OK, let's start with a brief bit of background. I was raised a religious conservative. After going to college, my beliefs began to moderate a bit as my perspective widened but I was still a religious conservative in every sense. With the advent of the Bush era, I teetered on the precipice of neoconservatism and briefly (to my eternal shame) openly espoused the use of torture and other immoral behaviors in the maintenance of the United States' de facto empire. Then, I read Thomas Sowell's book Basic Economics and my intellectual compass began a process of reversal. First, I realized that economic intervention was redundant and unnecessary at best, but usually destructive and impoverishing. Then, I began to wonder whether the government's other interventions into society are necessary or, perhaps, also destructive. I began to look online and stumbled into the writings of Mises, Rothbard, Hoppe and the other Austrian luminaries. My intellectual compass swung clear round and I was briefly an almost pure anti-state Rothbardian, then briefly flirted with across-the-board anti-authoritarianism. But this is Utopian territory and I quickly outgrew this and returned to earth moving to a more mature Hoppean view.
At this point, I began to strike out on my own and I began to feel that libertarian theory unfairly singles violence out as what is wrong with the world. This road leads to Longite de facto pacifism which I find Utopian and untenable. So, I turned to law and began to look at libertarian legal theory. Here, I came across the idea of common or customary law and the distinction between justifiable violence and aggression. Things were making more sense to me but then I began to wonder how it is that our legal systems are so out of touch with the origins of law in custom and non-aggression. Blaming it on "the State" is pointless if you want to understand why it is the State has managed to get away with bringing about the state of affairs we are in today.
This brings me to my most recent revelations that law rests on an even deeper foundation of human moral sense. Laws which grossly violate the prevailing moral sense do not last long and long-standing laws attain their longevity precisely because they coincide with the prevailing moral sense. This is an obvious point but understanding how it relates to the libertarian ideal of non-aggression is not trivial. In fact, this point about human morality explains how aggressive laws such as the drug prohibition laws come to be - precisely because the power interests in drug enforcement have succeeded in striking a chord in the prevailing moral sense... the 10,000 innocent deaths per year as a result of enforcement of drug laws is justifiable because people generally agree that drug use is "bad". There is also a psychological component of resignation to the collateral damage... if the police were trying to do what is right and, in the course of doing so, accidents happen, they cannot be held responsible as if they were acting maliciously. This is, of course, muddle-headed thinking but these are precisely the logical steps along which most human minds proceed in accepting the drug prohibition narrative. For by-standers who are not the direct victims of police action, intent is a deciding factor and since the vast majority of us are by-standers, our opinions outweigh the feelings of the direct victims.
So, this means that what people in a society believe about right and wrong is hugely important in regards to the legal and social order which can emerge. The aggressive State apparatus is only possible precisely because most people hold a certain complex of beliefs about right and wrong. Furthermore, the State itself is constrained by the moral ideas which people hold... we can see this whenever the government is forced to scale back its ambitions either in response to public outrage or a lack of sufficient popular support for its initiatives. This means that moral beliefs are not solely a function of State brainwashing and I reject the Rothbardian hypothesis that the State is primarily responsible for the moral beliefs that make its existence possible. Certainly, the State expends its resources to encourage the myths which secure its existence (e.g. the Hobbesian myth, per Hoppe) and discourage the ideas that endager it (e.g. most of classical liberal philosophy) but I think the historical evidence of the massive struggle of the State to actualize its own goals goes to show that its power to alter minds exists only within narrow confines.
What is more powerful than brainwashing is how our brains are wired to begin with and Nature - not the State - has wired our brains. Evolutionary psychologists are exploring the human moral sense and its roots in the ancestral environment and what they are finding is that our moral sense is highly rational and adaptive to that environment (>10kya) but maladaptive to the rapidly changing modern environment. And I suspect this is precisely where the State exists, in that gap between our evolved moral sense that was well suited to our primitive existence in the sweeping grasslands of Africa and the realities of the modern world. We can see this very clearly in the Europe-centered global wars of the 20th century where governments brazenly appealed to primitive tribal sentiments in their populations to drum up support for military adventurism. The actions of the European powers, the United States, Russia and Japan resulted in wanton destruction of human life and property on an unprecedented scale yet the popular support for most of these actions was high.
The level of tyranny achievable by the State is not everywhere equal and we can conclude from this that the limits to the power of the State are not limited to our hardwired morality. Moral sentiments can spread through family, community, religion and other means. Therefore, it is possible that more moral societies (societies in which tyranny is more restricted) are possible.
But what is morality? This is where my views are likely to become contentious. Morality is an expression of aesthetic taste regarding the actions of humans. To say "giving to the poor is good" means that I derive satisfaction from reading about, seeing or participating in giving to the poor and this satisfaction is a passive satisfaction, like aesthetic satisfaction. Satisfaction of a moral ideal is unlike the satisfaction of consumption because consumption is the attainment of an individual end. Satisfaction of a moral ideal is often the result of the action of others and, therefore, cannot be an end. Satisfaction of a moral ideal with respect to one's own actions is more complicated because it is intertwined with the means an individual chooses to attain his ends but I am not concerned with this aspect of morality here. But the satisfication of a moral ideal with respect to the actions of others is more like listening to music or observing a painting. My view is that the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to a piece of art (aesthetic taste) and the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to the behavior of others (morality) are of the same species.
This implies that the consequences of people's aesthetic faculty are immense... a society with bad taste and a society with bad morals suffer from the same root problem. It also implies that moral nihilism and aesthetic nihilism are more closely linked than just by analogy to one another, they are both species of the same idea. Consider this "Piano Concerto" by the modern composer John Cage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SmXNDYlNJM
You only need to listen to the first 30 seconds or so to get an idea of the how the whole piece goes. Such "music" is not merely an expression of poor taste, it is actually an expression of moral nihilism. Noise is music is noise. Wrong is right is wrong. It's all the same. Any distinction between beauty and ugliness is purely in the mind of the observer and is, therefore, arbitrary. Any distinction between right and wrong is arbitrary for the same reason.
And this is how I've become an aesthetic fundamentalist. Not only is Cage's "Piano Concerto" not music, it is pretentious, self-gratifying shit. For a human being, beauty and ugliness are not arbitrary because there is something that it means to be a human being (this idea is similar to, yet importantly different from, Rothbard's idea of human nature), there is certain wiring in our brain that predisposes us to prefer symmetry, variation on a theme and the elements of rhythm, melody and harmony that most music exhibits. These preferences are purely subjective (this is where I differ from Rothbard) which is why pathological cases are possible... there are people who really like John Cage's music. Morality, likewise, is not arbitrary for the same reasons our tastes in music, visual art or even food are not arbitrary. Nature wired us to recoil in disgust at certain actions of others and to react with admiration towards other actions of others. There are the sociopaths who really do not experience ordinary moral reactions and some of them slice people open for fun and others go into politics. Morality, like art, is subjective but not arbitrary.
