What our world has become.

POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, June 29, 2026 21:34
VIEWED: 23018
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RUE

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 6:36 PM

Very interesting post which, as always, gives me a lot to consider.

CAUSAL

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 7:10 PM

Well, HK, in the first place, I wish you would have given me the dignity of talking to me, like an adult, rather than about me, like a child. You decry many of the remarks I made, and yet you show me absolutely no respect? Come on, how am I not supposed to be offended by that alone? The fact that you talked about me and Khyron and AgentRouka instead of to any of us makes me think that you're less interested in actual dialogue than you are with conversing with people who already agree with you. And for someone who prides himself on his ability to think clearly and make his own judgments, your startling disinclination to even talk to people who disagree with you is just sad.

As for your remarks, I wish that you would have reacted more cognitively and less emotionally because very little of what you said actually responded to what I was saying. Most of it was reaction to what you thought I was saying, and I wish that you'd taken the time to figure that out. But in the second place, you did give a sterling example of the sort of sneering that I was talking about, and for that I suppose I should be grateful. So let me try to respond a little to your post.

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
Well, we could sneer about "what our world has become" or we could try to examine it phenomenologically, like Weingarten did. Is it that these people are fools? Or was there some validity to the art-without-a-frame thing? Seriously, we're conditioned to register street musicians as annoying presences and move along.

Okay, stop right there, seriously. We are "conditioned?" Who or what is conditioning us? Who or what has taken away Causal's ability to make his own judgements about what is and is not annoying? "Causal" indeed!

If you think that culture doesn't exert an extremely powerful influence on the way that people think about and process things, I suggest you may have another think coming. Nearly everyone, I think, will say, "Yes, that's true, but not in my case!" because I think most people don't like the idea that culture has made an impact on the way they perceive and think about things. But I believe that that's just the case. If you deny that, feel free to make an argument for why that's not the case, but please don't just insult me. That's called an ad hominem fallacy: you attack the person making the argument and not the argument itself. Because I really do think it's the case that for most people, context plays a huge part in how they process their environment. And because typically a subway station isn't the context for fine art, they tune it out. Don't make it right, necessarily, but I do think that that's true. Have you got a counter-argument that doesn't involve an insult on my mental faculties?

Quote:
Originally posted by HK:
Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:That sort of environment is the one where people see a musician and say, "Homeless schill wanting my money" and then walk right by.

I'd want to know who the heck Causal is talking about when he says "people" but there's evidence all over this thread of exactly who he's talking about.

Where did all this contempt for street musicians come from?

Again, as with my comment above, what I was trying to get at was context. Music is phenomenologically different in a subway station than in a concert hall (and when I say "phenomenologicall" I mean the total experience of it, not just the music as such). And I do think that our culture conditions people to have certain expectations of the phenomenon of music in a subway station, and certain other ones of music in a concert hall (or open-air park, or bar, or wherever). Again, if you disagree that it's phenomenologically different in different contexts, you're free to argue that. But don't accuse me, personally, of having contempt for street musicians as though that accusation makes me wrong about everything I've said. That's

FREDGIBLET

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 9:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Listen: if pausing and listening to Bach in the subway for--what?--a minute and a half is going to get you fired, then your life--your actual life--is not running smoothly.

If you don't have an extra minute and a half to spare on any given morning, you're killing yourself.

If you were to be late to work that morning and you were to blame it on the minute you spent listening to the musician, you'd be kidding yourself and your boss.

Here's the thing though, do we have to stop at EVERY SINGLE STREET MUSICIAN? Most of the people going by him lack the knowledge of classical music to recognize the skill he has so for most of the people there he's just another pretty good street musician.

If I'm 1 minute late I'm not going to get fired, but I don't pass by one street musician every day, I pass by dozens. If I devote a minute and a half to each one of them the time adds up quickly and I WILL get fired if I show up a half-hour late every day.

So who decides who I should stop and listen to? You? Should I get your phone number and call you every time I go by a street musician to ask if I should stop and listen? No. I make the decisions about which ones I should stop for, and I (probably) would not have stopped for him.

The problem is that people like you seem to think that there is some pressing reason why we SHOULD stop for every decent street musician and listen for a while. If you can explain why I should structure my life around street musicians please do as I'd love to hear your arguments.

RUE

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 9:22 PM

"People who can listen to the same artist play the same piece of music and enjoy it in the concert hall are probably many (if not most) of the same people who would have rushed right past Bell in the subway."

Though it seems that those who know music, especially the violin, where the ones who stopped.

I think the people who would fill a concert hall for that music would be a very small percentage of the overall population. It's possible the general population isn't as 'sophisticated' as the ad-hoc study presumed.

CAUSAL

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 9:26 PM

But isn't it the case that the study just wanted to see if anyone would stop to hear a world-class musician? I'm not sure they were really interested in how many classical-music afficionados would stop.

And when I said that many (if not most) of the people in the concert were the ones that rushed by, what I meant were that those same types of people who would attend the concert would be the same types of people rushing off to work in the morning. The point is, one and the same person can hear one and the same piece of music in two different contexts, and the contexts will exert a pretty dramatic shaping influence on how the person reacts to the piece of music.

