COUNTY SOVEREIGNTY No. 6
from Frank Forman
Again, just this one essay and on a variety of
topics, as is my wont. I thank "Citizen Kafka"
for reminding me of it, as it has been a while
since I put out an issue.
ANTIRACISM AND SCHUBERT AT 200
I wrote a piece praising Schubert which was part self-
satirical, part serious, and part inquisitive. It drew
a few good responses but mostly howls from the
antiracist crowd. Antiracism is a cosmic world view,
whose norms have been assimilated by an extremely
large number of people, judging from the responses I
got. My short piece said nothing at all about race,
but I offended the antiracist norms and hence got
denounced as, at worst, a racist and, at best,
ethnocentric.
"Racism" itself is the best example I know of that Ayn
Rand calls an "anticoncept." Whereas concepts are
supposed to promote clarity of thought, an anticoncept
destroys any possibility of thought. It seems that a
racist is someone an antiracist dislikes. This is
hopelessly circular, but I would like to get a better
fix on the core elements of the antiracist ideology.
Here's what I said:
"This is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz
Seraph Peter Schubert. Let me indulge in some dubious
metaphysics in celebration: Schubert's music is not
essential to Western music (the only kind), in a way
that the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and
Brahms are. Western music would be essential different
without them. But Schubert's music is a glorious
bonus, even though it is a fact that the value of his
music exceeds that of the combined artistic
productions of all non-Western civilizations. Music,
and I mean the deliberate contrivance of a extended
microcosm without external purpose, unlike chanting to
induce hypnosis in religious services, music that just
accompanies a story, or music too trivial to be an
extended microcosm (folk music), is the last of the
arts and has been achieved by only one civilization,
the Western, and only really got going about 1700 with
the music of Bach, albeit with precursors dating back
a century or so. (I am thinking of the Counter-
Reformation music of Palestrina, but Bach wrote purely
instrumental microcosms.) A lot of people say that
Bach represents the culmination of a tradition and was
not a radical innovator. What he did was to produce
master microcosms of a perfection far beyond that of,
say, Buxtehude. So, Bach is the first composer but
Schubert, though also among the dozen greats, is not
be essential to the development of music. All this is
dubious metaphysics, but I think I have communicated
something that rings true, certainly for me. So how
can I render these poetic statements into something
more respectable by way of scientific metaphysics?"
-----end of my short piece.
Here's a response from Philippe Varlet:
Do you mean "the only kind you understand"? I thought that kind of musical
ethnocentrism belonged in the stone age. But I don't know this person and
should give him/her the benefit of the doubt.
[FRANK: I have made a serious effort to understand
non-Western music, for instance the Victor "History of
Music in Sound, Vol. 1: Ancient and Oriental," Yehudi
Menuhin, "West Meets East," and a more modern disc,
"Musique de la Grece Antique." There were instruments
playing short pieces or making improvisations, but not
music as I defined it and with which no one disputed:
"the deliberate contrivance of a extended microcosm
without external purpose, unlike chanting to induce
hypnosis in religious services, music that just
accompanies a story, or music too trivial to be an
extended microcosm (folk music)." Of non-classical
music, I like best the marches of Sousa--these
compositions are not extended, but writing a really
good one is deceptively difficult. Ditto for Strauss
waltzes, which I am not fond of. The only Jazz music I
like is the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and Brubeck was
classically-trained, under Hindemith. I've asked lots
of jazz lovers what other jazz I might like but none
of it turned out to appeal to me.
[I wonder how many of my critics profess *themselves*
as understanding non-Western music. I suspect they are
just parading their assimilation of antiracist norms.]
----------------
From: citizen kafka
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: drug induced blather?
Hi, Frank,
I think you might have taken too much of your MAO inhibitor and
washed it down with some red wine and blue cheese...
i guess i'll defend all of the other cultures of the world here:
YOU ARE NUTS!
actually, your letter sounds more like you took a blackbird, then
2 hours later did a 40 and a blunt.
[FRANK: These are wholly unnecessary insults.]
Some kidding aside, this is not a personal attack, but a sharp
rebuke for your xenophobic or unknowledged statements. Now Frank,
we all love some music we think is great and greater than other
music, but "...IT IS A FACT THAT THE VALUE OF HIS MUSIC EXCEEDS
THAT OF THE COMBINED ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS OF ALL NON-WESTERN
CIVILIZATIONS"? (emphasis added). You know, the symphonic form
exists in other cultures, if that's what's bothering you... And
talk about the value of his music- tonalities, scales, dynamics?
