Re: (ed keith) Marx, Keynes and Ancestors)
Ray, Thanks for your latest. Please forgive me if I don't reply in detail -- I think we both know where we stand on a number of issues and we're unlikely to persuade each other. But you mention something at the end which has intrigued me enormously for some years -- though I suspect that I will disturb your artistic sensibilities and you'll consider me a Philistine. This is where you write: Keith Ed. I have questions. Is this duality virus related to the issue of wave and particle in Quantum Mechanics? Is it possible that all of this yes and no in economics and politics, this right and left as the only possibilities, is really a wave result from the earthquake of Quantum theory in science and math and it's consequent effect on Western languages?A question for the next Dr. Freud or Jung perhaps. It could also explain why so much of the discussion about work seems so emotional and unconscious. The short answer to the question as you've put it is No. The human race, being tribal, has always considered most questions of politics and economics from the point of view of whether it benefits one's own group or not. The duality was there long before Quantum Theory. QT has obviously had huge effects in science and technology, and will continue to do so (what with quantum computers being seriously developed and so forth) but I believe that it has also affected the arts (including religion and philosophy) in a considerable way. What I mean is that, by the turn of this century, the arts (visual, musical, literary), plus organised religion, plus philosophy had left the practical world where ordinary people could enjoy them and were becoming extremely sophisticated. But, essentially, they had reached the end of the Newtonian world, and could go no further. Nothing really new (beyond temporary gimmicks) was going to happen and be as successful as in the past. Technically, they had all reached a high level, but they had nothing further to say. Then along comes QT and opens up a whole new mystical world of a depth far beyond anything that the arts/religion/word-based-philosophy could express. In short, here is a double whammy. The arts/religion/word-based-philosophy can no longer be taken any more seriously than, say, flint knapping, morris dancing, or pottery. They are all crafts (extremely interesting, no less) that have reached their expressive limits. At the present time, they are all being used as sophisticated class "badges" (particularly "serious" music and poetry) by those who want to have something to make themselves distinctive and to keep the hoi polloi in their place. Here I was going to write a little further about the effect of all this on the world of work (and of its quickly changing nature), but I have no more time today, and will have to leave it for now. Perhaps someone else would like to take this theme further. Keith Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors -- Free Trade nurtures Culture
May I for once be openly cynical? Christoph Reuss wrote: On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. [snip] The above notion that "picturesque customs" come and go, and always did so, ignores what's fundamentally new in the current process of globalization: That old local/regional customs are not being replaced by new local/regional customs, but by GLOBAL "customs" -- by a McDonalds/Coca-Cola mono-"culture" that is the same everywhere. What is being lost isn't just "old customs", but the cultural diversity of this planet. [snip] Here is evidence that the above assertion is empirically false: When I was in Japan in the mid 1980s, I was struck by the fact that all the MacDonalds restaurants had an item on their menu which I had never encountered in MacDonalds in America: corn soup. Clearly, the new global economic "order" fosters cultural divesity, not homogenized "monoculture". \brad mccormick -- Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21) Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA --- ![%THINK;[XML]] Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
FW: Free Trade vs. Culture
Christoph, At 02:05 28/07/99 +0200, you wrote: On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. In England during the last couple of centuries the typical medieval village has entirely disappeared and there has been much wailing and nashing of teeth about its demise. But in its place today a vigorous and attractive new type of village is emerging -- together with modern equivalents of ancient customs. (CR) The above notion that "picturesque customs" come and go, and always did so, ignores what's fundamentally new in the current process of globalization: That old local/regional customs are not being replaced by new local/regional customs, but by GLOBAL "customs" -- by a McDonalds/Coca-Cola mono-"culture" that is the same everywhere. What is being lost isn't just "old customs", but the cultural diversity of this planet. If we are, in fact, losing cultural diversity then it would be a great shame. However, I'm not so sure that this is happening. True, 70% of the populations of the advanced countries seem to be passive customers of the same sorts of inane things and, true, most cities look exactly the same as one another. To this extent there is a global culture. Nevertheless, cultural diversity may be growing. