Philosophy Now Forum

Lacewing wrote: what can most of us create that is more creative, and has more impact, than our personality and ourselves?

I've been trying to create a descent toasted sandwich but I can't think of anything interesting to put in it. Nobody seems to be interested in giving me any advice, they're all too busy putting oil in their cars or feeding their goats or whatever. I'm not trying to produce a work of art, for God's sake, all I want is something reasonably tasty.

Greta wrote:In a billion years the oceans are expected to boil away, but the habitable period will be long passed by then. Life on earth's only chance of continuing anything of this journey is to go to safer worlds.

That requires leverage! It's only possible if you live long enough and successfully on the one we started with...very much an open question for many including professionals who started the warnings long ago and continue to make them more urgent. It's every now moment which determines the future. Screw that up and we may be outta here sooner than we expect without having created any viable 'extensions' of ourselves. Not a good idea playing Russian roulette with nature. Though we may win a few, IT never loses. There is no illogic in the assumption that more advanced civilizations than ours may have attempted to retreat only when it was already too late.

Greta wrote:Whether they are genetically enhanced, as you suggest as a possibility, or fully digitised, that life will be unrecognisable as human. I suspect they will have art, but maybe not recognisable as such to us.

I agree. If there remain no 'elective affinities' to that which created it then, whether created by us or not, is no-longer of consequence nor can such an alien entity be qualified as an 'extension'. But why even care now what the human may, as a very remote possibility, extend into in a million years? That's only a concern for professional futurists like Kurzweil who get paid handsomely for their speculations which are only extensions to what's happening in the here & now. There will by many Black Swans awaiting us in the future including those inadvertently created by us that haven't been factored in or even conceived of by any professional soothsayer. This is not pessimistic but realistic where the "To Be has the same probability as the "Not to Be".

The subject requires a different thread in spite of already having been discussed in prior ones. Though we agree on some things our views are very different on most things. Best, I think, to let it be and simply accept the difference.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:Copland is easily my second favorite classical composer.

He cannot be listened to without seeing all those covered wagons heading west, with Ma and Pa with the smiling children, Lassie runs behind barking. Its the sound of America's myth of itself; blinkered, optimistic, and untruthful.

It does not address the mountain of rotting corpses of millions of Bison and native Indians on the plains, and the arrogance and self loathing.

I don't think about anything like that when I listen to music. I'm more or less a formalist--a music for music's sake person. I like what he does with musical structures, with harmonies, rhythms, melodies, etc., and I only ever like music when I like what's done with musical structures.

Music without context? I think not!

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:Re Copland, have you heard stuff like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqqhgwwa7gQ
(that's probably my favorite piece of his . . . it's broken up into multiple videos on youtube; I just linked to the beginning)

Or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaYoRnsokOg

Reiterated and overused themes ad nauseam.

Are you referring to internal repetition that you don't care for, or are you saying that the musical material is more or less lifted from something else (in which case, what)?

No - most of his work sounds samey.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJYVH_kZkOk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXikDnYZYpM
Dredful.

YEEEEEEEHAAAAWWWWWW!!

LITS go git uz sum enjuns

Hobbes' Choice wrote:No - most of his work sounds samey.

Ah, well, most artists have particular mannersisms etc. that make them identifiable. That's their "style." Just how "samey" something sounds is also relative to how much one is acclimated to the artist and the genre in general. We tend to hear similarities when we're not as familiar with something, and differences when we are more familiar with it.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:No - most of his work sounds samey.

Ah, well, most artists have particular mannersisms etc. that make them identifiable. That's their "style." Just how "samey" something sounds is also relative to how much one is acclimated to the artist and the genre in general. We tend to hear similarities when we're not as familiar with something, and differences when we are more familiar with it.

I think for me, thoughts of Western films which infected my youth, but which I came to loath when I realised the truth of the genocide gives me a cold chill when I hear that stuff.
I could no more listen to the national Anthems of the world than listen to Copeland.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I could no more listen to the national Anthems of the world than listen to Copeland.

It's only fucking music, Hobbes, music never killed anybody.

Harbal wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: I could no more listen to the national Anthems of the world than listen to Copeland.

It's only fucking music, Hobbes, music never killed anybody.

National Anthems have killed millions.

You could just as easily say that Hitler never killed any jews.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: National Anthems have killed millions.

No, it's people that kill.

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:No - most of his work sounds samey.

Ah, well, most artists have particular mannersisms etc. that make them identifiable. That's their "style." Just how "samey" something sounds is also relative to how much one is acclimated to the artist and the genre in general. We tend to hear similarities when we're not as familiar with something, and differences when we are more familiar with it.

I think for me, thoughts of Western films which infected my youth, but which I came to loath when I realised the truth of the genocide gives me a cold chill when I hear that stuff.
I could no more listen to the national Anthems of the world than listen to Copeland.

I don't see films as anything more than fiction for fiction's sake either.

Harbal wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: National Anthems have killed millions.

No, it's people that kill.

Duh. So does gas, but Hitler never killed anyone after 1918, so you work it out.

Terrapin Station wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:Ah, well, most artists have particular mannersisms etc. that make them identifiable. That's their "style." Just how "samey" something sounds is also relative to how much one is acclimated to the artist and the genre in general. We tend to hear similarities when we're not as familiar with something, and differences when we are more familiar with it.

I think for me, thoughts of Western films which infected my youth, but which I came to loath when I realised the truth of the genocide gives me a cold chill when I hear that stuff.
I could no more listen to the national Anthems of the world than listen to Copeland.

I don't see films as anything more than fiction for fiction's sake either.

There is no such thing as "just fiction". Fiction lays down the very ideological structure of all national myths, they inform our norms and expectations. Fiction does this far more than a thousand books of objective truth.

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Duh. So does gas, but Hitler never killed anyone after 1918, so you work it out.

You could kill somebody with a teddy bear if you rammed it down their throat and blocked there wind pipe. If enough people were killed by teddy bear does that mean we should start despising them? Double Duh, by the way.

Harbal wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Duh. So does gas, but Hitler never killed anyone after 1918, so you work it out.

You could kill somebody with a teddy bear if you rammed it down their throat and blocked there wind pipe. If enough people were killed by teddy bear does that mean we should start despising them? Double Duh, by the way.

You are talking bollocks.
Are you trying to articulate that only people can kill, and that there is nothing that can contribute to the fact that they kill?
Seriously?
Not racism, national pride, ideology, religion, belief, ... Only people?

Is there no harm in Mein Kampf, Sun Tzu The Art of War; 101 way to kill a person; a knife, a gun, an atomic bomb; false accusations; the phrase " the only good indian is a dead indian"; how about "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live'?

Hobbes' Choice wrote: You are talking bollocks.
Are you trying to articulate that only people can kill, and that there is nothing that can contribute to the fact that they kill?
Seriously?
Not racism, national pride, ideology, religion, belief, ... Only people?

Is there no harm in Mein Kampf, Sun Tzu The Art of War; 101 way to kill a person; a knife, a gun, an atomic bomb; false accusations; the phrase " the only good indian is a dead indian"; how about "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live'?

Well of course I am, everybody who doesn't agree with you is talking bollocks, everybody knows that. Music is just fucking sound, it doesn't tell anybody to do anything. If Isis, or whatever the fuckers call themselves, decided to adopt Beethoven or Bowie to kill to would you condemn them as well? Stupid scenario, I know, but I'm sure you get my point, although I'm even more sure you will refuse to acknowledge it.