[FRANK: According to antiracism, anyone who violates the norms
fears others (the root of "xenophobic"). Who are you talking about
in the last sentence?]
Or how much it cost to buy the records? Geez, the guy couldn't
even finish some of his work!
Now all kidding aside, if you want to get meta about it, try
defining "artistic" and see if you're not talking yourself into a
small, tight, euro-centrism. To be clearer, you may be using the
parameters of euro 'classical' music to define 'artism,' thereby
automatically excluding everything else (but not really, if you
really look hard enough).
[FRANK: It is extremely difficult for someone socialized into
antiracism to read the writings of someone who violates the norms
on its own merits, *more* difficult that it is for Westerners to
appreciate non-Western art, which I do, by the way, esp. Japanese
painting. In fact, Westerners became so fond of it during the
nineteenth century this fascination and imitation has had a word
coined for it by art historians: Japanisme.
[I was defining music thusly to make the claim that such music is
distinctly western, just like vase painting was to the ancient
Greeks: I think all cultures paint pots (it seems deliberately so
that archaeologists of the future can discover them!), but only
the ancient Greeks made vase painting a major art form.
[I stand to be corrected. --end of Frank]
I won't be argumentative and claim that the 'individual value of
ANY artistic production of ANY non-western civilization' exceeds
that of Schubert, but there is a whole, big, beautiful world of
music out there, and lots of it is, at the least, the equal of
Schubert's. Now this is a stupid statement by me, too, since there
is no equivalency involved, just qualified aesthetic judgments.
Luckily for most of us, music happens to be a human art form which
has MORE variation from place to place than most any other.
Anyway, I would be glad to send you an annotated discography for
perusal.
BTW, for everyone else, I am referring almost exclusively to
recordings on 78...
[FRANK: Let's have it!! There is very little Western classical
music on 78s before Palestrina. (But then again, Beethoven's Mass
No. 1 and Choral Fantasy didn't make it on 78s.) But wait a
minute: I said that Bach was the "first" composer. Not quite a
contradiction, since Palestrina's music served other purposes than
music for its own sake. Well, Bach wrote a lot of religious music,
too. What some readers here may not know is that music was
forbidden during the service in churches in north Germany in
Bach's day, but not before and after. So Bach really went all out
to compose a *lengthy* piece that had no immediate religious
connotations.]
Seriously, no animus, just amazement at what you said,
[FRANK: Maybe not so amazing, if your antiracism hadn't beclouded
understanding non-antiracist thinking. You see antiracsits are
extreme relativists, most esp. when it comes to comparing
Occidental civilizations favorably to others. If I say, instead,
that rug design was (and is) a major art form only in the Arabic
civilization, someone might correct me as to my facts, but his
antiracism would not burst forth. I does, when I say the same
about Western music.]
-----------------------------------
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
From: Alun Severn
[FRANK: f_minor is an e-mail group devoted to discussing the life
and recordings of the late Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould. He's my
own favorite. Then come Backhaus, Kempff, and Schnabel in no
particular order. The pianists I regard as the most
underappreciated are Andor Foldes and Reine Gianoli. When I've had
an overdose of Gould's Bach and Mozart--it does happen!!--it's to
Kempff and Gianoli that I turn.]
Hmm. First of all, I would ask why would one want to *prove* that Schubert
is more important than the "combined artistic productions of all
non-Western civilisations"? It sounds to me as if that is the route to (and
I use this example because it's the only one I can think of, rather than to
be deliberately provocative) book-burning, censorship, the National Union
of Culture. I mean, it can't be done: it's an exercise not only in futility
but also, to quote GG, "...competition...which I happen to believe is the
root of all evil...".
[FRANK: I was being self-satirical when I made that wild claim
about Schubert, but it is probably a fact that most music lovers
who listen almost or entirely exclusively to classical music and
for whom Schubert is a favorite composer (I'm excluding the "Bach
and Before" crowd, the members of which all seem to make an
exception for Mozart) spend more *time* appreciating Schubert than
they do to all non-Western art put together.]
