Platt said: I too enjoyed your paper, especially your summary at the end where you attribute progress to the individual, citing Pirsig's "history is biography" and writing, "The struggle is personal."
dmb replies: Thanks. How about the part where I quote John Dewey talking about why most aesthetic theories fail? He says they, "fail because they do not take account of the collective civilization that is the context in which works of art are produced and enjoyed" and "their whole conception of morals is so individualistic that they miss a sense of the WAY in which art exercises its humane function". Based on your track record here and on the present comments, I'd say you share in that failure. The idea of taking account of the "collective civilization" always rubs you the wrong way, namely leftward. Taking account of the context usually strikes you a commie plot or some such thing. More specifically, here you emphasized the personal and the biographical as if it were an assertion of individuality. But those words are meant to emphasize the particular situation, the specific and concrete problems encountered in experience as opposed to dreaming up solutions in the abstract. Its about context, not individualism. Creative people, in fact, often describe their inspired moments in terms of letting something else flow through them, as if they were channeling a spirit or possessed by a Muse. David Lynch in a big fan of transcendental meditation and uses that method to make his ego shrink, for example. And besides all that, the point is that the evolutionary nature of art totally depends upon its ability to resonate with the whole culture. Its transformative power operates on a collective level, and you always refuse to acknowledge such a thing - oddly - for political reasons. That refusal makes no sense for lots of reasons, but that's another thread for another day. _________________________________________________________________ It’s easy to add contacts from Facebook and other social sites through Windows Live™ Messenger. Learn how. https://www.invite2messenger.net/im/?source=TXT_EML_WLH_LearnHow Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
