I wonder about their honesty. "Dream Brother" is about abandonment and Heart's a Mess about inability to connect. What is the honest response to "Dream Brother"...maybe this separation is right for the children, an unhappy marriage can't be good for children. The song relates the singer's lack of experience with his father... his antagonism is because of his father's abandonment, which does not mean that his friend will abandon his children. — Cavacava

It is great deconstructing why I am compelled to certain music as I never interpreted Dream Brother as you have and perhaps the morality behind the lyrics is what I appreciate being someone dedicated to traditional virtue. I also remember that when I first heard his album, I was struck by Corpus Christi and a few other songs that just made me believe he was original in his approach, which lifted my respect for him. I have listened to Jeff - he doesn't have many songs because he died so young - over and over again over the last decade and never get sick of him. Yet, Bob Dylan is someone I have the same respect and adoration for but I have trouble listening. Music requires a combination of factors and it could be that the reason why I love certain operas is because I don't understand and so the singer is merely another instrument. With Heart's a Mess I felt the same desperation and anger at my inability to connect, as though I was telling me what he wrote in the lyrics.

Maybe you could post a song on TPF's creative thread, I would love to hear your voice. — Cavacava

Maybe one day ill record something.

Actually boss, I think I can. Maybe you lack in empathy, that would explain an inability to perceive others' meanings. — Agustino

It appears that TS is refusing to listen to the question, which is about deconstructing the assignment itself, the reasons for the initial decisions and interpretations we make and why we make it.

I, like Schopenhauer, can play the flute! :D >:O — Agustino

(Y) ;)

It would depend on whether we were playing a recording through a device or had brought out a symphony orchestra to sit in the jungle and play. In either case, they would probably be more struck by the mystery of sound coming out of a box, or what the hell all these people in strange clothing were doing in their jungle. Obviously this is a hypothetical situation. But I'm sticking with it. — Bitter Crank

The bias of your assumptions on the possible reactions of our Amazonian group is seriously challenging the anthropological position of cultural relativism. Nevertheless, I am confident we cannot distinctly conclude any probable outcomes, so going onto:

, how different? Norwegian as opposed to Italian? You can give me a little more detail without spilling too many secrets, can't you? You still haven't explained how you picked up "whilst". — Bitter Crank

Not sure how different, but I never made contact with opera or classical music until I was about 17 and heard Andrea Bocelli one day after school at a music store and really liked it. I had no clue what was being said but it compelled me to further investigate; in my early twenties, I went to the Magic Flute live in concert and that was that, I loved it. My environment is your standard Western environment but where no contact with classical genres are made, so I kept my love for Vivaldi or Beethoven under the radar.

As for Whilst? I am self-taught and I did a lot of reading by authors and translators that used whilst, but from memory I remember it was when I read Plato' Last Days of Socrates that I picked it up, which was a long time ago now.

you think the Amazonian tribe would get that? — Bitter Crank

Cultural relativism, my dear friend. Does the tribe need to get that?

Either someone assigns meaning personally to something or there's no meaning (for them) — Terrapin Station

You are still scraping the surface; the question is about how or why this meaning is assigned and the influence underlying the decision.

In a word, training. It isn't that one has to go to an academy to learn the fine art of music, but one learns it as part of enculturation. — Bitter Crank

Training in what way? Instrumental? Because not everyone can play an instrument and regarding what would happen if we take Mozart to an unmet tribe in the Amazon, it would still be difficult to ascertain whether they may be moved and inspired by it in their own way. I was moved by Puccini and other operas, though I come from a very different culture. Radical changes such as expressionism and surrealism were used to challenge artistic methods as a way to infiltrate the material or social elements of art and expose the inauthenticity. Enculturation could be the problem, not the solution.

