Real World Event Discussions

What our world has become.

POSTED BY: Fremdfirma
UPDATED: Monday, June 29, 2026 21:34
VIEWED: 23018
PAGE 10 of 20

CLJOHNSTON108

Monday, May 7, 2007 9:36 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Finn mac Cumhal:
...the article claims that this musician was not playing anything recognizable, which means to most people’s untrained ears, including probably my own, it sounded a lot more like noise then music.

Has anybody here heard the piece he was playing?
I posted a link to the MP3 about halfway up the thread, but here it is again...
http://www.arteagency.com/alessio_Bach2mp3/ciaccona%205.mp3

J.S. Bach is the only classical composer I can listen to.

FREDGIBLET

Monday, May 7, 2007 9:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by kaneman:
AMERICANS spend more money on 'CLASSICAL' music than the rest of the world combined.

To be fair, Americans spend more money than anybody else on just about everything. Though probably only half of those do we spend more than everyone else.

THATWEIRDGIRL

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 12:00 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
How many people here would like a slower pace ??

*raises hand*

---
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
-- Charlie Brown

FUTUREMRSFILLION

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 12:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Causal:
Well, this seems like the high school smart mouth. He was the kid who talked sh*t about everybody all the time. He was quick to point out the faults of others, and he always managed to drag other people into his mockery (whoever the target was). But you just knew that deep down he was really just try to make himself feel smart by calling other people stupid, or popular by calling other people losers, or valuable by calling other people worthless.

I just sense a lot of that tone in the thread. "Those people are just _______. I would never have done that because __________." It doesn't really impress me much when people try to look cool by talking down about others. I have no problem admitting that I almost certainly would have walked straight past Bell. Not because I hate music (I don't), not because I can't appreciate beauty (I can), not because I hate homeless people (I don't), but because if I were in that terminal, it was probably because I had to go to work. A lot of the posts make it sound like if you ignored Bell in order to get to work on time, you're some kind of soulless automaton. But since when did valuing timeliness and being a hard worker mean that you're a bad person? As has already been stated, putting him in there at rush hour skewed the data. Because I'm sorry, but at rush hour I just have other priorities. Put him in there at lunch time or on a weekend, and I'm there. But I think that it's just a responsible thing to do to recognize that there are times for stopping to smell the roses, and times where that's not the highest priority. Contra some of the posts, I think that that's not only not unhealthy, but a sign of maturity.

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So because you would have walked by this man - you are a better human being than those that say they wouldn't? They are lying? Or self righteous?

Casual, I always stop to listen, I always drop a little change and I always put money in a beggars hand. That is who I am and what I do, doesn't make me better than anyone else and doesn't make me self righteous either.

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CAUSAL

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 5:15 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by FutureMrsFIllion:
So because you would have walked by this man - you are a better human being than those that say they wouldn't? They are lying? Or self righteous?

Well, I'm not sure where you might have gotten that impression, but thanks for the accusations.

I'm not saying I'm better than the people who would stop. I'm just saying I'm not worse. And this thread (at least, when I wrote my initial post) had an awful lot of sneering about the people who would have walked. So my point was not that I'm better than others, but that I'm not worse. You've got the time and the loose change to stop and appreciate? Good for you. But don't look down on me for choosing not to.

And I'm quite sure that most of those who claim they would have stopped aren't lying. But a goodly number have been self-righteous about it--as if their choice is somehow morally superior to mine. And it's that implication that I resent. I think I have the freedom to be entertained at a place and a time of my choosing, especially if I have somewhere else to be. I don't want people acting as though I'm somehow a soulless robot because my choice would have been to keep walking.

Quote:
Casual, I always stop to listen, I always drop a little change and I always put money in a beggars hand. That is who I am and what I do, doesn't make me better than anyone else and doesn't make me self righteous either.

