spaceplayer

Jake: "Many people have seen unidentified flying objects at some point. They're usually weather baloons, satellites, experimental (or not so experimental) aircraft, shooting stars. When you don't know what they are, orthey're too far away to see what they are, it means that they are unidentifiable to you. What does that have to do with the paranormal? Why would you assume that something you failed to identify is a supernatural phenomenon?" Oh, this is an easy one. To address ufo, all one needs to know is that it's an "unidentified flying object." If we could say a certain ufo is an alien or a balloon, it would no longer be unidentified. But in the absence of knowledge, we can speculate, investigate, and create theories based on evidence, but what we can't do is make arbitrary assertions. That's how Objectivism would approach it. Jake, I think you know why ufo's are identified with the paranormal. The treatment of ufo's throughout history is just a sci-fi version of mysticism. Aliens and gods have been intermingled for a while, think Stargate for an explanation of the Egyptian gods and pyramids, or ufo's as an explanation for Ezekiel's wheel, or aliens for the nephalim, and so forth. There's a new age explanation for aliens, as cosmic overseers. The little grey man who resemble babies as a metaphor for our psychological states. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... One reason for all this is the assigning of arbitrary reasons, but also, what connects ufos and the paranormal is the same thing that connects mythology/religion to philosophy, alchemy to chemistry, and astrology to astronomy. It's an early attempt to explain the world, but there's also a psychological reason. These explanations fail to address physical reality, but they do provide a projection of psychological states. The Greek gods are anthropomorphic versions of human emotions and states. Alien warnings usually project our fears of loss of external authority, and act as an attempt to recreate that authority when religious symbols become less plausible. Alien beings MAY be more plausible, given the vast reaches of the universe, but that's not what's happening when people tell of abductions and come back with warnings from aliens to stop polluting the planet or developing nuclear weapons; they're saying, "you won't listen to me, but you'll listen to authority, so listen to these godly aliens." That's why aliens are presented as "superior" and beyond "our technology," etc. They're cosmic father figures. I'd still like to see first contact in my lifetime, though.

Interesting question, it's an attitude I took when I was younger and under the influence of Rand ("drunk on Rand," even.) I thought that to be productive and a superman I had to force myself to exhaustion in the manner of Roark or Reardon. It was the depiction of Reardon at his desk, working on a problem while fighting off sleep, which Rand depicted as a "Herculean" task. And Rearden DID fight off sleep. But I know NOW that Rand wasn't writing that as a prescription. I remember reading somewhere the idea that Rearden was actually AVOIDING his home life with this feat of strength. And it should be weighted against Hugh Akston's "motherly" chiding of his three favorite students for pushing too hard, sitting on the ground outside in the cold, etc. There are times when you need to push, yes, but not as a rule. Besides, your brain does need sleep. Ever stay awake too long after working to exhaustion? All those images from the day just start flashing by uncontrollably! Overstimulated, overworked, chemicals depleted...hallucinations...

For those looking for more direct quotes from Rand re Beethoven: orpheusremembered.blogspot.com has a collection of posts on the topic with those quotes.

In a nutshell, the latter. But also, the more earthly idea of "decentralization" in the political sphere (communism, egalitarianism.) The idea of a central, tonic key became seen as a relic of the old physics, while QM offered a "scientific" basis for relativism in politics and music in the form of the 12 tone row. From ART AND PHYSICS: "Atonality was a dramatic departure from previous forms of music because it destroyed the central unitary principle of a home key...Each note has the same relative importance as all the others. As a result, dissonance becomes harmony....Thus Einstein pulled the stool out from the stationary observer in science at the same time Schoenberg finally dethroned the two-century reign of King Key." "A century of musical trends culminated in Schoenberg's 'special (musical) theory of relativity,' which was consonant with Einstein's democratic principle regarding the Galilean inertial frames of reference in time and space...Schoenberg then carried this egalitarian principle to its logical extreme." Another composer influenced by QM, directly or indirectly, was Anton Webern, "a student of Schoenberg," who "compressed one piece into nineteen seconds and focused the listener's attention on the element of time." So, whether directly or indirectly, these musicians were doing this at the time of the rise of QM.