Philosophy is the highest universal language - but universality is, paradoxically, not Reality - for what would Reality be without the particular? And the particular is exactly what the universal must exclude to be universal. And so there is a price paid to achieve universality - it's a butchering of Reality. Philosophy can achieve division - but never unity. The philosophy that comes closest to achieving unity is that which moves and moves and moves - only to, at the point when it is just about to achieve completeness, it denies itself and sees itself as nonsense - one must throw down the ladder after he has climbed as Wittgenstein put it :) - unity is realised not through philosophy - but through doing philosophy - through the philosophical activity itself, which reaches its own quietus. — Agustino

This aspect of the eternal properties was precisely my initial enquiry, however I disagree that it is merely butchering reality, on the contrary the divisions that we create is the way in which we increase language; as unenlightened said though completely irrelevant to the question, join a band to improve. We would not be who we are without society and the constructs we create to develop and increase knowledge, without which we would be nothing. Is music a part of or can in enable or strengthen this language?

Alright, gosh, this is the question and TP, I would much prefer an argument than a whole General Melchett "If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face" to see you through, n'kay.

Question: Setting aside your indifference to empirical states of reality, what are the conditions that enable music to provide meaning vis-a-vis consciousness.

Does that simplify it for you?

Music is another language. One needs a certain mastery of the mechanics of a language; having which one forgets it while using it in the urgency of communication. Or then again one can master the language but find one has nothing to say to anyone.
. — unenlightened

Philosophy is also a language, so would that make it the highest music?

Jesus Christ what a load of balderdash. — Terrapin Station

What has Jesus got to do with your cognitive limitations?

Nah, ill be hangin’ in the desert of the real. 8-)

What's probably going on instead is that the lyrics of artists like Buckley and Mitchell are resonating with you, you can relate to them; they're "honest" for you so to speak. But it's important to realize that that can differ from listener to listener. And it doesn't actually tell you anything about Buckley or Mitchell. — Terrapin Station

I just want to add, if you think about Dream Brother by Buckley, it actually is honest, he is talking to his friend who intended to run away from his wife for a younger woman, something he himself experienced from his father and why it is one of my favourite songs. I don't have a family so it does not personally resonate with me. But I do agree, something like Gotye' Hearts A Mess does resonate personally, in fact, when I first heard it years ago I imagined myself singing the song in a bar to an audience of me (as in, everyone in the bar was me) because I was a mess. I really appreciate your post, it is insightful and I will certainly be practicing regularly, but I just picked out areas I would like to discuss further with you.

Do some reading on Pythagoreans and the exploration of the relationship between ratio and harmony. — Wayfarer

The Greater Perfect System and the diatonic scale is interesting, but the metaphysics is lacklustre at best. The existence of natural mathematical laws as exemplified by the musical science that governs harmonic relationships that become the navigational tool to higher planes of existence or creation is probably a place I would avoid in preference for the phenomena of music' moral position in consciousness.

Well first, "authenticity" is a nonsensical concept with respect to the arts. The attribution of "authenticity" is subjective and doesn't consistently correlate with any objective facts at all. Surely some people who use "authenticity" as a metric for whether any particular music is worthwhile or not are basing their attribution on some reaction they're having to the music--some way they're interpreting the music, some way it makes them feel, but it's not at all clear just what that reaction is. — Terrapin Station

Whilst I appreciate your obdurate tone, the conveyance of aesthetic value and the meaning of the referent “authentic” though clearly ambiguous nevertheless illustrates the term to be context-driven. My question outlined two particular areas with the first related to performance, and unlike a painting where you actually have the original piece that one can claim to be authentic, music being notated and the instruments used all differ along with the musician’ interpretation or choices that the governance of the performance challenge our understanding of what expressive authenticity may actually be. In addition, authenticity encourages an interest in the original performances and historic conventions that enable a moral significance to sustaining the composition, tonality and musical structure as intended by the author at the time of its development.

The second and perhaps the phenomenological aesthetic of my enquiry does not deserve what appears to be your dismissal of the validity of subjectivity vis-à-vis authenticity, on the contrary sensuous experience and intuition – what is clearly your indifference to empirical states of reality – is engrossed with the question of what the conditions are that enable music to provide conscious meaning. If we think of popular music, for instance, is it a socio-political mechanism that exposes the habitual and thus requires a type of musical reductionism to ascertain the authenticity or the intentionality behind it? Richard Wagner and the use of his compositions to kindle fascism, for instance. If it is not clear what that reaction is, the intention of philosophy is to clarify hence the Platonic quote at the end of my post.

