We're riding a comfortable (for most readers) fast train headed toward a terrible cliff. The fact that the piped in music is good doesn't change that, so I don't know that I can comfortably accept the statement that the Machine does also facilitate "good"...I understand the larger point, though, that sorrow and joy are mixed everywhere, and we can't refuse to see or hear something or appreciate it, if its genesis is not spotlessly pure.
Plus, I think , good as the New World is, if you know the mechanism of its production, you can also hear in it the despairing cries of starving steelworkers and their families. I'm not saying its only the New World is like that: the mechanism of most official culture ensures that many things are so
I suppose I do have one question: What "ant hills" should we die on? We can acknowledge that things like great films, the symphony, museums, sports leagues, or whatever are all good things but also almost unthinkable without the bureaucratic dominance of the Machine. There's merit to all of them, things to be appreciated to all of them, but if they're good things that are inextricably tied to the Machine...do we have to give them up?
Of course, most of them are not actually inextricable--you can have a sports league without having a massive industrial-bureaucratic apparatus--but it's hard to resist the Machine while just accepting all the things that it offers.
I do have hope that most of these things can become a form of creative resistance, but I think that has to start with creating new centers of cultural power--ones that exist outside the logic of bureaucracy and dehumanization. But I'm still not sure we can properly call it "resistance" to just enjoy how good the symphony can be.
I suspect that Anthony is currently elbow deep in car while we sit pontificating at our laptops. So, I will respond first. One thing that I thought is that I do think there is some point at which we need to bow out of participating in these forms of "cultural" expressions when they are just fully captured by the Machine. For example, I don't go to concerts and sporting events where I can't use a paper ticket or cash once inside. Feels to me that this is a fully captured industry. MLB, and I love baseball, is fully captured. And the advertisements are just beyond comprehension. It's so profane that I hate taking my kids to sit through hours of ads. I don't have a TV for a reason. (By the way, I've noticed that MLB has 5 basic types of advertisements: gambling, alcohol, healthcare, banking.and insurance. That is probably telling) I really just can't do it anymore. The Symphony has basically retained some degree of humanity though I did notice that they've bolted television screens into the walls of Heinz Hall to show advertisements during intermission, admittedly for their own performances but still. Anyway, I think there are lines that we have to hold internally when we say I will participate in the Machine to HERE but no farther. It is probably a pretty subjective thing. I will never get a smartphone. That is one of my lines.
> without all of this Machine support, I would have been deprived of one of the best musical performances I have ever seen.
And how does that balance with the damage in society, people's lives, and such, from the Machine? Perhaps we would be better of with fewer of "the best musical performances", if the cost for them is feeding the Machine?
Perhaps the development of huge symphony orchestras already has a dehumanizing element in it: an abstraction, mechanical organization, and gigantism of music, akin to Taylorism, combined with the megalomania of the orchestral composer and conductor as some kind of God.
> At the Savage Collective, we are trying hard not to be nostalgists. We realize that the “good old days” and their systems were full of people just as broken as we are today.
So? Nostalgia isn't about some perfect utopia without broken people (and who said that's desirable in the first place?).
Nostalgia is for parts of life and aspects of a system that worked better. If one does't believe there are aspects that worked better before, are they even against the Machine? Perhaps they're Machine reformists, wanting a Machine-with-a-human-face.
> When the Machine gives us something true, good, or beautiful, we need not cast it out.
Isn't precisely when it gives us "something true, good, or beautiful" that we need to cast it out?
Because that's how abusers work. And it's the overall balance that matters, not whether we get some goodness trinkets in return for our humanity.
Nice time capsule. And as the line by Tennessee Williams in Glass Menagerie reads, You can’t ignore “the fact that the future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it.”
Not sure I entirely agree.
We're riding a comfortable (for most readers) fast train headed toward a terrible cliff. The fact that the piped in music is good doesn't change that, so I don't know that I can comfortably accept the statement that the Machine does also facilitate "good"...I understand the larger point, though, that sorrow and joy are mixed everywhere, and we can't refuse to see or hear something or appreciate it, if its genesis is not spotlessly pure.
Plus, I think , good as the New World is, if you know the mechanism of its production, you can also hear in it the despairing cries of starving steelworkers and their families. I'm not saying its only the New World is like that: the mechanism of most official culture ensures that many things are so
Wow, I'm getting responses. How about that?
I suppose I do have one question: What "ant hills" should we die on? We can acknowledge that things like great films, the symphony, museums, sports leagues, or whatever are all good things but also almost unthinkable without the bureaucratic dominance of the Machine. There's merit to all of them, things to be appreciated to all of them, but if they're good things that are inextricably tied to the Machine...do we have to give them up?
Of course, most of them are not actually inextricable--you can have a sports league without having a massive industrial-bureaucratic apparatus--but it's hard to resist the Machine while just accepting all the things that it offers.
I do have hope that most of these things can become a form of creative resistance, but I think that has to start with creating new centers of cultural power--ones that exist outside the logic of bureaucracy and dehumanization. But I'm still not sure we can properly call it "resistance" to just enjoy how good the symphony can be.
I suspect that Anthony is currently elbow deep in car while we sit pontificating at our laptops. So, I will respond first. One thing that I thought is that I do think there is some point at which we need to bow out of participating in these forms of "cultural" expressions when they are just fully captured by the Machine. For example, I don't go to concerts and sporting events where I can't use a paper ticket or cash once inside. Feels to me that this is a fully captured industry. MLB, and I love baseball, is fully captured. And the advertisements are just beyond comprehension. It's so profane that I hate taking my kids to sit through hours of ads. I don't have a TV for a reason. (By the way, I've noticed that MLB has 5 basic types of advertisements: gambling, alcohol, healthcare, banking.and insurance. That is probably telling) I really just can't do it anymore. The Symphony has basically retained some degree of humanity though I did notice that they've bolted television screens into the walls of Heinz Hall to show advertisements during intermission, admittedly for their own performances but still. Anyway, I think there are lines that we have to hold internally when we say I will participate in the Machine to HERE but no farther. It is probably a pretty subjective thing. I will never get a smartphone. That is one of my lines.
> without all of this Machine support, I would have been deprived of one of the best musical performances I have ever seen.
And how does that balance with the damage in society, people's lives, and such, from the Machine? Perhaps we would be better of with fewer of "the best musical performances", if the cost for them is feeding the Machine?
Perhaps the development of huge symphony orchestras already has a dehumanizing element in it: an abstraction, mechanical organization, and gigantism of music, akin to Taylorism, combined with the megalomania of the orchestral composer and conductor as some kind of God.
> At the Savage Collective, we are trying hard not to be nostalgists. We realize that the “good old days” and their systems were full of people just as broken as we are today.
So? Nostalgia isn't about some perfect utopia without broken people (and who said that's desirable in the first place?).
Nostalgia is for parts of life and aspects of a system that worked better. If one does't believe there are aspects that worked better before, are they even against the Machine? Perhaps they're Machine reformists, wanting a Machine-with-a-human-face.
> When the Machine gives us something true, good, or beautiful, we need not cast it out.
Isn't precisely when it gives us "something true, good, or beautiful" that we need to cast it out?
Because that's how abusers work. And it's the overall balance that matters, not whether we get some goodness trinkets in return for our humanity.
enjoyed this plus Patrick's original article both thoroughly
Nice time capsule. And as the line by Tennessee Williams in Glass Menagerie reads, You can’t ignore “the fact that the future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it.”