|
|
|
BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 12:28:06 [Permalink]
|
| WHY?, WHY?! Oh, the Humanities! |
"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History
"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini |
 |
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
 Posted - 01/10/2008 : 13:04:23 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by BigPapaSmurf
WHY?, WHY?! Oh, the Humanities!
|
LOL - Most famous quote along side "They like me. They really like me."
|
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 14:02:50 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by marfknox
chaloobi wrote: | I was attempting to be deeply critical of the US capitalist system through caustic deadpan sarcasm in that sentence. And at the same time to express a truth about how our culture regards the humanities. |
I see. Sorry about that. The word "whining" through me off. |
No, I should apologize. I shouldn't have been so deadpan.
| Is it? Or does it show what we truely value as a culture? |
I don't think it shows what we truly value as a culture at all. A lot of people think the way income is dolled out isn't fair at all, but we all have to pick our battles and most of us don't regard that overwhelming battle as worth the effort to take up. I also think most people are fine with income not reflecting the values of the culture, so long as extreme unfairness or injustice isn't taking place. I mean, I said I don't mind it so long as everyone can make some kind of decent living doing what they are best at if they want to. |
I concede it's an oversimplification to say income determines what is valued in our culture. It's a large piece of that pie, but unless we're schizophrenic, there's more to it than that.
| More than music and musicians our culture values people who can turn a commodity into wealth. A musician generally can't do that, but a company can. |
That is what happens in our culture due to many forces, but I don't think the forces which make it happen are most peoples' values. It is weird to say "our culture values". Culture itself isn't intentional. Culture is the sum of a society's customs, creations, values, and mindsets. If you mean that the majority of people in our society consciously value people who can turn a commodity into wealth more than they value the commodities themselves, I disagree. Most people don't think much on it at all, so they can't be said to be expressing any values. Those who do think about it tend to express a value for the creators more than the profiteers. The profiteers simply gain more because they are doing what they are good at: making money. |
Regarding a culture and what it values, I think of a society's culture as the sum total of that society's accumulated information, customs and practicies, government, policies, engineering and architecture, aesthetics, likes and dislikes, philosophy, religion, morality, art, etc. And within that giant mileau is contained many measures of what the people enveloped in that culture find important. The question is how that is measurably expressed in the culture itself? I don't think it's way off in American super capitalism to say we throw money at the things, and people, we find valuable and the more money we throw, the more valuable we find the target.
That said I think you're on target with the music industry in that they are more or less 'pimping' the artists. However, I don't know too many people that don't know this fact yet people still buy the music. It's that the music is valuable enough to them that they accept the artists are getting raked. And maybe the whole P2P file sharing thing is an expression of disdain for the industry - people don't feel like they're ripping off the artists because it's commonly understood the music industry is leaching most of that lost money anyway...
|
-Chaloobi
|
| Edited by - chaloobi on 01/10/2008 14:04:40 |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 14:32:30 [Permalink]
|
Cune.....
| And FYI, bngbuck-- arguing that something is a smart move based on the fact that Jerome (who believes, among other things, that the US is a Communist state and that the NFL predetermines the results of its games) gets it is, well, not the most convincing bit of evidence. |
FYI, Cune, I was talking about if you want to make money beyond a surviving (struggling) level. Jerome is not such a bad role model! He may sound like a bit of a cretin to our ivory towered ears, but I'll wager he makes a lot more dough than most here on the Forum who don't have an inheritance or some such windfall! That may not be your cup of expensive Starbucks coffee, well and good. If you're not hungry, stay out of the kitchen!
All I was saying was that I decided as a young man to make enough dough so that I could have the time in my later life to be a fucking dilettante! And I've had a ball since I was fifty! Jerome's on the same track, and it isn't necessarily a bad one if you like the things and experiences, and life education, and health, that money can buy.
As I attempted to point out in an earlier thread, there's damn little that money, properly spent, can't buy. Jerome's no fool in that respect! |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 16:21:06 [Permalink]
|
Chippewa.....