That just seems like nonsense to me, too. Why would it be an "eternal existent"? And there isn't anything outside of space or time. — Terrapin Station

Vat? You mean that QM theories are nonsense? Ok, alright, fine, I'll concede that this ain't cosmology but both you and Bitter are wrong as you have misunderstood the reference to "eternal" for which, if you think of Harmony vis-a-vis Platonic forms, you may understand why it transcends beyond the material world.

Oi, what happened to Homer Simpson, eh? :-O You cunningly modest thang you.

Considering as you mentioned "time and evolutionary dynamics" concerning heterogeneity, diversity, and similar ideas; of course that is an intrinsic part of both nature and society. Any organized attempt to forcibly "homogenize" a nation or people is bound to be a repressive power-grab on the part of the leaders, no matter what high-minded ideology they may spout. It seems that when one person (or one small group of people) trys to grab the reigns and fashion society in their image, it goes sour quickly -imho. I quoted Daniel Quinn in a previous post; and he has many ideas about evolution. One of which may be relevant here is his idea about the strength of an ecosystem, and the natural diversity that evolution gave it. Its diversity is its strength because that how it grew. Quinn writes that when humans try to eliminate all plants and animals that are not human food or other product, it eventually destroys the very place we are living. Taking the Taoist method of looking to nature to provide humans some clues as how to live in some kind of sustainable manner, that critical need of diversity for evolution could be applied to human civilization, i believe. It is difficult to go into all possible scenarios, but the general idea of how evolution occurs is the point. But i am no evolutionary scientist... or not even a social scientist. Or nutty professor! — 0 thru 9

If we take out the forcibly and if we create the right atmosphere that will enable society to assume that they are a collection of individuals when they really blindly follow in masses, they will no longer be conflicted with the master-slave power struggle and so there is no risk of raising a consciousness to fight against oppression. As I said in another post, take Anderson' concept of Imagined Communities and the idea of nationalism, whereby people have fabricated a union to this whole that though there may exist severe inequalities, violence and exploitation even at the most deplorable level, adherents to this imagined concept will nevertheless defend it tooth and nail despite. The depth of the human capacity to delude itself is markedly clear, so much so that our very own consciousness, what is supposed to be a part of our mind, cognition and self, appears to be so distant from our reach that knowing our own identity, who we really are, is entrenched with the ego-boosting that enlarges our false sense of self and image that who they are is barely recognisable.

That is why I think it is important to eliminate the toxicity; just like you say, the ecosystem has a diversity which is why it is important for us to go back to nature. When the ecosystem experiences something toxic, it forms ways to eliminate that and we should replicate the same in our lives. Not by wearing a dress, eating magic mushrooms and changing your name to 'Parsley' but by being away from the toxic environment and people you are around, from the delusion of an unreal society. I realise when I am in the forest or the desert the smallness of my existence as though I come face to face with the raw 'me' - the desolation of the desert puts death in my mind, the life of the forest transcends me with ideas of renewal and growth, to better myself. I am a gardener, for instance, and it taught me patience, that it takes time to grow and that enabled me to take a step back for once and allow myself to find the right balance. The elimination of this toxicity requires the fearlessness to be alone, even going on a trek by yourself for half a day can really change you, make you aware of how much the day-to-day bullshit has effected your capacity to be conscious and the dependence you allowed because your mind was just too messed up with conflicting emotions.

This is the balance that will enable one to become authentic.