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CAUSAL

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 9:29 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by fredgiblet:
The problem is that people like you seem to think that there is some pressing reason why we SHOULD stop for every decent street musician and listen for a while. If you can explain why I should structure my life around street musicians please do as I'd love to hear your arguments.

Right, exactly. It seems like a moral "ought" is being smuggled into the discussion. It seems like there's a presupposition that one has not just the option of stopping but an obligation of some sort. And of course, because it's on the presuppositional level, it's not being explicitly stated, just taken for granted. So when someone stops in and contradicts that notion, the argument isn't listened to because it's just being taken for grant that there is some sort of moral imperative at work.

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SIGNYM

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 11:44 PM

Quote:
If you think that culture doesn't exert an extremely powerful influence on the way that people think about and process things, I suggest you may have another think coming. Nearly everyone, I think, will say, "Yes, that's true, but not in my case!" because I think most people don't like the idea that culture has made an impact on the way they perceive and think about things. But I believe that that's just the case. If you deny that, feel free to make an argument for why that's not the case, but please don't just insult me. That's called an ad hominem fallacy: you attack the person making the argument and not the argument itself.

Causal I think you mis-perceive HK's argument. You miss the dialectic that culture makes the people... but people also make the culture. You become victim to a culture when you disavow any ability to change it.

Quote:
Music is phenomenologically different in a subway station than in a concert hall (and when I say "phenomenologicall" I mean the total experience of it, not just the music as such). And I do think that our culture conditions people to have certain expectations of the phenomenon of music in a subway station, and certain other ones of music in a concert hall (or open-air park, or bar, or wherever). Again, if you disagree that it's phenomenologically different in different contexts, you're free to argue that. But don't accuse me, personally, of having contempt for street musicians as though that accusation makes me wrong about everything I've said. That's the ad hominem fallacy all over again.

I don't know Weingarten, but I DO know that people are very 'contextual". Their experience of the music is different but the music itself remains the same. Is this a failure to differentiate between subjective and objective phenomena? Unfortunately smart people - politicians and advertizers- know the power of context and take full advantage of it. Being so contextual is one of our biggest weaknesses as thinking beings.

Quote:
if he took an Ellworth Kelly painting and removed it from its frame and hung it in a restaurant, the most it would get would be a second glance from another curator. Now why would that be? Because it's not altogether common for a restaurant to display a 5 million-dollar painting. Some environments arouse different expectations than others. I'd never expect to see a 5 million dollar painting at a flee market, for instance, so I'm not even looking for fine art there. But I do expect to see fine art when I go to the MOMA, so the way I look at things is different. Context matters. That was, in fact, a main point of discussion in the article.

I don't think "context" matters as much as previous exposure and knowledge.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

RUE

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 11:51 PM

"It seems like a moral "ought" is being smuggled into the discussion."

I think that was the point of the article. Not in the sense that we ought to be 'better' individuals, but that we ought to look at our society which creates the context.

CAUSAL

Wednesday, May 9, 2007 12:31 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Causal I think you mis-perceive HK's argument. You miss the dialectic that culture makes the people... but people also make the culture. You become victim to a culture when you disavow any ability to chage it. Again, as with my comment above, what I was trying to get at was context.

You make an excellent point. There really is a dialectic going on. The old sociological question is: do people make culture or does culture make people? I think the answer is: yes, both. So what interests me, working off your post is this: does the fact that people ignored Bell mean that something is wrong? Or not? I'd like to suggest that it's not as cut and dried as saying, "Change it!" I think that before we can really answer that question, we'd have to get an answer on the question of why people ignored him. And that's sort of been the bone I've had to pick with this thread: I don't think it's as simple as some inability to appreciate art, or some draining of compassion or zest for life. As with most things, it seems like the answer to the question of why Bell was ignored is going to more complex than a sound bite.

Quote:
I don't know Weingaten, but I DO know that people are very 'contextual". Their experience of the music is different but the music itself remains the same. Is this a failure to differentiate between subjective and objective phenomena? Unfortunately smart people - politicians and advertizers- know the power of context and take full advantage of it. Being so contextual is one of our biggest weaknesses as thinking beings.

Or you might look at it as a strength. One artificiality in our thinking is that things can be pulled from their context and set to the side to be considered on their own merits. Humans are hopelessly contextual. You can't not be contextual. I'm not sure it's as simple as saying something can be considered apart from its context on its own merits. Because the total experience just is the entire context. Pulling something out of it makes it not be what it is anymore. I think of it not as "Bell, playing in a subway station," but "Bell-playing-in-a-subway-station." I think to examine the thing phenomenologically, we have to let it stay in it's total context--because it's not just in a context, it is an integral part of the entire context as such.

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RUE

Wednesday, May 9, 2007 12:53 AM

I knew someone who knew someone ... who was a petroleum geologist by training and trade. And who was also someone who followed a creationist religion. On the one hand he would date strata as being so many million year old, on the other he believed the earth was only ~5000 years old.

The problem with rampant contextualism is that one can have a fractured approach to a single reality.

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