What you say may be anthropologically true (but I'm no expert nor want to
be), but I still feel uncomfortable with theories that need to exclude
verything else in order to prove a point about a particular chosen thing.
What I am saying, I suppose, is that I feel uncomfortable with absolutism
in all its forms. Schubert, dead or alive, is a bonus -- if you happen to
like Schubert, if you happen to identify with his outlook, his sensibility.
Surely, that is sufficient?
[FRANK: I made no such exclusion. It's just that the antiracist mind set
thinks I must.]
I guess this one will run for a while...
-------------------------------------
From: msh.hong@utoronto.ca
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
I can't believe I'm responding to this but just in case you are serious
and your post was not just an ingeniously and deliberately crafted
impetus to liven things up on this congenial list, I take offense to your
remarks.
I grew up listening to Gould recordings and Western music is in my
blood. I would like to think that I'm pretty with it in cultural
matters but I did not know that "the value of Schubert's music exceeds
that of the combined artistic productions of all non-Western civilizations".
Where did you find this fact? In the 1997 World Almanac listed under
_Per Capita Nodular Cultural Values - by region_ ?
White European men do not have a monopoly on the strange mix of passion,
blood, and cogency that is music. I assure you.
Michael Hong
[FRANK: I said nothing about race or sex. It's just that those enculturated
into antiracism think that I have to.]
-------------------------------------------
From: "Paul J. Stamler"
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: drug induced blather?
The reason I, for one, didn't respond is that some forms of stupidity are
impervious to argument. When someone Knows The Truth, no amount of reason
or evidence will sway them.
[FRANK: I am not the least impervious to argument. Let's see what
you have by way of evidence! It would be very good to be able to
get evidence for making objective artistic judgments!]
One of the most impervious forms of this is the classic logical error of
mistaking one's personal preferences for the Truth. I've come across this
a lot; many fans of classical music, like this twit, firmly believe that
nothing else is worth taking seriously. Many jazz fans consider that art
form the only serious one. Etc., etc.. Personally, I suspect every music
genre, yes even "lounge music", has produced something of merit, that can
stir the heart and soul. What turns me on the most is traditional folk
music; I can still remember the chill that possessed me back when I was a
college sophomore and heard Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark was the the
Night, Cold Was the Ground". That doesn't mean Vaughan Williams' Fifth
Symphony or "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" aren't brilliant, vitally important works
of music. They are, and they chill me too.
Tastes, yes. Absolutes, no.
[FRANK: Relatively absolute absolutes (a favorite expression of
the great and legendary pre-Friedman Chicago school economist,
Frank Knight), maybe. Consider:
1. I have never been able to appreciate opera, poetry, or ballet,
and this is my loss. But those who I respect for many other
reasons respect these art forms; so I will not denigrate them
(except opera).
2. Those who do not like Western classical instrumental music
quite often call it "good music."
3. Music, as I defined it, is the latest art form any civilization
develops. At least no one contested me on this.
I think the discussion may be irrelevant, as far as the future
goes, since Western civilization died on 1859 November 25. Some
genuine art lingered on in the periphery, Bartok in music, Joyce
in literature, say, with an end with the death of Shostakovich in
1975 and Ayn Rand in 1982. But men are too *self-conscious* to
produce art any more. What we have is global low-brow popular art
(A _Fortune_ article a couple of years back claimed that you could
go into any teenager's room on this planet and not know what
country you were in. Well, if they can exaggerate, so can I,
except that I get antiracists' ganders up.) and high-brow
international eclecticism. Besides, there is just too much cross-
cultural contact for separate artistic traditions to emerge
anymore. The fans of (classical) 78s know this all too well,
namely that the great performers of The Past were far more
distinctive than the ones we have today. There are some good ones-
-Harnoncourt, Kremer, Argerich--and they are the most
"controversial," i.e., independent and individualist, performers
around. I'd like to get recommendation on others.
-------------------------------------------
From: "David R. Hoehl"
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: drug induced blather?
On Sun, 2 Feb 1997, Paul J. Stamler wrote:
> The reason I, for one, didn't respond is that some forms of stupidity are
> impervious to argument. When someone Knows The Truth, no amount of reason
> or evidence will sway them.
[A good deal of additional good sense deleted.]
Paul stated pretty much my own reasons, better than I would have stated
them.