All of this is subject to debate, of course. However, and as I imagine you would agree... impatience, blame, and rage are a volatile brew, one not to be chugged before speaking (or even thinking) about what possibly needs to be changed or improved. This brew may be a tempting and powerful concoction, but it rockets things in the wrong direction and tends to self-destruct. We are have a right to our feelings, of course. The inevitable confusion, anger, sadness, weariness, loneliness, etc. are hopefully counterbalanced by more pleasant emotions so we all can feel inspired to continue. If the evolution of the natural world is helped along by continuous and varied mutations, then perhaps the idea of "civilization" may mutate into something that works more consistently for the greater majority of the community of life. — 0 thru 9

What I have come to learn is that our emotions have a language, they are comparable or perhaps counter-dependent on intuition and I believe emotions are trying to speak to us only because they dissipate when you understand at conscious level why it is there, hence why psychotherapy helps people with depression or anxiety as all they are doing is raising unconscious issues to the surface and confronting it at conscious level. The pleasant emotions are always there, I believe it is in our nature to be happy, but because of our lack of consciousness - the major problems being our environment and our lack of intelligence, hence why childhood plays a significant role - we become dependent on others to try and balance the confusion. Society becomes the artificial way that we rely on almost as a distraction. I often think of emotions as 'me' the real or authentic me trying to talk to the unauthentic me. That is why they say, for instance, that when a man meets the right woman, he is strengthened and his sense of calm is formed because he finds a sense of wholeness. Wholeness implies part-emptiness, something we each of us have because of the fact that we exist separate, that we have freedom and must take responsibility and all that with confusion due to a lack of intelligence and ultimately wisdom compels people to behave irrationally. They rely on societies behavioural norms to dictate what they should and shouldn't do because they do not want to think for themselves.

For instance the speed of light can't be decided based on emotional response to the perceived answer so why would emotion be an accurate source for other judgements? Also some emotions seem appropriate like being sad when your dog Bouncer dies. But what makes this response appropriate? Intuitively it seems appropriate but what kind of relationship is that? People cry when a pet dies but don't cry when they know every day animals are being eaten alive and people are starving.

I am not saying there is no other source of truth than science but it is hard to set up an appropriate schema or set of relationships that could justify ought style claims. And with no teleological or ought claims everyday we are just acting arbitrarily or on faith.

P.S. I think most societal structures are unjustified fictions that seem to work but are also damaging and need challenging. — Andrew4Handel

I am not sure about unjustified fictions, but if we take Anderson' view of imagined communities, it is clear that our idea of society or concepts like 'nationalism' and our relationships with others in a communal environment can quite easily be imagined; that is, society is merely a created construct held together by the imagined idea that they are united. While such relations are unauthentic, it does not necessarily make it unreal since what people believe can quite clearly be applied in the physical or material world; Foucault' concept of power is an example of how these imagined relations can be result in a highly productive environment, vital for capitalism for instance. There appears to be a counter-dependency between imagination and emotion, and I believe we can quite clearly assume that an imagined community is derived by our emotions. There may actually can be a science behind the emotions, perhaps the very fibre of our identity is held together by our emotions. But what would we be without it? Emotions can also compel us to feel bad or guilt, feel sad when we see hurt and thus propagate the seeds for moral understanding.

I think the concept of the Golden Mean exemplifies the right balance between imagination and emotion vis-a-vis reason and perception, the scientific being too cold and calculable without the right balance of emotions; this balance is the way towards the rational and authentic.

Well I think I missed you too :P There's few on these boards like you with insight to talk to about really significant matters (I love that your philosophy is always practical and practically oriented), if you can believe it, I'm busy here quibbling about matters such as whether 2 is a subset of 1 — Agustino

It is good to be back, almost symbolic as I overcome certain things one step at a time. As said by Schopenhauer, "I believe that if a woman succeeds in withdrawing from the mass, or rather raising herself from above the mass, she grows ceaselessly and more than a man.”

