Keith Hudson wrote:
>
> Hi Ray,
[snip]
> (REH)
> ---> snip
> >> >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.
[snip]
So I guess Bach wrote the Ultra-simplistic Fahtasy and Fugue (BWV 903)?
I think the ultra-simplicities of Math and Physics
are probably shared by persons of other colors whose
imaginative horizon is bounded by the latest Intel chip
allounctment and the latest Linux release.
Robert Venturi celebrated making a mess of everything
so long as he would get glorified for it. Venturi
wrote, supposedly against Mies van der Rohe: "Less is a bore",
and urged us to "Learn from Las Vegas" -- his architecture,
at least his Guild House housing for the
elderly in Philadelphia, is cynically *anti-human*, and he
is proud of the details that make it be so.
The problem of the "white world" is a "treason of the clerks",
which is based on a failure of our elite universities
to understand or nurture the highest cultural ideals
of the West. They give tests and grades instead
of constructing and nurturing peer study communities
(see, e.g., Rabelais for an alternative).
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/aboutTime.html#wisdom
Edmund Husserl was a "white person" (well, an assimilated
jew who had converted to Protestantism).
Scientism and AI-envy and "the low bid" and such are
sources of over-simplifications.
I would note that I am a "white Person" who has labored as
a computer programmer for 30 years, and I don't "buy"
any of the scientistic stuff -- it's possible
even for a compputer programmer employee to
think more richly than "Star Trek"-mentalite.
But I will agree that it is an uphill struggle.
Let me give one white person's (my) definition of
"elegant":
Very simple in "blueprint spec" but
very rich in meaning, so that one can
learn enriching and delighting things from the thing
during daily intimacy using it over
a whole lifetime.
(If you want nuance in surface detail, get a microscope
and see how the thing stands up to being looked at
closely!)
Hermann Broch (another "white person", albeit, again,
an assimilated jew converted to Protestantism, I believe),
has a lovely phrase to describe *this kiind of simplicity*:
raised high above the clamour of the non-existent
Unfortunately, this clamorous cr-p really does "exist" in the
sense of having power to *impinge* on our human existence
and drag us down to its level of clamour (bricolage?).
Of course there is good complexity, too. But, at Peter
and Alison Smithson said of the generation of architects who
came of age after 1930, and who build "modern" office buildings
because they were cheaper: They had no understanding of
what the original excitement was all about.
As Adolf Loos said in his famous essay (1907) of the
same title:
Ornament is crime.
And, as for many other so-called "cultures" (Yes,
I know there are exceptions -- I think???), they would
do better if all their knives and razors were taken
away from them so that they would have more trouble
mutilating the genitals of their children as "rites
of passage" -- to "perfect what nature left
not quite finished". (One of the few things I
liked in Anti-Oedipus was the idea that the original
form of writing was bodily scarification to write
the power of the group into the flesh of the individual
so he or she wouldn't forget it easily.)
"Yours in discourse...."
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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