On a related note, I think the link between the arts and morality goes to help explain why the world's most powerful religions are so concerned about art - what is permissible, what is impermissible, what should be subsidized and what should be suppressed.
In conclusion, I think that to stop at criticizing the monopoly on force and legalized aggression is to stop far short of the root problem. Buttressing the modern State are perversions in our legal system and buttressing these are perversions in our moral sense and aesthetic sense. Hence, promotion of good morals and good taste are central to the project of tearing down the State and correcting the many ills of modern society. The Renaissance in the arts and humanities came first, classical liberalism came later. The National Endowment for the Arts, the subsidy of arts programs in public schools and universities, the preoccupation of the religious leaders in the world's largest religious organizations with what people see on television or hear on the radio... these are all vehicles for the perversion of good taste and good morals. The attack on the arts began in earnest in the early 20th century. Its effects can be seen everywhere from the dull grey prison-like concrete architecture of the modernists to Lady Gaga. Gone are the Vermeers and the Wagners. The most powerful people in the world - the Pope, European monarchs, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, etc. - spend a great deal of time, energy and money in the arts and influencing organizations which spend public money on the arts. Do you really think they are all just big art buffs?
Clayton -
Addendum
I've spent some time thinking about how bad morals contribute to the existence of the State. Perhaps the most important way they contribute is through partiality or dual morality. Partiality is the evaluation of the morality of an action based on who did it. If John killed Peter, it's wrong but if Bob killed Peter, it's OK. This is a partial moral assessment. The State cannot exist without dual morality. If John takes your wallet by force, it's wrong, but if the King takes your wallet by force, it's OK.
We are all partial towards ourselves as an expression of our own natural self-interest. We tend not to judge ourselves by the same standard by which we judge others. Family members tend to be partial toward one another and this is an expression of genetic self-interest. More generally, tribes and clans typically exhibit a high degree of partiality towards their own and this highlights that dual morality is tribal morality or primitive morality. The State's very existence crucially relies on suppression of univocal morality (Golden Rule, impartial morals) and maintenance of tribal, dual morality. You can see this very clearly in the carefully cultivated "American exceptionalism", for example.
The alternative to tribal morality is the Golden Rule. I call this "actor-independent ethics". In other words, a non-tribal ethical system is one in which all the rules can be expressed without reference to the identity or office of the actor. I like to think about the problem in terms of aesthetics. A non-tribal aesthetic is one which makes its assessment without reference to the identity of the author - a good painting is a good painting no matter who painted it. A crappy work of music is crappy regardless of who composed it.
When applied to the State, it is clear that univocal morality would result in its immediate annihilation. If every moral rule either applied to everybody or nobody, it would be impossible to collect taxes, arrest and imprison people, invade countries, and so on. So, the terminus of good morality - in my view - is univocal morality, that is, actor-independent ethics. And the promotion of good taste requires multi-culturalism... true multi-culturalism, not the fake, forced-association variety promulgated by the State's paid shills. True multi-culturalism is the application of the universal principles of aesthetics to art, music, food and every other object of aesthetic assessment without regard to the identity of its author, without partisanship and without partiality.
The "why you should care" part should have been in the first paragraph.
I agree with a good portion of what you have stated but I do disagree on a couple of points.
You mention that the state (and religion) has a limited range on how much it can influence people away from what is 'natural'. However, I would contend that this is only true if constrained by time. I believe that given enough time the state (due to superior propaganda capabilities compared to any competitor) can convince people that anything is morally 'right'. I also believe that the plasticity of the people whose morals you are trying to sway significantly influences how far they can be influenced. If you catch them very young, as religion does, you can have a significant influence on their behavior (this can also be seen in education by the state). I think the places where you see people stopping the state from doing something "wrong" is when the state tries to sway the people's morals too quickly.
Also, if you take too extreme of a stance up front there will be a significant amount of counter-propaganda, possibly more than the state can fight against. However, if you inch the population little by little you can distribute the counter-propaganda over time and succeed in the same ultimate goal.
You also mention that humans are morally hard wired and while I agree that there is some psychological evidence towards this, I believe that morality is very plastic and easily changed. That is to say, while humans may have a certain moral predisposition, these are not permanent. You gave a perfect example in your introduction where you indicated that you were raised with a certain set of moral beliefs but over time this set of beliefs changed. On top of the ability to change our moral perspective I don't think there is anything bounding the amount of change possible. Our mirror neurons make it so we have a natural disposition toward not inflicting pain on others, but this can be overcome with enough influence.
I do agree that the root of the problem is changing how people view morality. What I question though is whether or not this can be done on a large enough scale to out-pace the governments attempts at changing morality in the other direction. Perhaps we have the advantage of having that 'natural predisposition' on our side so swaying toward that requires less work than swaying people away from it. Though, perhaps the natural disposition is really on the other side (governments).
While I agree that a relationship between aesthetic taste, morals and political beliefs exists, it would be a mistake to judge artworks as shit without taking into account the mental processes of the artist or perceiver. Art is ultimately in someone's mind and does not consist of the specific notes or brushstrokes.
I appreciate both Lady Gaga and Wagner, and I consider my understanding and appreciation of their music to be above most people's. I can explain the elements in each that excite me so. The reason I can't appreciate hip-hop is because my mind is not 'in tune' with the musical ideas in hip-hop music as I normally interpret them, but perhaps with a change in focus, I could find something to appreciate there.
You do mention "subjective but not arbitrary" and so I think we're not that far off in what we have in mind regarding arts and morality, but my point is, our interpretations of form are more malleable than you seem to be willing to allow.
An 'objective' brand of elitism merely shuts a person from a future rewarding experience. If you've read Hermann Hesse's 'Steppenwolf,' you can recall how the hero Harry Haller experiences both Mozart and 'lowly' jazz as ultimate things, depending on the particular moment. Ultimately, a critique reveals more about the critic than the critiqued.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: "It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul."
Clayton: This implies that the consequences of people's aesthetic faculty are immense... a society with bad taste and a society with bad morals suffer from the same root problem.
This implies that the consequences of people's aesthetic faculty are immense... a society with bad taste and a society with bad morals suffer from the same root problem.
What are "bad morals"?
Clayton: Buttressing the modern State are perversions in our legal system and buttressing these are perversions in our moral sense and aesthetic sense.
