co-evolution

highlights from a wide-ranging and interesting conversation, laid on the table without pretense.

* Philosophers are after the Truth [capital T], but they, like composers, are merely the articulators of a moment, making the Zeitgeist palpable/lisible/audible, orating from the mountaintop their own personal truth. The successful truths find resonance with the people of the time (or the time just after).

That is, Nietzsche wasn't so much calling for the death of God as much as proclaiming it. The messenger not the executioner.

* We live in a predominantly capitalist pseudo-democracy for a good reason: competition, survival of the fittest. Societies evolve like species. Religions, too. Myriad economic systems, myriad insignificant religions, have attempted to win over the hearts of people, but only a few have succeeded. Christianity succeeded in the West *because* it declared Jesus was the one and only son of God. While that rings false to me in the 21st century, it is perhaps the one decision that allowed me to hear about him at all.

Capitalism was just one possible system—of the 10,000 we tried—but was not so much chosen as it was proven to be effective. The reason why it won out is a big question. It's not the fairest system, it's probably not even the most efficient system, but it is dominating right now.

Maybe societies succeed or fail not because of what they give people but based on what people give them. Society creates its own needs, people fill them. Ultimately, when people have a role in society, when they are giving back, they feel a part of it.

* People created societies based on their fear of the unknown in order to stabilize food availability and weather. Thus, we needed to dominate nature to provide stability. Domination is always inherent, unavoidable.

We all need a different mix of certainty and uncertainty. I'm an uncertainty freak and so don't feel compelled to relinquish options in the name of stability. As such I neither join nor create many organizations. [Somehow, being on a bike team is the only one that makes sense.] But, still, I depend on organizations that others have created to give a modicum of stability to our chaotic lives.

Bigger organizations are more stable. More stability means less individual freedom. How do we balance these? We don't. We let the market decide. We let the powerful—the organization leaders—get away with more and more until the unfairness becomes excessive, then we stage protests and occupy shit.

We need organizations, but when there are organizations who have been organized to organized other organizations, it gets a little too meta for real life.

We seem to be living in the most stable time for the most number of people ever in history. There's a lot of evil still in the world, but we need to acknowledge how far we've come lest we pale at the sight of how far is left to go.

adornable

I've been mentally bathing in the sea of the early 20th century for the last month. It started through a confluence of three rivers of circumstance: we started covering the 20th century in music appreciation, I brushed up on Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire for an interview and video, and I started reading Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise. I find that period fascinating for its instability and change, a time of opposition between violently creative and destructive forces ultimately leading to the Great War and it's illegitimate offspring, WWII.

And so I'm studying up on Adorno. But thanks to the teleological nature of Western civilization leading up to the last century, it's hard to jump into the river mid-stream; by then the water is flowing too fast. But the roots of Adorno are in Marx, rooted in Hegel, rooted in Kant, reacting to Hume, and so on all the way back. Which is to say to the Greeks: all Western philosophy is just footnotes to Plato, right?

Fortunately, the early 20th century also saw the end of a single (Germanic) teleology and a disillusionment with progress. But though there's more diversity in philosophy, it's still ultimately about the Germans and the Greeks.


Aside from drowning in philosophy, I felt motivated and inspired today and worked on music all day. Had to get out of the house to enjoy the snow. It's so white! Tomorrow my plan is to plan more in the morning--not just for the rest of the week, but for the next 3 months. There's a lot to do but there's a limitless future in which to do it. Time to get down with some cartography and chart a course.