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong places for it. For the active, curious, intelligent 30% of the population there have never been as many different sorts of specialist organisations as today. For example, in Bath 50 years ago there was only one choir (that is, a secular choral society as opposed to church choirs). Today, even though there hasn't been any significant growth in the number of active singers, there are over 20 choirs -- each one with a different type repertoire. (KH continued on 27-Jul): There is a lot of historical confusion here because you are repeatedly associating merchants and traders with the military. OK, there's collusion sometimes (particularly in the defence industries) but the big lesson of human history from post-tribal times onwards shows that merchants (who need freedom) and governments (who want to establish control over their populations) are basically antagonistic. (CR) I think the U$A is a great example that - merchants and governments are NOT basically antagonistic (just think of the current U$--EU trade wars on bananas and hormone beef, or the wars in Iraq, Kosovo etc. etc.) - merchants do NOT need freedom (just think of the most successful merchant in history, Bill Gates, and his coercive monopoly that enabled this success in the first place) Yes, one can always find examples (particularly in the US where there is such a well-developed lobby system) where some industries have got an inside track with government departments and are able to persuade the government to help them with subsidies, protection from imports, etc. But, by and large, most business steers away from involvement with government, even from asking favours, because as soon as they do so, civil servants start meddling in their affairs. (REH) Keith, if you want to know what you are losing with the death of the languages then consider the following: it ultimately won't effect the outcome because the battle over this is not scientific or economic, (efficiency is cheaper) but political and cultural imperialism. (KH) Yes, I appreciate this, and, yes, nation-state politicians in all countries ^ have tried to stamp out minority languages for the sake of establishing firmer control. But they don't always succeed and whether a language survives or not is very much more to do with whether it's in the interests of the people within the relevant region. (CR) Please don't confuse "nation-state" with "imperialist state". I think it's being pedantic to differentiate between "nation-state" with "imperialist state". Whether a country is inimical to its domestic populations or to both its domestic populations and foreign ones, either state is undesirable. There is all the world of a difference between politicians and civil servants who are truly answerable to the people and those who have wrapped themselves up in cosy departments of state and seek to make themselves as independent as possible from the people. Instead of calling one country a "nation-state" and another an "imperialist state" I would place them both along the "state" axis rather than the governance axis. (CR) For the record: *Not* "all countries [or their "nation-state politicians"] have tried to stamp out minority languages for the sake of establishing firmer control" -- for example,
Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors -- Free Trade nurtures Culture
Hi Brad, Thanks for your post. I'm working on my return but it will be a little while. As for monoculture I would say that it is not so much that they had corn soup but that the culture of McDonald's may or may not be close to the Japanese and the issue is whether the Japanese can absorb McDonalds and allow it to be a flower on the Japanese trunk or whether it is toxic to the whole. I suspect that the Japanese are flexible enough to make a McDonald's "Japanese" and still enjoy their own considerable appetite for their own fast food. But I don't know the answer to that. The Japanese in music are kind of like the Italians. They have the same intensity and belief in their own answers as the bel canto has in its. Also like the Italians they have a rather bad history with the giants next door. We could relate the rape of Nanking to the Roman Church's relationship with the Albagensians when real travel became efficient and safe enough for the Pope's Armies to control the minds of what are now the French. Ultimately the French culture triumphed and Roman Catholicism in France is French and not Italian. However, they still don't tolerate Christian diversity very well, or so my Baptist Missionary cousins tell me. McDonald's in France is another issue. The French cuisine has begun to heal my daughter along with the Doctor's herbs which are coordinated with her diet. He is a five star french chef himself. McDonald's and all fast food is totally at odds with the French methods of food combining and with what they call "eating to live" rather than "living to eat". ( They have the same attitude about work.) He is teaching her to "eat to live" so that she is watchful of whether the chemistry of the nutrients work together or not. He says most of this fast food is like pissing into your gas tank on your car. And yet that is exactly the food that American Private Enterprise sells our schools. It would be more easy if my daughter were orthodox Jewish and ate only kosher food than eating lots of vegetables with the proper relationship to carbohydrates, etc.. in her current "fast food" school. The TV actress Suzanne Summers has written a couple of books about food combining that she learned in France after the standard gym health food diet went to her stomach once she past fifty, and wouldn't go away. Food combining became