Buttressing the modern State are perversions in our legal system and buttressing these are perversions in our moral sense and aesthetic sense.
What exactly makes them "perversions" instead of just "differences"?
If I wrote it more than a few weeks ago, I probably hate it by now.
Satisfaction of a moral ideal is unlike the satisfaction of consumption because consumption is the attainment of an individual end. ...My view is that the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to a piece of art (aesthetic taste) and the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to the behavior of others (morality) are of the same species.
So if I understand correctly, we can split satisfaction into active and passive, or, satisfaction that we strive for (with means) and satisfaction that is thrust upon us. And morality, as the aesthetic of others' behavior, is passive satisfaction because we are sort of observers of this behavior and not actors (we are not the others). In this framework, one couldn't meaningfully say "I strive to act morally." In fact, morality could never apply in the first person, right? Otherwise it would become a form of active satisfaction. And then to say "they acted morally" would necessarily mean that they acted in some way that ultimately pleased me, but fully unintentionally. In other words, morality can only be examined like a painting in a museum, ignoring the fact that action was in place: someone created that painting to attain their own satisfaction.
On another note, your views on John Cage (and I'm assuming a lot of modern art) are really one dimensional.
Noise is music is noise ... Not only is Cage's "Piano Concerto" not music, it is pretentious, self-gratifying shit.
I just don't understand this explicit and implicit rejection of self-gratification. Why does someone outside of 'self' need to experience a picture before it is art, a sound before it is music, and an action before it is morality?
Back to music though, I just wanted to point out that the end result (the sound going into your head) of a lot of modern music is not what the art is about. Did you know Cage has scores on display at the MOMA in New York. The sheet music itself is beautiful. Or if you look at the serial music of Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, the end sound is unbearable to most. But if you understand the theory of 12 tone serialism you can recognize the mathematical transformations of the tone row. The theory is beautiful. What I'm saying is, this is not nihilism, this is creating art according to predetermined rules. It is really a rejection of aimless romanticism and a return to the strict rules of Bach.
they said we would have an unfair fun advantage
Awesome posts Clayton, I couldn't agree more.
I wouldn't call it "bad morals" but "irrational and inconsistent ideas about morality". Now, what says people should be consistent and rational? Here's a little challenge. I know that only Molyneux tried to prove this for a long time. Anyone know different people so that I could examine their arguments more closely?
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
Satisfaction of a moral ideal is unlike the satisfaction of consumption because consumption is the attainment of an individual end. ...My view is that the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to a piece of art (aesthetic taste) and the internal preference or dispreference which is experienced in reaction to the behavior of others (morality) are of the same species. So if I understand correctly, we can split satisfaction into active and passive, or, satisfaction that we strive for (with means) and satisfaction that is thrust upon us. And morality, as the aesthetic of others' behavior, is passive satisfaction because we are sort of observers of this behavior and not actors (we are not the others).
So if I understand correctly, we can split satisfaction into active and passive, or, satisfaction that we strive for (with means) and satisfaction that is thrust upon us. And morality, as the aesthetic of others' behavior, is passive satisfaction because we are sort of observers of this behavior and not actors (we are not the others).
Precisely. And this is not my own idea, Bastiat explains this in his Economic Harmonies:
The soul (or, not to become involved in spiritual questions, man) is endowed with the faculty of sense perception. Whether sense perception resides in the body or in the soul, the fact remains that as a passive being he experiences sensations that are painful or pleasurable. As an active being he strives to banish the former and multiply the latter. The result, which affects him again as a passive being, can be called satisfaction.
From the general idea of sensation come the more definite ideas of pain, wants, desires, tastes, appetites, on the one hand; and, on the other, of pleasure, enjoyment, fulfillment, and well-being.
Between these extremes is interposed a mean, and from the general idea of activity come the more definite ideas of pain, effort, fatigue, labor, and production.
In this framework, one couldn't meaningfully say "I strive to act morally." In fact, morality could never apply in the first person, right? Otherwise it would become a form of active satisfaction. And then to say "they acted morally" would necessarily mean that they acted in some way that ultimately pleased me, but fully unintentionally. In other words, morality can only be examined like a painting in a museum, ignoring the fact that action was in place: someone created that painting to attain their own satisfaction.
Well that's why I said, "Satisfaction of a moral ideal with respect to one's own actions is more complicated because it is intertwined with the means an individual chooses to attain his ends..." I should also have said that it is intertwined with the ends he will choose. Imagine your ends as a set of destinations and your means as a set of paths to those destinations. Individual morality is a subset of your valuation by which you choose which ends to pursue as well as which means you find acceptable in the pursuits of those ends. I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image).
There's more that should be said about this, if I get time, I will.
On another note, your views on John Cage (and I'm assuming a lot of modern art) are really one dimensional. Noise is music is noise ... Not only is Cage's "Piano Concerto" not music, it is pretentious, self-gratifying shit. I just don't understand this explicit and implicit rejection of self-gratification. Why does someone outside of 'self' need to experience a picture before it is art, a sound before it is music, and an action before it is morality?
Well, if John Cage or his audience enjoys shit, that's their business. As I said, there are pathological exceptions to the rule. But the fact remains that if aesthetic judgment is to be meaningful at all then some art must be shit and other art divine. To equivocate and say that everybody's opinion on what is good art is equal is to democratize valuation. Not everybody's opinion is equal. And this is where the Misesean idea of profit and loss enters the picture... without a market in art, we have no way to tell what is good or bad art. We just have a lot of clamoring and pontification about what is, supposedly, great art in the opinions of those whose government-subsidized job is to sit around all day and ponder art. But since when do academics have a corner on the market in taste?? It's like saying that the best food is whatever the food critics say or the best movies are whatever the movie critics say... surely you can see the absurdity in this. Back when there was a real market in classical music, it was easy to see what qualifies as music... whatever people will pay to hear a second time. The rest was shit. With the advent of subsidized art, anything can and does become "art".
Yes, I'm familiar with tone row music but I disagree that it has any relation to Bach. A tone row is built on the silly idea of using each of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale one time before allowing any one to repeat... I cannot imagine why a person would want to do this except to build a chromatic scale or some interesting variation thereof. Bach's music was based on voices and playing with voices until you find the hidden structure within them. As a sheer genius, he apparently had the ability to do this largely in his head otherwise he could never have written the volume of music that he did. He used and extended the body of contrapuntal methods which some of the modernists mimic while wholly missing the point. Bach's music is structured but it is not mere structure and I would argue that a great deal of the Schoenberg-style "brainy" modern music is empty structure without musicality.