Besides, everybody already knows that the only decent music ever performed
was in the fabulous recordings of Kostelanetz and His Orchestra, so why
belabor Frank@clark.net's error?
--drh, who has owned as many as 5 copies of "Kostelanetz and His
Orchestra Perform Victor Herbert Melodies" at a time
[FRANK: At least someone has a sense of humor.]
-------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: drug induced blather?
From: ericgoldie@mhv.net (Eric Goldberg)
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: drug induced blather?
>
>Tastes, yes. Absolutes, no.
>
>Peace.
>Paul
Paul would be correct that there is good in all musics, except for the fact
that New Age music exists.
And I'm not even introducing Minimalism, ism, ism, ism, ism, ism into the
discussion! And I'm not even introducing Minimalism, ism, ism, ism, ism,
ism into the discussion! And I'm not even introducing Minimalism, ism, ism,
ism, ism, ism into the discussion!
After all, any art (?) form based on the sound of a needle getting stuck in
a groove must have some reason to exist.
Eric Goldberg
[Ditto.]
From: "Michael Biel"
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: Re: blather induced lather?
> Whoever decided it was safe to sell computers, modems and Internet
> accounts to 78 rpm record guys was deranged.
> Besides, we All know that Spike Jones' music is the Best of All Time!
> Diane (NOT Kurt) Nauck. :-)
It's funny you should mention Spike Jones, because the "Schickele Mix"
program one of our college stations played this afternoon (the topic was
musical body parts) started with Peter S telling us that he was not allowed
to play Spike Jones records when his father was in the house!
But now, are you willing to say that the music of Spike Jones is worth more
than all the combined music of all of the countries with an R in their
name? How about an L. (Oh I don't give an L.)
[And again.]
----------------------------------
From: lanza
Newsgroups:
rec.music.classical.recordings,rec.music.classical,alt.music.j-s-bach,alt.musi
c.beethoven,sci.philosophy.meta,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Schubert at 200
First of all, Happy Birthday, Franz! You gave us so much beauty and
happiness in your short life.
I think a statement attributed to Britten sums up my own feeling toward
Schubert: to wit, Benny respected Mozart more, but loved Schubert
more. S. is the most lovable of all composers, I think. His music is
certainly the most available, with the fewest problems, either of an
emotional or musical nature.
As for previous comments, I think it does no good to criticize the
music of other cultures, which many of us can hardly lay claim to
understanding in any real sense. It is enough to appreciate our own
artists without using them to depreciate the art of others.
As for Schubert's contributions to music, certainly his chromatic
modulations should be high on the list, as well as a previous poster's
reference to his extended thematic statements and the innovative lieder,
which set standards that are still unchallenged.
[FRANK: I was caught here, when I thought that Schubert was not
"essential" to Western music. I have just never been able to
appreciate Lieder *as it mingles the music with the *meaning* of
the text, as opposed to just lovely melodies running by that
happen to use the human voice as an instrument. They could all be
singing in a foreign language for all I care! I find the Lieder of
Schubert, Mozart, and some of Brahms and Schumann, but above all
Mahler worthwhile, but only *as abstract music*. It is my loss
that, try that I have, I just can't appreciate Lieder *as text
_cum_ music*. So, to a Lieder lover, Schubert will be *more*
important than Beethoven himself, who is not "essential," though
his "An die ferne Geliebte" was the first song cycle. I am not
going to try to wiggle out of this by claiming that Lieder is not
really music: most of the great composers took it very seriously
and did not write them just to make money. I plead guilty of
subjectivism here and thank Lanza for his thoughts.]
-------------------------------
From: andrew@Bayou.UH.EDU (Andrew A Brownell)
Newsgroups:
rec.music.classical.recordings,rec.music.classical,alt.music.j-s-bach,alt.musi
c.beethoven,sci.philosophy.meta,alt.philosophy.objectivism
Subject: Re: Schubert at 200
Uhm, yeah. Whatever.
I should point out that post-Renaissance Western civilization isn't the only
place one finds music for purely abstract purposes. I am most familiar with
the type of music that grew out of China two thousand years ago and continued
evolving until the Cultural Revolution put an end to it all. Yeah, it may
not be as complex or as sophisticated as "classical" music, but it does
exist.