Not saying it does. I'm not sure exactly why you're taking me completely personally. I'm not suggesting that everyone who has said "I'd stop" is a self-righteous prig, and I'd appreciate it if you would recognize that that's not the case. But I don't always stop, and don't always drop change, and don't always put money in a beggar's hand. And that doesn't make me a monster. So perhaps what you're really saying is, "I'm not self-righteous!" to which I reply, "I know; I never said you were." And what I'm really saying is, "I'm not a soulless bastard!" To which I await your reply.

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SIGNYM

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 5:42 AM

Quote:
How many people here would like a slower pace ??

Also raises hand. I'd like something other than a treadmill stuck on high speed.

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

AGENTROUKA

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 10:01 AM

One question I have...

if we had the option of shorter work days, longer breaks... would the experiment really have gone differently?

Given the number of people and the amount of cultural offers stays the same, would people suddenly pay more attention to their surroundings, suddenly stroll about leisurely, be less preoccupied with their lives?

KHYRON

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 11:35 AM

Even with shorter work days and more leisure time there'd still be rush hours, so they'd probably still just run the experiment then to arrive at the same conclusion.

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

KANEMAN

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 4:45 PM

"but I thought the emphasis was on what our society has become, not on what we have become."

I thought our society was us. We make 'our' society what it is..

If this was an unbiased objective experiment it would not have been done at rush hour. As I said in an earlier post if it was done at a different time/day the results would have been different. I don't know about the rest of FFF.net'ers but, every city I go to from New Orleans to NYC the street performers(even bad ones) always draw a crowd, after all Americans are entertainment junkies, right?....just not that early in the morning...really, a long commute, bad coffee, a shitty mattress, early meeting, and an asshole boss = walk on by....at least 'till lunch break.............

HKCAVALIER

Tuesday, May 8, 2007 5:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So anyway, the contention, if I get it right, is that people have become droids to the system.

Hey Rue,

I think the situation described by this discussion is a good deal bleaker than your light-hearted summation would imply.

The experiment itself is nothing but a retelling of the old myth about a god going disguised among mortals as a beggar, with predictable results.

The comments from posters on this board, on the other hand, strike me as far more disturbing.

First of all, we have a lot of people among us who don't even know the difference between a "homeless person" and a street musician. The implication is that anyone that wasn't "homeless" would be performing in a concert hall or some such. What an ugly, prejudicial and thoroughly classist notion--and dead wrong.

First of all, I've been a street performer myself and I've known literally hundreds of such artists over the years and I can tell you that not one of them was homeless (a few lived in their cars, but young artists living in cars are not the "homeless" that Saint Ronald invented back in the 80's--buskers have been with us for as long as there have been streets to play on and people to appreciate them).

A lot of musicians I have known perform on the street as a brutal form of practice. It's a test of their self-esteem. It's a game to get self-obsessed passers-by to stop and listen (Joshua Bell and the culture vultures predicting how he would do during rush-hour were all pretty naive, if you ask me).

But most street musicians play on the street because they genuinely love the energy and the spontaneity of the street. That's right, some people actually like street life. I think most of them would be appalled to discover that so many here assume by the fact of them performing on the street that they are "homeless schills" after their money. What an ugly phrase, "homeless schills."

Some other of Causal's very revealing comments are worth quoting at length in this context.

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!

Quote:
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?

Quote:
But if they got dressed up and went to a concert hall, the experience would be phenomenologically different. Because there people see a musician and say, "Genius playing masterpieces."

In Causal's utopia, any musician can just get dressed up and go to a concert hall--the artist's version of "boot-strapping," I guess. Street musicians may not be homeless, but most musicians across the board can't get booked at a concert hall--and plenty of them wouldn't want to anyway.

But beyond that, Causal is saying that beauty is all a matter of framing and packaging and that's about the worst thing anyone could say about beauty. He's abdicated his ability to make his own judgement of what is and is not beauty--apparently because making one's own judgements is just too dang inconvenient in this fast paced modern world.

Sorry to belabor Causal's remarks like this, but I think the relationship he describes to art and beauty and self determination, his self-concept as the poor victim of societal forces "conditioning" him to view