Clayton: I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image).
I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image).
Why don't you find that "morally acceptable"?
Clayton: Well, if John Cage or his audience enjoys shit, that's their business.
Well, if John Cage or his audience enjoys shit, that's their business.
Don't you mean that if John Cage or his audience enjoys what you don't enjoy, that's their business?
Clayton: As I said, there are pathological exceptions to the rule.
As I said, there are pathological exceptions to the rule.
Why would it be a "pathological" exception, instead of just an exception?
Clayton: But the fact remains that if aesthetic judgment is to be meaningful at all then some art must be shit and other art divine.
But the fact remains that if aesthetic judgment is to be meaningful at all then some art must be shit and other art divine.
Meaningful in what sense?
Clayton: To equivocate and say that everybody's opinion on what is good art is equal is to democratize valuation. Not everybody's opinion is equal.
To equivocate and say that everybody's opinion on what is good art is equal is to democratize valuation. Not everybody's opinion is equal.
What if you just say that you can't compare them (one is neither better nor equal to any other)?
Clayton: without a market in art, we have no way to tell what is good or bad art.
without a market in art, we have no way to tell what is good or bad art.
Why not just adopt a standard (for music, you could pick strong emotional manipulation, certain kinds of patterns, or whatever), and then try to figure out what best conforms itself to that standard?
Clayton: Well, if John Cage or his audience enjoys shit, that's their business. Don't you mean that if John Cage or his audience enjoys what you don't enjoy, that's their business?
No, I mean what I wrote. The difference between me and the audience of John Cage is that there are billions of people who share my tastes and precious few (hundreds? thousands maybe?) who actually enjoy Cage's crap. This is not to say that numbers determine aesthetics... far from it. But go back to what I wrote on the music market and look at the situation from the point of view of a would-be music composer in a genuine market for music. Let's say he really enjoys Cage's music and, if he had his own way, would write music that is in Cage's "style". Nevertheless, he is constrained by market demand. Unless he's subsidized or has a patron (patronage is also a kind of market, by the way) he must respond to the audience's demands, go hungry or find a different line of work. Music that cannot pass a market test is shit music. If a composer wants to write it for his own enjoyment or show it to like-minded friends who also will enjoy such amusical endeavors he is, of course, free to do so and I wish him the best. But if a composer is incapable of writing music that will entertain people enough that they are willing to pay for it*, he just sucks and his music is crap.
*Note that money is not the only way people are willing to pay for good entertainment... some musicians perform for free at parties but their audience still indicates its willingness to pay by paying attention. If the audience would rather leave the room or ignore the music, it's crappy music (or, what is the same, the wrong music for the party).
Clayton: As I said, there are pathological exceptions to the rule. Why would it be a "pathological" exception, instead of just an exception?
Because market demand is not arbitrary, it reflects human nature. People eat bread but not rat poison because bread is suitable to the human digestive tract and rat poison is not. Similarly, people listen to rock and roll but not a pure sine wave at 1000Hz because rock and roll is suitable to the human ear but a pure sine wave at 1000Hz is not. The few people odd enough to maybe sit in front of a speaker just listening to a 1000Hz tone constitute a pathological exception. Their brains are wired different or something about them is significantly different from the rest of us. It's not normal.
Clayton: without a market in art, we have no way to tell what is good or bad art. Why not just adopt a standard (for music, you could pick strong emotional manipulation, certain kinds of patterns, or whatever), and then try to figure out what best conforms itself to that standard?
Because such a choice, without reference to human nature or the human demand for musical entertainment, is purely arbitrary and, therefore, a pointless exercise.
Clayton: I want to own a Lamborghini. Stealing one is a path toward this end but it is not a path that I find morally acceptable (it is inconsistent with my moral self-image). Why don't you find that "morally acceptable"?
I don't know, it's just not.
But some aspects of them really are not malleable. Symmetry, proportion, variation, unity... these are aesthetic attributes that exist in every culture and we can conclude, therefore, that these attributes are down to our genetics, the hardwiring. The presence of the elements of aesthetics are what makes something art. Without these elements, it's something else. Otherwise, you're equivocating on the word art and both everything is art and nothing is art.
Not familiar with Hesse but I agree that prejudice shuts off potentially rewarding experiences and I'm not encouraging prejudice. If you want to know for yourself whether Cage's music is crap, go listen to it, I provided the link above. In the act of checking my opinion, you may have a rewarding experience. This is how art appreciation works.
Great quote. The human soul underlies form - without humanity, there is no form just patterns accidentally selected from the set of all possible patterns.
[Modern music] is really a rejection of aimless romanticism and a return to the strict rules of Bach.
By the way, this quote drove me mad! I'm a huge fan of romantic music. In fact, I think the pinnacle of achievement in classical music was achieved in the late Romantic era just as modernism began to rear its ugly head. I find most modern classical music to be pointless, aimless, wandering and unstructured unless you take the raw score and go on a puzzle-hunt looking for the clever ways the composer tried to exhibit his vast command of music theory. The greatest romantic music is just as structured - in fact, I would argue more so - as anything Bach wrote.
Consider Chopin's "Winter Wind" Etude, decidedly romantic and yet highly structured:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJMIIxm1bGo
In the right hand, he's interlaced a descending chromatic scale with broken chords and the left hand carries the melodic and rhythmic structure and there is some contrapuntal structure in the piece as well, yet it has all the bravura of Wagner. Another example from Chopin (my fav composer by far), is his 2nd Scherzo which, like the above Etude, has all the bravura of any Romantic era piece but the musical structure is deep and rich. Unlike modern music, the Romantic composers - like the Baroques before them - liberally incorporated themes, rhythms and harmonies from the folk music of their time and you hear folk music galore coming through this piece, all within a template of disciplined musical structure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_MwPdr7WXQ
Here's a piece from Rachmaninoff which wears its structure on its sleeve. The pinnacles of musical beauty achieved by Rachmaninoff shows just how much we've lost to a century of subsidized arts. Imagine how much further we could have gone!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyxpeLh7z3s
If you follow the score, you can see very Bach-esque patterns in the arpeggiated chords as well as in how they act against the melodic lines. Yet Rachmaninoff was the pinnacle of late Romanticism, where my heart lies.
</aimless romanticism>
tl/dr
but I skimmed through it. Seems you are just correlating two things you don't like: 1) some music that you don't like and 2) the state. So your confirmation bias links the two together.