[FRANK: We agree, then, for Chinese music did not make the sort of
self-contained microcosms that occurred in the West. The
eighteenth century, with precursors in the seventeenth, saw the
beginnings of at least two other sorts of deliberately self-
created microcosms, namely the novel and political constitutions.]
Schubert, in my opinion, is the most misunderstood and unappreciated
of the Viennese composers. As a pianist, I can safely say that it is a
disgrace that his contribution to the sonata literature is not more fully
realized. And where would the lied repertoire be today without him?
The only problem is that he lived such a short life.
[I agree with all of this. I've been celebrating the bicentennial by listening
to 18 of the 21 in Wilhelm Kempff's lofty renditions.
-------------------------
From: jellis10@ix.netcom.com(Jeremy Berman)
Newsgroups:
rec.music.classical.recordings,rec.music.classical,alt.music.j-s-bach,alt.musi
c.beethoven,sci.philosophy.meta,alt.philosophy.objectivism
>This is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Seraph Peter
>Schubert. Let me indulge in some dubious metaphysics in
>celebration: Schubert's music is not essential to Western music
>(the only kind), in a way that the music of Bach, Haydn, Mozart,
>Beethoven, and Brahms are.
Dubious statement no. 1: Schubert's music is not essential.....
I disagree. Where would lieder be without his hundreds of contributions
to the form? Secondly, when you talk about what influence Schubert had
on the composers who came after him, the names that come immediately to
mind are Bruckner and Wagner, with an honorable mention to Schumann.
Schumann (and Mendelssohn) were among the first composers to appreciate
Schubert's Ninth Symphony. Schumann wrote of it's "heavenly length."
This extension of the length of a work's themes for future development
was one of Schubert's identifying features as a composer, and again,
from there you go directly into Bruckner & Mahler.
[FRANK: Disregarding Lieder, I'm inclined to stand by my statement
that the really essential composers are just Bach, Haydn, Mozart,
Beethoven, and Brahms, except that I must add Bartok. It seems
that my restriction to this small number is rather arbitrary, but
what I *do* say is that the list of "essential" composers is not
higher than fifty. Take them away, and music becomes a *minor* art
form. We're down to the level of Verdi now.
[There is no other art form that would be reduced from major to
minor by removing fifty creators. Now here's where the problematic
metaphysics comes in: these top five or fifty composers were
genetic accidents, in the sense that in a very, very slightly
different universe, they would never have been born. It's hard to
speak of essentials about something so accidental. I left myself
wide open here. I realized the difficulty and have no answer. But
my respondents were too busy being antiracist.--end of Frank]
>Western music.....only really got going about 1700
>with the music of Bach, albeit with precursors dating back a
>century or so. So, Bach is the first composer but Schubert,
>though also among the dozen greats, is not be essential to the
>development of music.
Dubious statement number 2: Bach was the first composer. No he
wasn't,
and Western music didn't really get going in 1700, German/Austrian
classical music did. There are hundreds of examples of Spanish and
French music (chansons, virelais, ensaladas,etc. etc.) dating back to
as early as the 1100's. The first opera was written one hundred years
before Bach began composing.
[FRANK: German music got going with Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf
and such other dreadfuls as Paul Hindemith and Max Reger.]
But, back to dubious statement no. 1: The line of influential composers
didn't curl around Schubert. He lived at the same time as Beethoven,
and felt the prescense of the more popular composer just as Brahms
would a few decades later (to different ends). Yet, Schubert was an
original. Though his musical "parents" are Haydn and Mozart, his works
are not exact replicas of either. The quintessential Viennese quality
of smiling with tears in his eyes is rarely absent from his symphonic,
piano and chamber music output. As I wrote earlier, his use of longer
themes was then taken up by Bruckner & Mahler. And certainly the
songfulness of his music was inherited by Schumann (though his
development of them is probably more Beethovenian) and even Dvorak.
[no disagreement, and thank you for sharing your comments.]
-----------------------------------
From: livio@ocean.isdgm.ve.cnr.it (Livio Marangon)
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
Dear Frank,
I can't understand why you need to repeat that whatever doesn't belong to
Western civilizations is shit (and I feel that kind of pride so
anti-gouldian).
[FRANK: An antiracist flaring up. I did not know of Gould's
admiration of non-Western music. I've read most of the literature,
in the form of whole books by and about him, but his discussion of
non-Western music is so minimal that I don't remember any of it.