"What piece of music/composer do you folks think would best represent Objectivism?" In a "Q&A" session from AYN RAND ANSWERS: "So many combinations of premises are possible that you can't make a rule applicable to everyone who claims to like all kinds of art. You can say the same about people who claim they only like "romantic" art or-be careful here-"Objectivist" art (if there ever were such a thing, which there isn't.) You cannot always be sure what a person's premises are; most people are inconsistent."

I'm not saying QM is wrong per se, but that modern art of that time developed around the more "wrongheaded" interpretations of QM. This is laid out pretty well in ART AND PHYSICS: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light by Leonard Sheldon (the book itself is about how artists mirror the physics of their respective times.) As to my own understanding of QM: well, I'm a good musician...

Real quick response, heading out: The biggest problem I have with the "modern composers" and the claim of "pushing envelopes," and "streched contraints" is...well, let me compare it to language: one doesn't say that "the English language has been pushed to its limits, that it's an artificial construct and a compromise, so in order not to devolve into grunts, I'm going to devise a new system of language...not Chinese, not German, not Spanish, they've been pushed as well, and are also artificial. No, I'm going to liberate the word from the paragraph, and the letter from the word, so that every letter is as important as the next. We have WAR AND PEACE, there is no where left to go with the language." Oh, wait, someone did do that. His name was James Joyce. Disintegration. But the above is what the Lois Cooks do, not the Howard Roark's. Maybe Roark would say something LIKE the Schoenberg quote, but there would be a different context. It is not for nothing that Rand created Lois Cook as a foil for Roark, to distinguish the individual from the pseudo-individual. Adrock, I'll send you a private message, so as not to derail the thread.

That's one hell of a thesis on Schoenberg! It makes me sad to disagree with it, out of respect for the sheer chutpah. "Intellectually, I view Schoenberg as probably the most heroic—and perhaps tragic—figure in 20th-century music. Had Rand been as well-versed in music as she was in the other arts, I think she would have agreed." Really? REALLY? One, it's never safe to make assumptions like that. (You don't know that she would have agreed, first of all, but unlike others online who claim she's a "musical ignoramus" because she didn't like Beethoven, or "unteachable" because she preferred tiddlywink, I think she knew enough to call shenanigans...). "Imagine, as some already have in this thread, if Shakespeare (or Hugo, or Rand herself) lived in a culture with a primitive language with only 500 words, or if Michelangelo had only mud and clay to work with." You say the "tonal system was disintegrating." How does a tonal system disintegrate? Does the sound decay? No, it was not the tonal system, it was the minds using the tonal system that could be said to be in decay...if that's even the case. Maybe boredom, or dissatisfied, etc....Rand made the case that "modern" art and music was in a state of deconstruction, by the artist's own admission. (This is pretty much the case, and it's no surprise that this started around the same time that physicists were embracing quantum theories.) "Schoenberg agonized over this situation, although he didn’t put it in those terms. What he did was to single-handedly construct a sophisticated musical language in which he (and most importantly, others) could once again create complex, expressive works. The 12-tone system he devised enabled him to apply his intellect to his craft without self-consciously adopting a style that had such strong associations with the previous generation, a style that had been exhaustively mined at any rate." Ok, so there was a primitive strain happening via Stravinsky, Rite of Spring, etc. There was dissatisfaction with the diatonic scale and the tonal system. But was the solution to construct a complex system without heirarchy, i.e., the tonal row? Was it any better to replace the limited vocabulary of grunts with pomo-complex cacophony dressed in academic robes? "Unfortunately, the 12-tone system was based on an artifact of the even-tempered Western scale rather than on nature, resulting in music that failed to have the same direct emotional impact as earlier music, which relied on the brain’s perception of natural harmonies (i.e. closely associated frequency ratios) to achieve its effects. Also, the language was not easily mastered, and many subsequent composers corrupted the system by introducing randomness and other anti-rational elements until most listeners—and many composers—could not tell the difference, just as the uninitiated cannot tell the difference between a complex computer language and gibberish made to look as such." There's also the matter of the political implications of the 12-tone row. Schoenberg, Adorno, Varese, et. al spoke of "liberation" and freedom of sound from heirarchy...because heirarchy was "unnatural." This is an endorsement of anarchy, or communism...you say 'artifact of the even-tempered scale" as if "artifact" was a bad thing compared to nature...artifact, artificial, art, artifice, artisan. Man-made. You suggest that man-made scales cannot have an emotional impact? The Western scale has made quite an emotional impact, last I heard... But these composers spoke of freedom from artifice, as if it were a fascist limitation, that the conductor was a tyrant, that the composer was imposing his will on the musicians...As one commentator puts it, "Schoenberg does not impose a new set of abstract formulae on his music as later serial composers were tempted to do...but liberates the individual moments of his composition from their subordination to the whole. Or, in Schoenberg's own words, "In this music, the only thing that still matters is the particular, the now and here of the musical events, their own inner logic." In other words, disintegration. I believe this bears comparison to another "genius," Lois Cook, and her "book," The Gallant Gallstone. "Schoenberg’s heroicism lies in his refusal to accept the constraints of the primitive post-tonal language on his intellect, and in his largely successful efforts to forge from the chaos a language in which to once again express profound musical thoughts. His tragedy lies in the doomed condition of a language that does not correspond to nature, and in the failure of audiences and subsequent composers to appreciate what he managed to achieve." Sure, blame the victim... 'In other words, Schoenberg was much closer to Howard Roark than to Lois Cook, though the same cannot be said of his successors." See above.