John Cage had a classical music training. Even studying with Arnold Schoenberg for a period. He just had a different intent. He did write regular music at different points (for instance his piano piece "Dreams"). His main thing was that he just enjoyed the ordinariness of sound and space. Even of the hustle and bustle of cities. I saw him on a show a few years ago and he said that he was just deeply influenced by zen. He wasn't really a very serious person. He always seemed to be laughing at his own work and just enjoying life. Not trying to put anyone on or present a falseness.
What you said about him isn't particularly original. It has become a bit of a cliche to point to him or Jackson Pollock and say it is the downfall of civilization itself. For many many decades. If you didn't know: John Cage isn't a teen sensation, he has been long dead for almost 20 years. And literal zillions of armchair critics on the internet and pre-internet have thought they were the first to make such criticisms. Most of them with very little thought about philosophy, but a lot of smug and elitism.
And for the most part even people who are into far out stuff are the last people who are a serious threat to anyone. For the most part people take Cage for what it is and can listen to any number of other things as well. Whether it be classical or rock music. Classical music unto itself has dug around in experimentation and series for almost a hundred years. Largely due to the declining numbers of those interested, not the other way around. And other forms, conforming or not, have come a long with it.
tl/dr but I skimmed through it. Seems you are just correlating two things you don't like: 1) some music that you don't like and 2) the state. So your confirmation bias links the two together.
All I can say is you should have read it. It's not actually that long.
John Cage had a classical music training.
Who cares.
Even studying with Arnold Schoenberg for a period. He just had a different intent. He did write regular music at different points (for instance his piano piece "Dreams"). His main thing was that he just enjoyed the ordinariness of sound and space. Even of the hustle and bustle of cities. I saw him on a show a few years ago and he said that he was just deeply influenced by zen.
Fine. Trent Reznor did the sound effects for the hit game Quake, but he didn't try to say his sound effects were music. The little of Cage that I've endured doesn't rise above the level of a fairly pedestrian sound effect track. The "Piano Conerto" above, for example, is not music.
He wasn't really a very serious person. He always seemed to be laughing at his own work and just enjoying life. Not trying to put anyone on or present a falseness.
That may be, I didn't know John Cage so I couldn't possibly comment on his persona. However, John Cage's legacy - whether he would have it be this or not - is the public-subsidized "canon" of orchestral playlists. It's played because that's what serious conductors are supposed to play from time to time. That's it.
What you said about him isn't particularly original. It has become a bit of a cliche to point to him or Jackson Pollock and say it is the downfall of civilization itself.
I said nothing about the downfall of civilization, you really should have read what I wrote. Civilization will be just fine no matter Cage and Pollock but that doesn't mean a great deal of human creativity hasn't been nuked by a century of public art subsidies forcing out genuine artists who could have made it in a genuine art market but were instead upstaged by the well-connected, annointed "artists". How many Beethovens and Monets of the 20th century became discouraged, gave up and moved on to do something else?
For many many decades. If you didn't know: John Cage isn't a teen sensation, he has been long dead for almost 20 years. And literal zillions of armchair critics on the internet and pre-internet have thought they were the first to make such criticisms. Most of them with very little thought about philosophy, but a lot of smug and elitism.
The irony of calling Cage-criticism elitism. As for the cheap accusation of philosophical shallowness, feel free to tangle with me on any topic of philosophy you like.
The following is somewhat philisophical so if you aren't interested in debating philosophy please don't respond.
If a computer randomly generated the same set of noise as your favorite musician, would it equally be considered music? If a computer randomly generated what Beethoven generated, would it be considered music? I am not talking about a program that is designed by a musician to create something that is appealing. I am talking about a computer that spends eternity randomly generating noise and at some point it happens to spit out a sequential collection of noise that matches Cage, Beethoven, your favorite musician, etc.
I have asked people of this before and some have suggested that art (in any form) is only art because of the intent behind it so a computer can not randomly generate art (it has no intent). I am curious how other people weigh in on this topic. Is it art because of the finished product or is it art because of the intent behind the product?
My personal view is that art is only art because of the finished product and whether it is asthetically pleasing to me. Whether a computer generated it randomly or a person put it together intentionally is of no consequence to me in my determination of whether or not it is art.
Clayton:This is not to say that numbers determine aesthetics... far from it.
But that is exactly what you ended up saying. Simple argumentatum ad populum. It's like you completely tossed out all Austrian methodology when it comes to value and exchange.
I don't think you understand entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial risk. I also think that as JohnE indicated, you're conflating your values with some market derived truth.
But that is exactly what you ended up saying. Simpel argumentatum ad populum. It's like you completely tossed out all Austrian methodology when it comes to value and exchange.
Can you be more specific? I'm saying that the market uncovers or reveals what people demand and that the end result is visible in what the market itself produces. Let's go back 100 years before there were any major public arts subsidies. If you wanted to make a living writing music, your music had to sell tickets. If your music sucked, you were quickly selected out of the market never to return. Yet all the music that people wrote and which sold tickets had common elements in it - structure, theme, melody, rhythm, symmetry, and so on - and my argument is that we can know that these elements are what make music music as opposed to random noises that no one would ever pay money to hear.
I don't think you understand entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial risk.
Again, can you be more specific? I'm not denying entrepreneurship... composers have to take risks and invent new musical ideas and sounds that will keep bringing audiences back for more, it's not enough to just apply the "orthodox rules" of music and churn out yet another minor variation on what has been done before. I think of the Haydns and Schumanns in this category.
I also think that as JohnE indicated, you're conflating your values with some market derived truth.
No, I think the two coexist. I have my values (Cage's music is shit, for example) and the market reveals the nature of human taste in music (which also suggests that Cage's music is shit).
Clayton:Can you be more specific? I'm saying that the market uncovers or reveals what people demand and that the end result is visible in what the market itself produces. Let's go back 100 years before there were any major public arts subsidies. If you wanted to make a living writing music, your music had to sell tickets. If your music sucked, you were quickly selected out of the market never to return. Yet all the music that people wrote and which sold tickets had common elements in it - structure, theme, melody, rhythm, symmetry, and so on - and my argument is that we can know that these elements are what make music music as opposed to random noises that no one would ever pay money to hear.
Can you not see the massive epistemic errors in this line of thinking?
Clayton:Again, can you be more specific? I'm not denying entrepreneurship... composers have to take risks and invent new musical ideas and sounds that will keep bringing audiences back for more, it's not enough to just apply the "orthodox rules" of music and churn out yet another minor variation on what has been done before.
Every variation is its own niche. Every variation has an audience of at least one. The more highly valued a variation doesn't have to be proportional to the entire market, it can be one man valuing art that no one else does. It can be the composer writing music only he enjoys. This tells us nothing about the market and everything about subjective value.