Quibbling is the fun bit >:)

Thanks for your reply. I would say a community is both a collection of individuals AND a whole greater than the sum of its parts, like light can be described as both a particule and a wave. But as the saying goes, five severed fingers do not make a hand. Not sure though that I quite grasped the rest of what you were saying in this quote. I don't want to assume. Can you rephrase it or dumb it down a shade? (as Homer Simpson says). — 0 thru 9

Ah sorry old horse, I haven't been in a forum for a while. What I meant is that your proposition of a truly functioning community fails to consider time and evolutionary dynamics where we cannot separate heterogeneity as though the community could be a continuous picture, something that is only possible when we eliminate the 'individual'. This possibility of the community being continuously the same picture is what Nazism attempted to employ hence why it is dangerous. This is the thermodynamics of humanity, as it were, the entropy prohibits the reversal of the arrow of time or that systems are irreversable and that chaos increases by a perpetual motion that is unpredictable. Whenever we move to a direction of cohesiveness or equilibrium, individuality disintergrates because it is individual consciousness that is causally the root of our chaos - if you take away consciousness, we would have no language and thus be nothing but animals, but we would reach an equilibrium with nature. In a social setting, we become slaves or mindless drones.

In order to maintain individuality and form this true community, it requires consciousness of this consciousness as it were; if society is a collection of individuals, we need to ascertain what an 'individual' is first and thus it returns us back to my original argument, which is the reason why the initial conversation was about authenticity and an independent moral consciousness. We could reach this equilibrium with nature because we consciously choose to do so as we transcend our destructive unpredictability and return back to our state of nature as we become aware of ourselves and others.

Sorry if I'm taking this sentence out of context, but this rather large claim perhaps needs more explaining before i can begin to accept it. Sure, some hardy people can live in the woods, off the grid and alone, and be quite happy. That is quite admirable. Our basic survival skills "in the wild/nature" have gotten flabby, at least for most of us. But humans don't come right out of the womb ready to run, swim, and hunt like some other animals. Some clan/tribe/community is needed, as well for the transmission of knowledge. I think you would agree with that, at the least. — 0 thru 9

No one is saying run off into the wilderness; I am not going to take off all my clothes and wander around the bush bare breasted for the rest of my life as even that defies our state of nature as we are "beings" in a world, but Aldous Huxley knows that those who have reached a state of existentiality or of an independent consciousness amongst a community of clones is impossible that we will be inevitably banished to live in isolation. As Augustino said, happiness is only possible when we lead a virtuous life that is only possible with an independent moral consciousness and this is best achieved in a reciprocal, communicative environment amongst people as we are in a spatial world and it is through society that we can transcend to become aware of our individuality.

Nature is a reminder of the finitude of our existence unlike the massive egotistical capitalist culture that prohibits any self-reflective contemplation and this consciousness of our finitude, of the unbelievable largeness of nothingness - I thought about that when I was young and it was shocking that the thought barely lasted - that we become aware of our own death, the futility etc that we become conscious of ourselves and our environment and place in the world. The sophistication of capitalism is quite frightening whereby these so-called 'individuals' in their expensive clothing and cosmetics are now taking selfies in the bush and marketing people to go back to nature and be natural - all artificially, almost as a trick that ascertaining what is authentic is becoming close to impossible. This is what needs to end.

Good on you for questioning and you have a calmness to you that is refreshing and reminds me of the balance I have developed and am committed to in my personal life. I just have to do this intellectually, haha.

It held the tribes together, and was an expression of the laws of nature. The laws of nature being that which is observed to foster and continue life, both within and among the species. But that may be a little off the topic, as interesting as i may find it. But the point he makes is that a species that goes against the laws of nature might exist for a time, but even a thousand years is an evolutionally short amount of time. And to go against nature is (to borrow Agustino's phrase) to saw off the branch they are sitting on. Individuals are needed to devise alternate ideas, but without the support and action of the majority/collective, even the brightest ideas will wither on the vine. — 0 thru 9

Spot on, which is why we protest in our own way despite the collective that eventually I may pave the way for someone in the next generation who will be better than me who will pave the way and so on. A tree grows. Marx was incorrect when he purported an immediacy in this change through revolution, though with our current conditions and the impact we are having environmentally, it would seem that choice is becoming limited. I still refuse to give in and consistently push myself to understand my place in this world.