Start up a thread on this, please.]
[insult deleted]
And music in religious services doesn't serve to "induce hypnosis"
(Frank! Have you ever listened to Bach or Gibbons?!!).
[Yes, but never once to the point of being hypnotized]
I don't like hearing silly ideas called "metaphysics".
[What you mean is you don't like silly metaphysics. I wrote a
book, _The Metaphysics of Liberty_ (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer
Academic, 1989), an outgrowth of my doctoral dissertation
(economics, George Mason University, 1985), which you might want
to get from Interlibrary Loan.]
--------------------------------------
From: citizen kafka
To: 78 RPM Records <78-l@cornell.edu>
Subject: drug induced UPDATE!
Hi, all,
an update on the Schubert announcement. The man who wrote it,
Frank Forman, is a fairly prolific participant in several usenet
groups, including political groups discussing racial superiority,
and classical music groups. From comments he has made in other
postings, he actually seems extremely informed in the classical
and 78 world. He has also published an e-zine called "County
Sovereignty." If you're interested, do a search with altavista;
search for his address in usenet...
frank@clark.net.
[FRANK: Please do a search. You'll find a thread I started on
alt.politics.nationalism.white entitled, "What Are the Race
Deniers Denying?" Many antiracists deny the existence of race "as
a meaningful biological category." What I have tried to extract
from these antiracists is whether race is a meaningful category
anywhere in biology, and if so, how would man be different if
there were races. In other words, I'm trying to get some
conceptual clarification. None has been forthcoming, whence
antiracists do not know what they are talking about. I make one
exception to this, some postings by Scott MacEachern. This is
driving me to sit down and read Luigi Cavalli-Sforza, et alia,
_History and Geography of Human Genes_ (well, nobody actually
reads the whole thing), and Milfred Wolpoff and Rachael Caspari,
_Race and Human Evolution_. I'm going to have to drop out of the
discussion for a while, since Scott has come up with some genuine
thoughts, and I want to examine them and not blather on. This is
violating the most sacred of all UseNet taboos, and it may be
worse than offending antiracists.
[You mention my e-zine, _County Sovereignty_. I'm experimenting
here with the ideal of government being restored primarily to the
county level, reversing the trend toward concentration to the
state level, to the federal level, to the executive branch at the
federal level, and *within* the executive branch. It was Nixon,
out of a fear, not altogether paranoid, that bureaucrats would
block his movement toward smaller government that led him to
require decisions to be made by his own White House staff. It has
remained so and has gotten so bad that it seems everything has to
be "cleared with OMB" [Office of Management and Budget]. Even that
has gotten to be too personal, so Clinton has his own immediate
advisors the OMB people have to clear things with. Actually,
Clinton and Gore seem to be somewhat reversing these trends. Now,
this ideology got going when large scale business operations did,
the first of which was the American railroads. There are always
two factors to be balanced: economies of scale and diseconomies of
bureaucracy. The physical characteristics of railroads meant that
the optimal size of enterprise was larger than ever before in
history. And what happened was that control over businesses passed
from the ruggedly individualistic capitalists (the so-called
"Robber Barons") to the managers, as Burnham argued. At the same
time governments expanded, in large part because of the extension
of the franchise and, with it, the illusion that you rip off more
people below you than rip you off from above. It is an illusion
easy to believe in a country where, according to a survey by the
National Science Foundation, that half the electorate does not
realize that the earth rotates about the sun. (This is stupidity
at a higher level, for the earth *revolves* around the sun but
*rotates* about its own axis.) Governments can only be managed
bureaucratically, and what happened was that both big business and
big government is staffed predominately by managerial types. Since
governments control education, the notion that everyone can be
educated--i.e. that education is something that is done *to* the
students, that it comes from without and not from within--took
hold. In fact, the governmental part of this whole Human
Betterment Industry (most of it), has been larger than
manufacturing for a couple of decades now at least. This is a
pressure group of fabulous proportions. (Our political system
consists mostly of rewarding groups who have the merit of being
able to get organized.) It is especially in the interests of this
pressure group to believe in racial equality, since on the
evidence so far, it is going to take even more fabulous sums of
money than have already been expended, which is more than the cost
of the Cold War (another ripoff). Things are going to change,
though, since the equations governing economies of scale and
diseconomies of bureaucracy are changing. First, there are nowhere
nearly the *physical* economies of scale, at the plant size, as
there were in the heydays of industrialism. I don't know what the
largest plant in the country is, but I do know that Detroit is now
just one more city that makes cars. On the other side,
bureaucracies are no longer as necessary, since the man on the
shop floor can get ahold of information that previously could only
be had in the executive suite. It will take awhile for these
changed realities, understood quite widely, to become manifest in
our ideologies. What is the case is that the dinosaurs digging
their heels in, especially by exploiting racial altruism. So you,
Citizen Kafka (well, maybe not you, but a great many others), just
lump in everything that contradicts the managerial mind set with
"racism." Militias? Racist! Born-again Christians? Racist!