Far from muddying, you clarify the obtuse with the following:
Perhaps muddying the waters but I would consider the following unrelated diverse objects both to have "artistic value." That is, exhibiting elements that are interpreted by humans to have some relation to the humanities via perception of form and balance as well as a contrasting dynamism and imbalance:
A and B |
Of course; both have high artistic value to anyone with a sense of aesthetics! And a refined sense of aesthetics would discern the elements of that which pleases the aesthetic sensibility in each of the examples, although the differentiation is subjective conceptualization in the abstract!
Besides, a little known fact of Kandinski's later life, was that he was a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Corps force in his dotage. Mercenary, of course! Made a number of bombing runs over Germany in 1944 near the end of WWII. He was the oldest Air Corps pilot flying at that time, being 77 at the time. Angry at the Nazis for raiding his house and closing Bauhaus in 1932, he produced a gropious quantity of work while waiting for the war to start and Boeing to invent the B-17. He also learned how to fly, which was useful when he joined the Air Corps at 75.
You won't find these facts in most art history books, which just goes to show how much your eyes can deceive you when it comes to art! But it certainly helps a lot to explain the close interconnective relationship between Wassily and World War Warplanes!
|
| Edited by - bngbuck on 01/11/2008 18:30:53 |
|
|
|
Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 18:44:28 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
Cune.....
| And FYI, bngbuck-- arguing that something is a smart move based on the fact that Jerome (who believes, among other things, that the US is a Communist state and that the NFL predetermines the results of its games) gets it is, well, not the most convincing bit of evidence. |
FYI, Cune, I was talking about if you want to make money beyond a surviving (struggling) level. Jerome is not such a bad role model! He may sound like a bit of a cretin to our ivory towered ears, but I'll wager he makes a lot more dough than most here on the Forum who don't have an inheritance or some such windfall! That may not be your cup of expensive Starbucks coffee, well and good. If you're not hungry, stay out of the kitchen!
All I was saying was that I decided as a young man to make enough dough so that I could have the time in my later life to be a fucking dilettante! And I've had a ball since I was fifty! Jerome's on the same track, and it isn't necessarily a bad one if you like the things and experiences, and life education, and health, that money can buy.
As I attempted to point out in an earlier thread, there's damn little that money, properly spent, can't buy. Jerome's no fool in that respect!
|
I reject the notion that Jerome is on the path to life education. It's great if he makes loads of cash and vacations and owns nice cars. Fantastic. But really. NFL games are predetermined? |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2008 : 21:08:50 [Permalink]
|
Oh hell, Cune he's a KID!!! When I was his age, I didn't have enough sense to compete in a ten minute conversation with anyone that had finished Debate 101 in high school. A great deal of what Jerome threw at you folks here was pure, unadulterated Trollism, and I can't argue (although I did once) with Dave's banning him for senseless disruption and wasting everyone's time. I just didn't think he should have been banned permanently. But you guys were exposed to him a lot longer than I was. How many thousand posts? One liners and one worders! That was stupid, and annoying! Strangely enough, though, he hasn't been banned on JREF where he has been carrying on for some time now! Maybe different norms for different forums? Or maybe Jerome is behaving a little better over there! I don't monitor it!
But these boards need someone to berate frequently because the great silent audience of lurkers out there needs to see blood spilled. Dude and Dave get into a big donnybrook, and the viewer numbers go up astronomically! I post a pair of bare boobies and the crowd roars! Or at least the Nielsen goes way up. Entertainment is an essential part of these intellectual hoedowns and the occasional Jerome adds a lot of spice to what can become pedantic and boring, until the object of derision becomes boring himself! And that happened to J.
Dave works all the time to keep the entertainment level up, and so does Filthy, in a much subtler way! How about Half Moon? Aside from the fact that he lives there, his very nom de plume is a spoof and Mooner certainly does spoof in marvelous visuals! All in all, the show must go on! Marf once derisively called it "showboating", but most of the better players here do it a good deal of the time, and I think it is a good thing. I suspect that D&K do too! |
|
|
|
chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 06:53:35 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
chaloobi.....
