26 Jul
2012
26 Jul
'12
11:22 p.m.
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 03:57:14PM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 3:52 PM, Neil C Smith
<neil(a)neilcsmith.net> wrote:
I don't think this is necessarily about
"young" vs. "mature" thinking; I
think this has more to do with being a rational thinker vs. being a
dreamer (not an anarchist, necessarily). I believe a society or
community needs both in order to evolve in a meaningful direction.
Cheers,
S.M.
--
On 26 July 2012 20:43, S. Massy
<lists(a)wolfdream.ca> wrote:
i've probably used this quote before...
"tradition is a static defense against a chaotic community
and what would we gain by destroying it?" (annette peacock)
when i was 15 it seemed to me that breaking the rules was worth doing for
its own sake. now that i'm 48, i'm more interested in understanding the
rules, the history of the rules, the sociology of the rules, the
anthropology of the rules ... and only breaking them when its clear that
"the way we do things" is stupid, anachronistic or just the freakish side
effect of some historical event.
music (the ordering of sound in time, and perhaps space) is a *culture* and
doesn't really mean very much without a cultural context. throwing away the
yokes of technology-past is the dream of a 15 year old. embracing the rules
and ignoring the ones that no longer or never did make sense - that's how
culture (and music) moves forward. I often feel that we now have many
of the tools we've been dreaming up for the last century and a half but
are (most of us) too chicken to use them to their full potential and
prefer clinging to superannuated ways.
Perhaps many of those things we've been dreaming of have turned out
not to be so interesting in reality! :)