Then I certainly don't have a "perfect life" nor a "beautiful wife", for physical beauty would not be sufficient to make her a beautiful wife. — Agustino

If happiness is merely an externalisation or a quantitative multiplicity that represents spatial influences and that quantifies the very fibre of our existence, then what is real or authentic? You say you would not have a perfect life or a beautiful wife because you desire virtue and it is virtue that is beautiful, but I have witnessed virtue mocked and the immoral praised as long as this immoral adequately fits within the social requisites. Virtue is a form in that the concept itself has transcended to a qualitative multiplicity where experience is shaped away from the socially habituated toward the realm of moral consciousness and where temporality is no longer treated spatially. Moral consciousness and not the master-slave morality is what makes us human rather than objects.

Ah, would that be so even if your wife prostitutes herself but she is beautiful or your family - in the Kafka 'Metamorphosis' sense - only "love" you for things other than who you really are? A house is just an object without genuine love. Of course, I am forced to make spatial concessions to aid your comprehension on the phenomenology but even so you voice the very ignorance and inadvertently exemplify my point.

I missed you.

It depends on your view as to whether a community is a collection of individuals or whether it is subject to the sum of its own parts, where as you suggest there is a subsistence of an un-manipulated ‘utopian’ society that enables the group to mirror justice without being subject to time? Can this cohesive homogeneity be sustained without an evolutionary dynamic and radical unpredictability affecting the flux and dynamics of continuity and discontinuity as though the second law of thermodynamics is merely a misnomer? The heterogeneity of society cannot be separated into a continuous picture and this radical unpredictability is the very impediment of a perfect social design - hence Nazism - and any impediment to something successful requires its elimination. The impediment itself is the ‘individual’ since consciousness leads to questions, free will invites an authentic awareness and an proper ego, intuition takes us out of the process of experience and pushes us beyond the normal constraints of reality that we become more attuned to what really is. For instance, you could have a perfect life, a home, loving family, beautiful wife so then why would you feel like something is wrong? These socially determined and habituated positions trap one into a mental prison and the dependence leads us to reject our own consciousness – that is our own free will – in order to survive the impending anxiety. Thus the reason why we desire the community in the first place is to avoid our true nature (what would humanity look like if consciousness did not exist?) and this is the tragedy and our unique position in nature.

I do, however, agree that there exists a possibility to reach an authentic unity but only when the individual has transcended to this existentiality and conscious awareness and only amongst others of the same mental state whereby they exercise this freedom together. Human rights and liberal democracy is as close as we could get to this but even so the traps of capitalism and globalisation far outweigh the good and to denote those who dismiss all that is wrong in this world deserve the cringeworthy title of being a part of the 'herd'.

Not sure about the phrasing mortal existence, ‘tis somewhat Highlanderish what with our mortal sins n’all, but nevertheless I tend to view the idea of Self and individual exclusivity as a social construct, an implicit function that coordinates as part of a historical rearrangement of the social contract in our contemporary era that compels compliance in a more sophisticated manner.

The Hobbesian fear of punishment has transformed from an authority to a social form of punishment; by developing a universal conception of an ‘individual’ deviation from mass opinion is minimised since what the bourgeoisie require is the power to control in order to maintain sustainable capital. Under the conditions where people assume they are making their own decisions, disciplinary conditions and thus the threat of being subordinated is no longer applicable as the slave ‘wants’ to be the slave, preventing the possible outbreak of any Nietzschean ressentiment. Should a mind become rehabilitated enough to desire escape – thus forming the first instance of authenticity [see Heidegger] which is basically the authentic Self or where one becomes conscious of freewill – their entire identity is at risk due to the entrenched and powerful social conditions that has normalised its coercive techniques to impose conformity. That is, they forfeit their true nature for the herd.

I therefore agree that there exists an ‘individual’ where one can articulate an independent discourse vis-à-vis a conscious morality and whilst we are entirely social, a Being in Time, we nevertheless contain the capacity – consciousness itself – and the free-will to evolve to ‘existentiality’. What is unfortunate is that the objects available to us to be used as instruments to develop this capacity for ‘individual’ articulation or morality has become absorbed – due to capitalism – to hinder this possibility as people themselves have been turned into objects.