Far from muddying, you clarify the obtuse with the following:
Perhaps muddying the waters but I would consider the following unrelated diverse objects both to have "artistic value." That is, exhibiting elements that are interpreted by humans to have some relation to the humanities via perception of form and balance as well as a contrasting dynamism and imbalance:
A and B |
Of course; both have high artistic value to anyone with a sense of aesthetics! And a refined sense of aesthetics would discern the elements of that which pleases the aesthetic sensibility in each of the examples, although the differentiation is subjective conceptualization in the abstract!
Besides, a little known fact of Kandinski's later life, was that he was a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Corps force in his dotage. Mercenary, of course! Made a number of bombing runs over Germany in 1944 near the end of WWII. He was the oldest Air Corps pilot flying at that time, being 77 at the time. Angry at the Nazis for raiding his house and closing Bauhaus in 1932, he produced a gropious quantity of work while waiting for the war to start and Boeing to invent the B-17. He also learned how to fly, which was useful when he joined the Air Corps at 75.
You won't find these facts in most art history books, which just goes to show how much your eyes can deceive you when it comes to art! But it certainly helps a lot to explain the close interconnective relationship between Wassily and World War Warplanes!
|
Um.... Huh?  |
-Chaloobi
|
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 07:31:27 [Permalink]
|
bngbuck wrote: | Besides, a little known fact of Kandinski's later life, was that he was a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Corps force in his dotage. Mercenary, of course! Made a number of bombing runs over Germany in 1944 near the end of WWII. He was the oldest Air Corps pilot flying at that time, being 77 at the time. Angry at the Nazis for raiding his house and closing Bauhaus in 1932, he produced a gropious quantity of work while waiting for the war to start and Boeing to invent the B-17. He also learned how to fly, which was useful when he joined the Air Corps at 75. |
If this is a joke, I don't get it.
Incidentally, Kandinsky moved to France in 1933 (after the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis) and lived there until he died. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
|
|
|
Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 12:36:45 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by bngbuck
Besides, a little known fact of Kandinski's later life, was that he was a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Corps force in his dotage. Mercenary, of course! Made a number of bombing runs over Germany in 1944 near the end of WWII. He was the oldest Air Corps pilot flying at that time, being 77 at the time....
|
Actually I originally linked to a picture of a Navy Corsair but the link broke so I replaced it with a B 17. I thought about just posting a picture of a Talbot Lago (car) or maybe an building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Aesthetics was the only criteria in pointing out the melding of art and science.
|
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 18:38:35 [Permalink]
|
Chaloobi.....
Chippewa, Chaloobi, Iroquois or Hopi; you red guys all look and sound alike, not like all us white guys! Brown guys and little green guys are pretty hard to distinguish one from another, too! More evidence of our white, Aryan superiority!
Sorry to have typed Chaloobi whilst thinking Chippewa! |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 18:43:54 [Permalink]
|
Marf.....
Please don't take my humor personally! It is directed toward human foible in general!
What is your view of the B-17 as a example of the logical extension into the 1940's of Gropius's 1920s vision of aesthetic functionality crafting utilitarian products - ultimately resulting in the work of Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and Raymond Loewy, among others?
Do you think Chippewa's choice was well taken to symbolize the transition of the Der Blaue Reiter aesthetic embodied in Kandinski, Franz Marc, Paul Klee and other early Bauhaus alumni academically guided by Johannes Itten; into the revolution in industrial design begun in Germany in the 'teens and exemplified particularly in the aircraft and automobile design of the thirties and forties?
Design, incidentally, that was dictated far more by the relatively new science of aeronautics, than by aesthetics, although the aesthetics fortunately emerged! The Chrysler Airflow of 1936, for example, concieved by Breer, Zeder, and Skelton at the Chrysler Corporation, had it's aesthetic roots in the Bauhaus; but it's engineering design was born in a wind tunnel.
Designed to perform and to please the eye!
As was the M10000 locomotive (same picture) designed by Harley Earl, later of General Motors fame. Although never tutored in graphic, sculptural, or architectural art, Earl's industrial design work was strongly influenced by the revolutionary conceptualization and production of of the Bauhaus group in the twenties through 1933, when it was closed by the Nazis. You know that Wassily was mad at them! They shut down a fountainhead, although the Swiss communist Hannes Meyer had turned Gropius's school on its head by 1933!