You're welcome, and thank you.

You might like my blog, orpheusremembered.blogspot.com, as well as adambuker.com. The former is dedicated to Rand's questions in "Art and Cognition" regarding music (and the debate that has ensued), and the latter is the site of a composer/musician who just started a series of youtube podcasts exploring the question of art and philosophy.

I thought about that initially, but a man holding a mirror doesn't use his own body and life as the mirror. It's more like the Nietzschean abyss than a mirror: "Be careful that when you look into the abyss, the abyss doesn't look into you..."

You mean it wasn't original with Metallica? Darn. I'm disillusioned.

If Metallica's anger is of the "Don't Tread on Me" variety, Manson's is of the "we're all evil, don't you see?" variety. I've read his bio, and at times agreed with a few things (he's a Rush fan, and may have even read some Rand), but overall, he's ugly for ugly's sake. What saddened me is that I think he knew it, and hinted at wanting to change that. I saw a bit of that on MECHANICAL ANIMALS, the only album I can listen to, but I think he tried to change a bit, and lost his fans who didn't want change, so he reverted. Ironically, it's no longer shocking, and he comes off like a cartoon without any relevance. His performance on a late show performing "This is Halloween" from NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS nailed the coffin on his career. He's about as scary as Alice Cooper on the Muppets.

I like it, much better than ST. ANGER, but it feels too much like a retread of past material; they're plagiarizing themselves. (I'd like to be "Generous" and say it's all variations on a theme, but I can't, knowing that Rick Rubin was involved, who is known for bringing artists "back to their roots," in a pandering kind of way.) No new ground here. Still, I like a few tracks, "Cyanide" is good, and "Broken, Beaten, and Scarred" is my current anthem when I'm angry. "Breaking your teeth on a hard life coming/Show your scars...what don't kill ya make ya more strong...but we die hard." Could be my war cry in the Obamanation. Gets me pumped, and ready to face the world on my terms. I'll trade the album for this one song alone.

Hi, Laure, Well, we all have our own boiling point. Since the future's uncertain, optimism is not a bad option. But I intend to keep up the pressure so that it DOESN'T get so bad that there is no hope! I know there's a bit of hyperbole involved with some of the attacks on Obama, but as long as he has to keep denying that he's socialist, that makes it harder to him to act like one without appearing to contradict himself. And thanks for the shout out!