necessary if she was to continue to work as an actress. They wouldn't hire her with the weight gain. But most of all the diet just makes you feel better. Now the issue for McDonald's is not does it taste good and is it easy but does it work in your fast paced life of "living to work" in this world, as the energy supply, or does it just gum up the works. Like the cigarette manufacturers of a generation ago using Doctors to sell poison, the fast food entrepreneurs are trying to get our children hooked early by selling in the schools under the old fashioned "American diet" rules. A diet that I met once again in the hospital but is generally discredited. Not by the scientists but by the HIV community that has had to eat properly to live longer once they got the bug. This is like the MDs who claimed that Alexander and other somatic methods were fads until their million dollar athlete customers began to break down more quickly than the ones trained by practitioners who worked with dancers. Suddenly you met all of the MDs at Pilates and in the Alexander Center. They had to change because their million dollar athletes sued a couple of them for incompetence. I found that the great American diet was alive and well the other day with my dietition at the hospital. The turning point for me was when my company was doing some very complicated rehearsals. At five o:clock they all took a short break and went to McDonalds in order to be back rehearsing at six. It was strange, they simply couldn't do the work after eating there. After that they brought their own food. The clincher was when I had a wonderful rehearsal with a Bach cantata and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble. Took a liesurely burger at the local fast food restaurant and had NO voice when I returned. Something in it caused my cords to swell. It was the first and last time that I ever did that. Well I guess you have to beware if you are going to be a buyer in this barbaric free market society. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. wrote: May I for once be openly cynical? Christoph Reuss wrote: On Sat, 24 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: For better or for worse, we recreate society much as it was before whenever we have passed through technological/economic change. OK, we might well lose picturesque customs and metaphors (such as 7 or 70 different names of snow -- and it's important for scholarly reasons that records are kept of these), but we recreate new ones which are equivalent. [snip] The above notion that "picturesque customs" come and go, and always did so, ignores what's fundamentally new in the current
[FW] Quantum Th. Re: Marx, Keynes and Ancestors
REH said: I have questions. Is this duality virus related to the issue of wave and particle in Quantum Mechanics? I don't think so. Duality is the basis of logic. Given any particular thing, real or abstract, absolutely everything else in the universe (or in the universe of discourse) becomes a new abstract thing, the thing that is NOT-this-particular-thing. It's risky to extrapolate metaphors from quantum theory -- both the humanists and the physicists rage and sneer. But as a source of metaphor, the wave/particle ambiguity of QT is suggestive of somthing very unlike logical duality. QT say that stuff -- both matter and energy -- is not infinitely divisible but is composed of discrete bits. But the wave equation says that one of those bits -- an electron, say -- isn't in any particular place. It's just more probably here than just over there and waaay more probably here than in the next galaxy. While it may be said to exist, as a thing it's very un-thing-like, not a very good referent for a noun. It's a much better referent for a verb because you can only say that it's in a particular place when you interact with it -- when you observer it in some way. So observable thingness only arises as a result of process. Sorry if this sounds weird -- I'm no mathematician but an introductory theoretical physical chemistry course was one of my more enlightening experiences. And it has influenced my artistic efforts to the extent taht I always think of an art object as an embodiment of mind and process. Umm...better (or worse, much worse from the perspective of efficiency and profit) I think of all satisfying work that way. Probably why I drive the same model of Porsche the Ray does. ;-) - Mike -- Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] URL: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/mspencer/home.html ---
Re: FW: Free Trade vs. Culture
On Wed, 28 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: To this extent there is a global culture. Nevertheless, cultural diversity may be growing. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong places for it. For the active, curious, intelligent 30% of the population there have never been as many different sorts of specialist organisations as today. For example, in Bath 50 years ago there was only one choir (that is, a secular choral society as opposed to church choirs). Today, even though there hasn't been any significant growth in the number of active singers, there are over 20 choirs -- each one with a different type repertoire. It's clear that 4 years after WWII, the people of Bath had more basic things to do than singing in a choir... Also, I would suggest that the increase in opportunities is largely due to technology and increased leisure-time. The question is, are the 20 choirs of Bath much different from the 20 choirs of other towns ? There may be 20 brands of toothpaste in the supermarket, but it can hardly be called "cultural diversity" if the supermarkets in other regions carry basically the *same* 20 brands of toothpaste... (Okay Brad, the Japanese store may carry a 21st "corn toothpaste" ;-}) Yes, one can always find examples (particularly in the US where there is such a well-developed lobby system) where some industries have got an inside track with government departments and are able to persuade the government to help them with subsidies, protection from imports, etc. But, by and large, most business steers away from involvement with government, even from asking favours, because as soon as they do so, civil servants start meddling in their affairs. I guess the larger problem is that it's increasingly *vice-versa* -- corporations are meddling in the state's affairs... so they don't steer away from it, but actively meddle more and more (not only in the U$ -- just think of the thousands of industry lobbyists in Bruxelles..). (CR) Please don't confuse "nation-state" with "imperialist state". I think it's being pedantic to differentiate between "nation-state" with "imperialist state". Whether a country is inimical to its domestic populations or to both its domestic populations and foreign ones, either state is undesirable. The question is whether this nation-state is "inimical to its domestic populations" in the first place. You're right, though, that an imperialist state is likely to be inimical to both its domestic populations and foreign ones... Anyway, the problem of our time is that *corporations* are increasingly inimical to populations... What seems to be happening is that everybody is learning English -- that takes care of globalisation; but also speaking their own language -- and this, of course, may be a regional or local language and not the official one. In my region, the "second language" that people once learned was the language of their neighboring region. Now it is English. This means that neighbors won't communicate with each other in the native language of one of them, but in English, which is a foreign language for both of them. This will increase the "misunderstandings" and decrease the sense of community among neighbors. Chris
Re: Canadian Indian Claims
Too bad they can't assess liability for lost families, intellectual capital, land use ideas etc. It seems to me that you are using the rules of a divorce without separating. Better you start with the ideas of justice and the rule of law as defined by both groups. The truth is that one group has the power, just as with the Kurds or the Bahais in Iran, and the other group doesn't even exist except as a continuing image and a tumor in the empathy of those who continue to benefit from the injustice. The problem with such tumors is that they either make the person inhumane or they eat at the identity until something terrible happens that releases the toxin. Something like a Holocaust, a Nuclear war or a plague to give the dominant population the same experience. Often such unconscious functions are masked by contemporary economic, religious or political myths and the prove tenacious and impossible to stop even when the conscious story is removed. The unconscious is rarely probed for a whole culture. I've always felt that the story of Noah was an example of a culture doing that. Noah of course was furious for some deep unknown reason. A reason so deep that he had to spend some time back in the water contemplating the meaning of his unconscious connections with his spirituality. At one point Jesus said that someone would have to go back inside his mother's belly (the water) before he could change those motivations. But after the catharsis, plague, war or whatever things change. After that they go on, just as the Romans did with the Etruscans. The Christians have a history of absorbing groups like this and maintaining certain images. That is not unlike the Iroquois who rescued a nation that they had defeated and nearly destroyed. The took in the survivors and incorporated their ceremonials into their own tradition. That kept them from feeling bad I guess. It worked for the Church with the Mithrians and the Italians with the Etruscans. The Pope's hat is Mithric and the bull fight is the old ceremony to kill the bull which they then hung above the door to let everyone walk under while they received the power in the blood from the slain bull. The Spanish and the French have kept the fight but I think the French no longer kill the bull. Regards, REH Ed Weick wrote: In a posting yesterday, I made the point that in Canada "we've tried to deal with it via an Aboriginal claims process which is intended to define and make explicit the Aboriginal rights entrenched in our Constitution as these apply to particular groups. This is not a fully satisfactory process since it applies mainly to Aboriginal people who did not come under treaty during the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries and whose rights have not therefore been defined. These people are considered to have 'outstanding claims'." This is known as the "comprehensive claims process". I should have mentioned that there is a parallel process for Indian people who have treaties but can make the case that certain provisions of their treaties have not been honored or have been violated. This is the "specific claims process", One specific claims case with which I have some familiarity deals with lands in Saskatchewan. The Indian Bands of Saskatchewan signed treaties in the 1870s well before Saskatchewan became a province in 1905. Lands and resources were not transferred from the federal government to the Government of Saskatchewan until the 1930s. They were transferred on condition that the Province fulfill all outstanding land-related treaty obligations. The Province did not do so. The result is a recent, and I would surmise, still continuing step-by-step, band-by-band, process of determining how much additional land the Indian people are entitled to and how much monetary compensation this might require in lieu of land. Ed Weick