So you see, Kandinski's spirit, together with that of Walter Gropius and the other luminaries of that era did indeed ride with, if not pilot, the great aerial war engines of the forties, as well as the products of the automotive industry beginning in the thirties and extending into today! Are the humanities of any use? I think so! |
|
|
|
marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 20:59:13 [Permalink]
|
bngbuck wrote: What is your view of the B-17 as a example of the logical extension into the 1940's of Gropius's 1920s vision of aesthetic functionality crafting utilitarian products - ultimately resulting in the work of Norman Bel Geddes, Henry Dreyfuss, and Raymond Loewy, among others?
Do you think Chippewa's choice was well taken to symbolize the transition of the Der Blaue Reiter aesthetic embodied in Kandinski, Franz Marc, Paul Klee and other early Bauhaus alumni academically guided by Johannes Itten; into the revolution in industrial design begun in Germany in the 'teens and exemplified particularly in the aircraft and automobile design of the thirties and forties? |
The connection to Gropius and Itten is far stronger than the connection to Kandinsky and the Blue Riders. Kandinsky was much more esoteric and into metaphysics than he was utilitarian. If anything, Kandinsky's middle and later work were influenced by the same Bauhaus aesthetic forces that the industrial designers were inspired by, and so he's more of a cousin that a predecessor or cause himself. I also find much of your sense of humor when you talk about Kandinsky and his relationship to the events of WWII unjustly crass and demeaning. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
|
| Edited by - marfknox on 01/11/2008 20:59:42 |
|
|
|
Chippewa
SFN Regular
USA
1496 Posts |
Posted - 01/11/2008 : 21:56:28 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by marfknox (to bngbuck)
...I also find much of your sense of humor when you talk about Kandinsky and his relationship to the events of WWII unjustly crass and demeaning.
|
Me too bngbuck, and quite the racist crap directed at my ethnicity.
. |
Diversity, independence, innovation and imagination are progressive concepts ultimately alien to the conservative mind.
"TAX AND SPEND" IS GOOD! (TAX: Wealthy corporations who won't go poor even after taxes. SPEND: On public works programs, education, the environment, improvements.) |
|
|
|
bngbuck
SFN Addict
USA
2437 Posts |
Posted - 01/12/2008 : 01:30:00 [Permalink]
|
Marf....
At the frightening risk of sending you into an emotional tailspin, I'm going to gently ask you to qualify your comment. To wit:| I also find much of your sense of humor when you talk about Kandinsky and his relationship to the events of WWII unjustly crass and demeaning. |
WEBSTER ONLINE UNABRIDGED DEFINITIONS below:
Unjustly: characterized by injustice : unfair
Crass: having or indicating such grossness of mind as precludes delicacy and discrimination
Demeaning: to lower in character, status, or reputation
PARAPHRASING below:
| I find your sense of humor UNFAIR and of a GROSS MINDSET that is INDELICATE AND DISCRIMINATORY when you speak of Kandinsky piloting a B-17 on bombing runs over Germany during World War II. |
MY RIDICULOUS SPOOF OF KANDINSKI/B-17 AIRCRAFT NON-RELATIONSHIP VERBATIM below
| Besides, a little known fact of Kandinski's later life, was that he was a B-17 pilot in the US Army Air Corps force in his dotage. Mercenary, of course! Made a number of bombing runs over Germany in 1944 near the end of WWII. He was the oldest Air Corps pilot flying at that time, being 77 at the time. Angry at the Nazis for raiding his house and closing Bauhaus in 1932, he produced a gropious quantity of work while waiting for the war to start and Boeing to invent the B-17. He also learned how to fly, which was useful when he joined the Air Corps at 75. |
Marf, please delineate, in detail and with substantiation, exactly what it is that you find in the above paragraph to be:
A. Unfair?
B. Of a gross mindset?
C. Indelicate?
D. Discriminatory?
or else SHUT UP!
And please don't go whining to a higher power how mistreated you are, because comments like yours above are disingenuous in the extreme - poorly concealed insult - and bespeak a adolescent lack of sophistication as to an understanding of any style of humor! And if you continue to direct such childish prattle to me, I most certainly will ask you to justify it with reference to the subject matter you object to, and why!
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Are the Humanities of any Value, really?
