trails that can take a lifetime to complete the run to the top as they learn every rock and cranny in both Mountain and their souls. The US Supreme Court gave a logging company permission to cut a logging road right through the center of a religion that was thousands of years old. It is all art to me just as much as the Sistine Chapel and the works of Palestrina. If a principle works in one place it should work in another. Why not look in Mecca for oil and the Sistine Chapel for Gold? What is the future of real work? Work that has genuine intellectual and cultural productivity as opposed to the number crunchers. That builds superior human beings, societies and families not to mention beautiful ones. > (REH) > >3. Communication by writing makes people "kinesics" dumb. Already the > >video phones and the talk news networks are teaching us to ignore facial > >micro-movements which carry as much information for the non-white world as > >does the words themselves. > > I disagree here. I don't know why the white world should have any less > discernment in "facial micro movements" than the non-white world. I think > it's precisely because of the TV screen that we are more able to detect > insincerity in our leaders than ever before. Note in the later sections I put "White" in quotes. I meant to in the part cited above as well. It is difficult to know what to call this. In the past, European Americans called it "White" and now that is considered racist. I hesitate to call all European Americans "White" because I consider it to be an attitude that embraces such things as the "White Man's Burden", European Art as the only real thing and European Science as reality when in effect it is a narrow band of reality extended in as wide a use as is possible for some selfish benefit to the ruin of others. It is not European to be selfish but this use of an obnoxious science is a part of Euro-American politics. To deny other people's existence as human in this day and time is untenable and yet we have the rise of Cultural wars as if the death of a culture is something to be desired. The latest group called themselves "White" and it was not until Hitler ruined the show by being such a monster that it went out of fashion. But it is still a cultural attitude below the surface of things. Sorry to ramble on about that but I find it embarrassing to use such language. You are right about the TV but Hall and Geertz used movies before television because they could go frame by frame. Actors and Artists in England and Europe also noted this in their explorations of color and light on faces both in paint and in light on the stage as modern lighting came into being. Before that it was done out of doors in places like the Island Epidoris where light, masks and make-up created the illusion of micro-movements. However, in the Victorian Era the showing of such emotive movements as well as the rise of writing as the pure expression of human reality tended to kill it off in a blast of mono-chronic and monochromatic classicism. That was what Hall found in the testing of student's perceptions. Due to the taboos on acknowledging non-verbal communication the European American students he tested were much less adept at recognizing visual cues and social rituals than the Hispanic, Black and Native American students he tested. So the IQ tests test on words which the EA student is better at. That is one of the points of the Internet. There are no cues other than the written word. The body doesn't exist and on TV these days it doesn't matter much whether the mouth is out of Sync with the words or not. They often are and as long as they aren't seconds behind, nobody is bothered, except for me, my students and half of the rest of the world. > (REH) > >The "white" world is married to the > >ultra-simplicities of Math and Physics. Note the term used by the "white > >world" is not simplicity but "elegant", either way it can be entered into a > >computer but no such thing can be done with the complexities of Chromatic > >harmony. That is why I have to have this new computer with all of that > >memory. > > OK I'll grant you that the basic tenets of maths and physics are simple, > but the "white" world is also deeply interested in much more complex > matters such as brain science, biogenetics, lunguistics and so forth. True, but with the exception of the fact that they don't know much about brain science and it's density is daunting and computers have made biogenetics viable, again for the same reason, these Intellectual activities are at their roots still amazingly simple once they are understood. Understanding the works of Richard Strauss and why they are finer than the works of Max Reger is another matter. Even today the complexity of artistic creativity is so complicated that most people just ascribe it to personal preference. As for linguistics, you have many of the same issues since language is one of the art forms and the mix of music and words can take you into thousands of alternatives. Artistic expression expands in complexity while science simplifies. I realize that in itself is oversimple but that is in a crux the problem of Art and computation. They simply haven't figured out how to do it yet and it will take a lot more time and effort before they do. > (REH) > >There is an extensive discussion of such things in Edward T. Hall and the > >writings of Clifford Geertz. Hall uses the terms European Americans instead > >of "White World.". Also note that the scientists in the Princeton > >Institute for Advanced Study where Geertz is the head of the anthropology > >section refused to allow him to test them on the "culture" of science. > > I don;t know about this case. but I've long thought that the most eminent > scientists know a great deal more about the arts world than eminent artists > know about science. In fact, the very best scientists like to switch around > while artists and musicians have narrow fields of interest. That is not my experience at all. The competition for paid work demands that artists work sometimes two and three performances a day just to make a living in NYCity. And the only ones working are the upper two per cent. Science has no such labor problem. On the other hand I have taught a lot of scientists and they are delightful and are only a problem when they are out of work. I could tell you some stories in my forty three years of teaching. (snip) > If it is the terrorist attack on NYTC you're referring to I thoroughly > understand. I know from my American customers just how much it has affected > your country. In my own studio I have students who lost bright young people that they had taught their bar mitzvahs. Another man lost seven hundred employees. The funerals are overwhelming. Both fire companies within ten blocks of where I live lost 20 men altogether. Bright beautiful people. Father's in the prime of life with families. > > (REH) > >This is my city and I think an air base > >nearby and serious governmental standardization and control on air traffic > >control would have stopped all of that instead of this Private Enterprise > >idiocy. Instead we get PCs at home but chaos in the air. And then we > >breed economists like locusts. > > I don't fully understand you here. I don't know why you're so > anti-economist. Economics is, at bottom, about human nature and this, > surely, is one of the most fascinating subjects of all. 1. I think they have created a monstrous abuse of language that creates chaos in assigning value to work. 2. I think that the meaning of work is not to be found in Utility. 3. I think they are sleazy in escaping responsibility for the various economic isms that have desecrated the last century and offers to do the same for the future as well. 4. I think that they are not nearly as important as they would have us believe. 5. I believe that the computer will eventually show that their pet theories are inane and inhumane and stifles creativity while encouraging banal derivative simpleminded drivel. Not a smarter population but a more glib and arrogant one. 6. I believe that they will eventually come to their senses but by that time so many great minds will have been lost to the externalization of motivation that their shame will create a problem for the profession's ability to do a necessary job. 7. Yes I believe that it is necessary but I also believe that they haven't even begun to ask the questions that their numbers imply. 8. I believe that only paying 2% out of every college graduated economist would make them listen more and supply a little empathy. I know wonderful human beings who are economists. I have some that I directly admire and care about. But the profession is messianic and I don't believe that works. Value is too important to trust to any one profession. It has to be fought over and negotiated. Unfortunately today the Economists as a profession have too much power and too little experience in what it means to be a culture and a viable society. Those twin towers you love to talk about were built on the principles of cost effectiveness. We could call it the Andrew Lloyd Webber syndrome. What 19th century tailor who paid his money to go to the opera would ever have believed that such simple minded nonsense would be the great art of 20th century capitalism? Yes I teach it and the art is not in Webber but in the performers who create something beyond him. That was what Henry Irving did with the magnificent play "The Bells". You remember that one don't you? That was one "Long Days Journey into Night" and we are in it right now due to the sick attitude towards value that our country admires. What is it they call it? Value Intensive? I can't remember, its too depressing. If you think that somewhere in there I might care about what they do, you are right. I just think they aim way below their potential. And it is unworthy of them as a profession. > (REH) > >But the city has survived and it will > >continue past this plague. > (KH) > I agree. > I still agree. REH