Re: FW: Free Trade vs. Culture
Christoph, I'm glad you've replied to this because I think I'd rather brushed you off regarding how one would classify Switzerland. Since I wrote last I'm now unsure as to whether Switzerland could be regarded as a nation-state in the fullest meaning of the term. What characterises a nation-state more than anything (IMHO) is a large and autocratic civil service which is fairly independent from the politicians (who come and go), and I'm not so sure that Switzerland has this. How does the size of the civil service in Switzerland compare with other advanced countries? With all the different languages, is the civil service unified and heirarchic? (It is tremendously so in the UK, Germany and France) At 00:49 29/07/99 +0200, you wrote: On Wed, 28 Jul 1999, Keith Hudson wrote: To this extent there is a global culture. Nevertheless, cultural diversity may be growing. Perhaps we are looking in the wrong places for it. For the active, curious, intelligent 30% of the population there have never been as many different sorts of specialist organisations as today. For example, in Bath 50 years ago there was only one choir (that is, a secular choral society as opposed to church choirs). Today, even though there hasn't been any significant growth in the number of active singers, there are over 20 choirs -- each one with a different type repertoire. It's clear that 4 years after WWII, the people of Bath had more basic things to do than singing in a choir... Also, I would suggest that the increase in opportunities is largely due to technology and increased leisure-time. To some extent this is correct. There are quite a lot of retired people in Bath who make up these choirs. I'm not so sure about the effect of technology, though. I don't think this increases leisure time particularly -- in my experience it tends to use it more intensively at the expense of other activities. The question is, are the 20 choirs of Bath much different from the 20 choirs of other towns ? Not really. However, since starting my choral music business two years ago and getting to know a little more about choral singing in other countries, I am intrigued by just how parochial choirs are -- despite the apparent internationality of choral singing. For example, I recently organised a visit of the Moscow University Choir to this country and they had never heard of many extremely well-known English composers. The same applies to choirs of other countries. A German conductor recently had never heard of Elgar, for example. (KH) Yes, one can always find examples (particularly in the US where there is such a well-developed lobby system) where some industries have got an inside track with government departments and are able to persuade the government to help them with subsidies, protection from imports, etc. But, by and large, most business steers away from involvement with government, even from asking favours, because as soon as they do so, civil servants start meddling in their affairs. I guess the larger problem is that it's increasingly *vice-versa* -- corporations are meddling in the state's affairs... so they don't steer away from it, but actively meddle more and more (not only in the U$ -- just think of the thousands of industry lobbyists in Bruxelles..). As I've already suggested, there'll always be some industries which want to benefit from preferential treatment by their government and will make overtures. This is particularly so in Brussels -- or has been so until recently, anyway. The European Commissioners has been handing out so many favours in recent years (as a sort of bribe to mover public opinion in favour of the EC) that not only do thousands of firms queue up to receive special grants but many spurious companies are invented purely for the purpose of receiving EC money. The amount of food, for example, that's shipped backwards and forwards across frontiers just in order to receive subsidies (and sometimes both ways) is nobody's business and amounts to billions (pounds, dollars, euros etc) every year. (CR) Please don't confuse "nation-state" with "imperialist state". I think it's being pedantic to differentiate between "nation-state" with "imperialist state". Whether a country is inimical to its domestic populations or to both its domestic populations and foreign ones, either state is undesirable. The question is whether this nation-state is "inimical to its domestic populations" in the first place. You're right, though, that an imperialist state is likely to be inimical to both its domestic populations and foreign ones... Anyway, the problem of our time is that *corporations* are increasingly inimical to populations... No, I don't agree with this in the conspiratorial sense. By and large, and increasingly so, large corporations seek to satisfy their customers. There are, of course, some rogue companies, even large ones, but by and large they reflect the value systems of their own