The market is a process, not a referendum.
Clayton:No, I think the two coexist. I have my values (Cage's music is shit, for example) and the market reveals the nature of human taste in music (which also suggests that Cage's music is shit).
How can the market suggest anything unless you appeal to majoritarianism? As long as one person appreciates his music, there is a market for it. The size of the market is not at all correlated with quality.
As a friend, and I do consider you a friend, I think you should give this reconsideration. While you're frigging brilliant, this stuff is by far some of your worst work.
Agreed. My point about market size is that the modern market in elite arts (including music) is distorted by subsidies. Surely, you grant that public subsidization of producers distorts the market with oversupply of the subsidized product and undersupply of products that would be demanded if they were not priced out by the subsidy?? My point is that artists we would never have heard of are given a megaphone if they are well-connected and they drown out artists that many people would have otherwise voluntarily patronized as a result of their own free choice.
Let me translate to a market other than music. We can meaningfully say that people like to drive four-wheeled vehicles in the United States because they select a majority of four-wheeled vehicles. I agree that this is not a value judgment against two-wheeled or three-wheeled vehicles, but we can also note that people generally don't like to drive Ford Pintos or AMC Gremlins because these cars were pieces of junk to begin with. They failed the market test as well they should have. This is not just an expression of my value judgment ("I don't like Ford Pintos or AMC Gremlins") but is a reflection of the difference between good design and poor design as evaluated by consumers. You might say, "Well, the cars were cheap so they couldn't afford to design them any better to hit that price point" but apparently consumers wouldn't agree with you... they bought Toyotas and Hondas that were just as cheap but well engineered. In fine art, design is even more crucial since most of the cost of a piece of art is the artist's time, not the materials which went into producing the art piece (with the exception of sculpture, architecture, some major rock shows and so on). Design, not the frugality of the bill-of-materials, is the deciding factor in the market success or failure of a piece of art.
I agree with you that the market is a process, not a referendum. This is why it's possible for composers to write great works of art that flopped on their initial release but later came to be elevated to the classical canon (this occasionally happens with movies, as well). So, it is impossible to derive any sort of "objective values" from the outcome of the market process, as Rothbard seems to have attempted to do.
It seems like maybe we're talking past each other?
Clayton,
I think that you're missing the purpose of morality.
For taste (food taste), what's the purpose? It's your subconsciousness advising you on whether or not to continue eating whatever you're eating. It pays attention to the stuff in the food (whatever that means), what your body needs to prosper, and so on, and makes a recommendation. But thanks to the food industry of the past whatever amount of time, it's extremely maladaptive in the modern world (at least for my goals). It makes a barrage of totally insane suggestions at every turn (again, at least for my goals). We're hard-wired to take our taste as an end in itself (that's why it "tastes so good" to your present self no matter whether your future self would approve), but most of us also want our health to prosper in the long term. During "our primitive existence in the sweeping grasslands of Africa", I assume that those 2 goals (our present-oriented one and our future-oriented) were perfectly in harmony. There was a harmony of interests between our different selves over time. But in the modern world, we find ourselves with a serious conflict of interests between them. It's a tricky situation, and it destroys countless lives.
As I alluded to in the previous paragraph, I suspect that the violent disagreements, and absolutely dumbfounded regrets, that almost everybody experiences day in and day out with respect to what to eat (should I indulge or not?) is because of some sort of unnatural situation (fake food, easy access, and so on). In other words, I suspect that if one were in a more natural situation (no fake food, the necessity to do some hard exercise to "earn" your food, and so forth), there would be some sort of harmony of interests between your different selves over time. It wouldn't be that you would hope to God that you would be able to overcome some sort of "base craving" so as to sustain your health in the long term (such as avoiding eating too many donuts or something); it would be that your short term interests would align perfectly with your long term ones. Just as the state can destroy the harmony of interests among the people, and destroy the mechanisms which coordinate the actions of the different market participants over time, an unnatural situation for your body can wreck the harmony of interests among your different selves, and wreck the machinery which coordinates them over time.
But because the taste system that I was born with is so maladaptive in the modern world (yet again, at least for my goals!), I must compensate. I must submit some conscious intervention and regulation into the process, lest I find my different selves make war with each other. If I simply go by what tastes good, I will find my different selves torn in a distracting battle, while my ultimate goals go unfulfilled. So what's there to do? For my decision of what to eat, I can either listen to my subconsciousness (my taste system's output), my consciousness (what I consciously think about it), or a combination of both. To avoid droning on and on about this, I will avoid talking about how exactly I solve this classic problem, but for the purpose of this topic it's sufficient to point out that I'm not the slave of my taste system's output. As it's very unstable in the modern world, I must intervene with its activity. If I let it go about its own thing, it will lead me into destruction. I mustn't take its output as the final world on the subject. I don't find it an end in itself (as some may), so I must question it. If it outputs bad results (e.g., it tells me to eat something, but I suspect that it would be a bad idea to take that advice), I mustn't let it push me around.
Now, it's the same exact thing with morality. For your moral sense, it's your subconsciousness advising you about whether or not to approve of whatever social interaction that you're witnessing or a part of. But (as you stated), thanks to the market system, it's extraordinarily maladaptive in the modern world (at least for our goals). For most people (maybe not us?), it makes a flood of completely moronic recommendations at every corner (again, at least for our goals). And on and on. It's all the same with morality as it was with taste. Just as we must decide what to eat based on our conscious calculations (common sense, biology, medicine, and so on), the advice from our subconsciousness (what the food actually tastes like), or a combination of both, we must do the same with what social interactions to condone. And as our conscious goals are the final word on what we should eat, our conscious goals are the same for what interactions we should approve of. If the purpose of our taste system is to advice us on what to eat, the purpose of our moral sense is to do the same for whether we should condone a given kind of social interaction. But if either of them outputs bad results (i.e., anything going against one's conscious goals), one mustn't let it push them around.
Clayton:as evaluated by consumers.
*sigh*
Ok, let's start with basics, please stop writing walls of text, I ignore 80% of it anyway.
What can consumers, assuming a majority, since it is unlikely they all make the same choices, and even if they all reject the same choice, zero sales doesn't reflect a cardinal value but a low ordinal priority, meaningfully tell us by their choices?
Can they tell us what we should choose? Can they tell us what is morally right? Can they tell us what is high quality? Can they tell us what is scientifically proven? (rhetorical questions)
Praxeologically, what conclusions can you draw or infer from any choice made by another individual? What conclusions are known to be outside the scope of our knowledge?
But if either of them outputs bad results (i.e., anything going against one's conscious goals), one mustn't let it push them around.