Decentralizers? Racist!]
It does give a better explanation for his views...
[This ad hominem I leave in.]
------------------------------
From: Ingvar Loco Nordin
Cc: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
[more insults]
Please look out the
window, Frank! Isn't it lonely in there - and dusty??? You sure are missing
a world of art, a world of joy, a world of excitement, a world of
refinement.
[FRANK: Not at all true. I've been a classical music lover
(instrumental music, generally) since the sixth grade and exchange
tapes of 78s and broadcast rarities with collectors several
European countries and Japan. There are about 500 private members
of the _Association of Recorded Sound Collections_ (and a like
number of institutions). If I can reasonably suppose that half of
the collectors collect classical music and half of them non-vocal
and further assume that a tenth of all those with large
collections of materials have found out about and joined this
worthy institution, then my collection must be among the top 1250
in the world. I don't collect the 78s themselves, which makes me
more of a music lover, a participant in "a world of art, a world
of joy, a world of excitement, a world of refinement" than a
hoarder.]
I am truly sorry for you and the likes of you. I am glad to
notice that you really have gone deep into the world of Schubert,
but don't get stuck there. How old are you; 15? You sound like a
very young person who just learned to enjoy classical music, and
who gets so overwhelmed that he blows the lid. You have a lot to
learn, a lot to discover. Right now you are nowhere. Now I am
deleting your posting and forgetting about you.
[FRANK: For the record, I was born 1944 October 28 in Kansas City,
MO, which makes me 52. (Physiologically, I'm about seven or eight
years younger than the average for my age.) But thanks hugely for
the compliment: far, far too many people lose their independence
of thought after they get older. Well, come to think of it, I
deplored the conformity of my companions even when I was 15. As
far as I knew, there was only one other atheist there, the boy who
asked me if I believed in god and if so why. I couldn't answer
him, so I gave up the belief.]
----------------------------------
From: Mary Jo Watts
To: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
Subject: GG:Flame Warning
All of you are aware of my policy that flaming is simply not allowed on
this list. I mean it. People are free to voice their opinions (however
I may disagree with them) but not in such a way that is 1) vulgar 2)
hostile 3) totally off topic (GG).
I ask all of you to respect these ground rules and remind you that I
have, can, do and will unsubscribe people who refuse to comply and
clutter up our boxes with off-topic messages full of rancor.
-----------------------------------------
From: Robert Kunath
Cc: f_minor@email.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: GG:Flame Warning
Dear Gouldians,
A Gould-inspired endorsement of Mary Jo's flame policy:
Many of you have argued persuasively that Gould would have adored
the Internet and the new prospects for technologically-mediated contact
that it offers. I'm sure you're right, but I also think he would have
abhorred the way the 'net has in some ways contributed to a culture of
aggressive rudeness. I am sure he would be pleased to think that his
listserve was distinguished by the civility of its discourse.
[FRANK, and to put an end to this and in agreement with Mary Jo. I
felt obligated to respond to my critics and commentators. Some
comments were nothing but insulting, others gave me and I hope the
rest of us food for thought, and some others made me aware of my
neglect of Lieder. I hope I have succeeded in doing what Ayn Rand
urged us all to do, namely check one's premises.
There are still many things to discuss, not the least of which is
whether our admiration of Glenn Gould's musicianship is more than
just a matter of taste, a subjective liking, as well as this whole
business of antiracism (which is rather off-topic for music
groups). But *I* didn't say anything about race.
Frank
P.S. I threw in two deliberately outrageous statements, the better
to provoke your thinking things over. And that, Citizen Kafka, is
the actual "explanation for my views."