I think you are mischaracterizing human nature... what you describe sounds more like Data from Star Trek. The vast majority of the decisions you make each day are made with very little forethought or reflection and are mainly the result of habit or impulse. How to comb your hair, which route to drive to work, where to park your car, whether to smile or ignore a passerby, whether to look twice into a shop window, and so on.
Clayton: I think you are mischaracterizing human nature... what you describe sounds more like Data from Star Trek. The vast majority of the decisions you make each day are made with very little forethought or reflection and are mainly the result of habit or impulse. How to comb your hair, which route to drive to work, where to park your car, whether to smile or ignore a passerby, whether to look twice into a shop window, and so on.
Why exactly do you think that our taste system and our moral sense evolved?
As a producer, you had better draw conclusions from the choices of consumers or you're likely to go out of business. A shoemaker who makes shoes with steel spikes in the insole is probably not going to have great sales figures.
I don't know what your second question means.
The only reason anything evolves: survival and reproduction.
Clayton: The only reason anything evolves: survival and reproduction.
But what purpose do those 2 systems have for our survival and reproduction?
But what purpose do those 2 systems have for our survival and reproduction?
I am assuming you are referring to morality and taste here, if not then please correct me.
Taste is the easy one and addressed mosty above by Clayton. Your sense of taste gives you feedback as to what nutrients you need to survive. If something tastes bad it probably is not conducive to your survival. If something tastes good then it is probably condusive to your survival. This of course no longer applies since human technology has outpaced biological evolution.
Morality is a little more complex but my understanding of it is that evolution has proven (many times over) that working together with others has a net positive effect on survival and reproduction. By banding together into a family, tribe, society, etc. we have a competative advantage over those who don't. Morality is natures way of encouraging this behavior. Things like mirror neurons that cause us to feel empathy play a major role in this. We know something has a negative effect on our own survival/reproduction (pain, bad taste, etc.) and when we see that in others of our species our mirror neurons cause us to feel a similar emotion which encourages us to stop whatever from happening to the other person. When they do this for us and we do it for them we, as a species, have a competative advantage over those that are entirely self serving (e.g.: lacking in mirror neurons).
Micah71381: Taste is the easy one and addressed mosty above by Clayton.
Taste is the easy one and addressed mosty above by Clayton.
Wait, wasn't that me?
Micah71381: Your sense of taste gives you feedback as to what nutrients you need to survive. If something tastes bad it probably is not conducive to your survival. If something tastes good then it is probably condusive to your survival. This of course no longer applies since human technology has outpaced biological evolution.
Your sense of taste gives you feedback as to what nutrients you need to survive. If something tastes bad it probably is not conducive to your survival. If something tastes good then it is probably condusive to your survival. This of course no longer applies since human technology has outpaced biological evolution.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get Clayton to agree to.
Micah71381: Morality is a little more complex but my understanding of it is that evolution has proven (many times over) that working together with others has a net positive effect on survival and reproduction. By banding together into a family, tribe, society, etc. we have a competative advantage over those who don't. Morality is natures way of encouraging this behavior. Things like mirror neurons that cause us to feel empathy play a major role in this. We know something has a negative effect on our own survival/reproduction (pain, bad taste, etc.) and when we see that in others of our species our mirror neurons cause us to feel a similar emotion which encourages us to stop whatever from happening to the other person. When they do this for us and we do it for them we, as a species, have a competative advantage over those that are entirely self serving (e.g.: lacking in mirror neurons).
Yeah, and that's what I was trying to point out by bringing up our sense of taste.
Micah71381: I am assuming you are referring to morality and taste here, if not then please correct me. Taste is the easy one and addressed mosty above by Clayton. Your sense of taste gives you feedback as to what nutrients you need to survive. If something tastes bad it probably is not conducive to your survival. If something tastes good then it is probably condusive to your survival. This of course no longer applies since human technology has outpaced biological evolution. Morality is a little more complex but my understanding of it is that evolution has proven (many times over) that working together with others has a net positive effect on survival and reproduction. By banding together into a family, tribe, society, etc. we have a competative advantage over those who don't. Morality is natures way of encouraging this behavior. Things like mirror neurons that cause us to feel empathy play a major role in this. We know something has a negative effect on our own survival/reproduction (pain, bad taste, etc.) and when we see that in others of our species our mirror neurons cause us to feel a similar emotion which encourages us to stop whatever from happening to the other person. When they do this for us and we do it for them we, as a species, have a competative advantage over those that are entirely self serving (e.g.: lacking in mirror neurons).
And doesn't all of that support my conclusion (that if they output useless advice, we shouldn't let them push us around)?
I mean, if you want to take pleasing one of those systems as an end in itself (as many people consciously do with taste), that's perfectly fine. I just want everybody to understand that our moral sense isn't arbitrary or something. There's a reason why it's one way and not another.
If you're trying to figure out how to organize a stable society, your moral sense isn't the final word on that subject; it's possible that its advice isn't useful. If you recognize that your moral sense is simply nature's way of encouraging a certain kind of behavior (i.e., organizing into a society), it's possible not only to question (a) whether you want to engage in that kind of behavior, but also (b) whether it's even giving you the right advice anyway (e.g., whether what it's encouraging you to do really would result in a stable society).
And if you get all that, it's easy to see that economics (or whatever) is the science of making conscious decisions about how to interact with other people (or whether to condone a certain kind of social interaction), and that your moral sense is simply nature's (probably outdated) opinion on the subject.
Clayton:Praxeologically, what conclusions can you draw or infer from any choice made by another individual? What conclusions are known to be outside the scope of our knowledge? As a producer, you had better draw conclusions from the choices of consumers or you're likely to go out of business. A shoemaker who makes shoes with steel spikes in the insole is probably not going to have great sales figures.
That's a non sequitur. Please try again.
Clayton:I don't know what your second question means.
You actually tried to answer it with the first. You're just grasping at ideas with no consistent train of reasoning that I can discern. Which is to be expected because you're trying to read more into subjective values than can be extrapolated into a broader truth.
I will repeat the first question, so you can really think about what I am asking, and what the question is looking for in an answer.
Praxeologically, what conclusions can you draw or infer from any choice made by another individual?
Wow, sorry. Totally misread that as from Clayton.
LS, if I may be so bold, I think what you're saying is that people's choices in the market only reflect their individual and necessarily subjective value judgements. There are no objectively "correct" value judgements to be made there. However, I think Clayton has pointed out that there are certain broad commonalities in people's esthetics. For example, most people seem to greatly prefer tonal music to atonal music. That doesn't make the former objectively "good" and the latter objectively "bad", of course.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Firstly I think your general point regarding dual morality and the morality of the population providing constraints for state action is spot on. Further your link with this to aesthetics is indespensible: all art even ostensible non-narrative art such as architecture, in fact tells a story and stories can be virtuous, despicable or a mixture of both. Further art heralds certain acts heroic and others shameful. This then influences how actors how they ought to act in their own stories within the metanarrative (in this context I'm purely defining this term as the dawn of the universe until and am prescribing no content thereafter).
As an aside I have heard it argued that architecture is the most influential art form since we see it all the time and yet do not reflect upon.
Where I would disagree is that to be consistent with the above argument you must hold an objective aesthetics and morality. To say that "aesthetics are subjective and not arbitary" is word play unless you can account for a subjectivity within an objectivity; your appeal solely to human nature is attempting to bridge is ought with an illusory, rather than actual bridge. The necessity of both objectivity and subjectivity, or form and freedom, which you have aptly demonstrated in your musical criticism can solely be accounted for by the trinitiarian God. You have the form in the shared nature and freedom in the three persons who have their own tastes and preferences. (Just for a quick logical defense of the trinity - if God is defined as the Father, the Son and the Spirit loving each other as scripture indicates we have no problem of 1+1+1=1. Rather 1+1+1= 3 persons and 3 persons ≡ 1 God)
Finally thanks for the music links, they were wonderful. Regarding my own musical taste I tend to not like the Classical period proper as it seems to concerned about form and ends up being too neat and tidy thereby alerting the listener solely to the piece rather than to somethng beyond itself; the Baroque and Romantic music are far better at this and as such tend to be better. In a different way serialism is all form too however even worse than the Classical period it is egalitarian: no note is more important than any other in the piece. In fact I think the best way tto convince an egalitarian the idiocy of the position is to listen to serialist music; if they enjoy it, give up.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
@ Clayton
In conclusion, I think that to stop at criticizing the monopoly on force and legalized aggression is to stop far short of the root problem. Buttressing the modern State are perversions in our legal system and buttressing these are perversions in our moral sense and aesthetic sense. Hence, promotion of good morals and good taste are central to the project of tearing down the State and correcting the many ills of modern society. The Renaissance in the arts and humanities came first, classical liberalism came later.
Can you explain how the promotion of good morals and good taste during the Renaissance led to the philosophy of classical liberalism?
The National Endowment for the Arts, the subsidy of arts programs in public schools and universities, the preoccupation of the religious leaders in the world's largest religious organizations with what people see on television or hear on the radio... these are all vehicles for the perversion of good taste and good morals. The attack on the arts began in earnest in the early 20th century. Its effects can be seen everywhere from the dull grey prison-like concrete architecture of the modernists to Lady Gaga. Gone are the Vermeers and the Wagners.
It is tempting to view the Lady Gaga phenomenon simply as the result of the demand of the masses, like televisions, washing machines and cars. After all, people freely spend enormous amounts of money on all sorts of inferior products: cheap pornography, fast food, dime novels, plastic toys, etc. Do public subsidies really have that much power to pervert our aesthetic sense? Can you recommend any reading on the "attack on the arts" that would support your thesis?
I'm not denying entrepreneurship... composers have to take risks and invent new musical ideas and sounds that will keep bringing audiences back for more, it's not enough to just apply the "orthodox rules" of music and churn out yet another minor variation on what has been done before. I think of the Haydns and Schumanns in this category.
Do you mean that Haydn and Schumann were risk-takers who invented new musical ideas, or that they only applied "orthodox rules" and churned out unoriginal material?
No, I mean what I wrote. The difference between me and the audience of John Cage is that there are billions of people who share my tastes and precious few (hundreds? thousands maybe?) who actually enjoy Cage's crap. This is not to say that numbers determine aesthetics... far from it. But go back to what I wrote on the music market and look at the situation from the point of view of a would-be music composer in a genuine market for music. Let's say he really enjoys Cage's music and, if he had his own way, would write music that is in Cage's "style". Nevertheless, he is constrained by market demand. Unless he's subsidized or has a patron (patronage is also a kind of market, by the way) he must respond to the audience's demands, go hungry or find a different line of work. Music that cannot pass a market test is shit music.
What about the billions of people who enjoy Lady Gaga, buy her albums, and pay to see her perform? Are they to be disregarded because their tastes have been perverted by the "attack on the arts?" I am reminded of Walter Block's response to the critique that Austrain economics is shit economics because it has not passed the market test. Block says that rap music is much more popular than classical, but that does not mean 50-Cent is a better musican than Mozart.
With the advent of modern recording technologies and iTunes, it is amazing how cheap and easy it is to access the highest quality classical music. Yet, given this free market, people still choose Lady Gaga. Perhaps it has less to do with the perversion of taste and morals, and more to do with the distribution of intelligence in the human population. Most people just aren't smart enough to appreciate Bach and Mozart.
What about the billions of people who enjoy Lady Gaga, buy her albums, and pay to see her perform? Are they to be disregarded because their tastes have been perverted by the "attack on the arts?" I am reminded of Walter Block's response to the critique that Austrain economics is shit economics because it has not passed the market test. Block says that rap music is much more popular than classical, but that does not mean 50-Cent is a better musican than Mozart. With the advent of modern recording technologies and iTunes, it is amazing how cheap and easy it is to access the highest quality classical music. Yet, given this free market, people still choose Lady Gaga. Perhaps it has less to do with the perversion of taste and morals, and more to do with the distribution of intelligence in the human population. Most people just aren't smart enough to appreciate Bach and Mozart.
You're making the same mistake that IRyan and ls have made... I'm not saying that market size is an objective measure of a product's quality or value (certainly not value as value is purely subjective). What I'm saying is that the marketplace is distorted. Bach and Mozart were never popular with the masses in the heyday of classical music to begin with. The masses were stomping it out in pubs singing the folk tunes they grew up with. People often forget that. Rock music is just today's folk music. Despite all the hoopla, there's nothing fundamentally new about it. Classical music has always been elite music and I'm not saying it would become popular but for the State. Rather, what I'm saying is that State subsidies in the arts "crowd out" artists that the market would have selected otherwise in that market. It's like if the government started giving away Ford Pintos for free. Even though they're total crap cars, you'd start seeing lots of Pintos on the road because you can't beat free. This would put a squeeze on car manufacturers, especially in the low end, whose markets are being saturated with a product with which they cannot compete at the subsidized price-point.
It's my opinion that this is not just a mistake. I think that the elite arts are under attack and for a reason, the reasons I've given above.