It's not "Objectivist" music, but the point comes across...Rock against the Obamanation. "Earth in the Balance" by Spaceplayer. "A meteoric rise to fame/ what's ours to lose was yours to gain/ as you pulled on the reins/ so you could remain/ the king that you think you are/ yeah, you're a supertzar/ you held us so far, you held our mind in chains/ made us wonder who is crazy and who is sane/ our sanction of guilt was the key to our shame/ and our self-sacrifice was the claim to your fame/ but I know who you are and I know you're to blame/ 'cause I know the score...and I know you're name..."

Here's some food for thought: Temple Grandin writes that she "thinks in pictures," going so far as to title her book..."Thinking in Pictures." I THINK IN PICTURES. "Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head. When somebody speaks to me, his words are instantly translated into pictures. Language-based thinkers often find this phenomenon difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment designer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremendous advantage." Is this accurate, meaning, is this truly "thinking?" I bring this up based on Ayn Rand's answer to the question during a Q and A at the Ford Hall Forum. She was asked: "Is it possible to think in images, rather than with words? I have in mind the mental process in which an architect projects in his imagination a view of a particular space, and works on that image in his mind. Isn't an image like a word-a perceptual concrete that can stand for an idea?" Her response was: "No. The only image that can stand for an idea is a written or printed word. That's a visual symbol. But the image of a concrete has nothing to do with thinking. An image can be the OBJECT of thinking, but you can't think BY MEANS of images. What an architect or any visual artist does is much more complex, and connato, except as a metaphor, be called 'thinking in images.' It isn't thinking; it's imagination. Imagination can make use of a mix of images, sounds, and words; it's an entirely different process. But imagination, creativitly, or anything rational cannot take place unless the creator uses words....An architect isn't good if he can't translate his spatial imagination into actual words, and in effect say, "I'll build a building of such-and-such size, and put the stress on height,' and so on. He must translate his plan not only into language, but into engineering language, which is mathematical and extremely precise." She adds that "In using concepts, words are merely arbitrary symbols. The word 'table' is not the concept 'table'; it helps one to hold that concept in mind. The word gives identify to the concept, but it isn't the concept. The concept is our understanding of what that word stands for. A concrete image cannot do that." When I read this, it seems that Grandin isn't saying anything necessarily striking, more that she's reversing the process of turning concepts into language. It usually goes from sensation to perception to conception. A sensory experience occurs, the brain percieves it after recieving the signal, and the mind via language creates the concept. An interesting thought experiment would be to substitute thinking in images with sounds or smells.

"Objectivist" music theory? Well, Rand said herself that there was no such thing as Objectivist music...but, if you mean research into the questions she asked in "Art and Cognition," about how and why music does its thing... Roger Bissell has written a few things, notably "Art as Microcosm," and contested Rand and Helmholtz on the sensation of tone...the latter was online, but is temporarily unavailable, but his site is http://www.rogerbissell.com/. JARS published a symposium dedicated to Torres and Khamhi's WHAT ART IS: THE ESTHETIC THEORY OF AYN RAND, with different views, pro and con, of Rand's musical theory. Worth checking out... My own site, Orpheus Remembered, has some things of interest as well, mainly my essay on the cognitive and gestalt theory of music as they support Rand's theory. Hope that helps, Joe

TPS, thanks for the response, and I've been blessed with the writings of not only Rand but many others on the subject. Rand being my favorite, but I'm particularly in thrall to Robert Jourdain's MUSIC, THE BRAIN, AND ECSTASY.

Kendall, I'll take you at your word that you're not trying to pounce. That said, I don't know how to make it any plainer. My own assessment of Rand's comment, in intself, is simply a "request." As someone in the public eye, she probably received many letters and correspondence from people trying to give her gifts, etc. The embarressment? The way I interpret it is personal, I remember, in high school, playing a song for a friend, a song that gave me goosebumps. My friend simply shrugged. Ever since then, I was mystified and fascinated by this, but at the time, I was embarrassed myself for getting worked up and sharing something that met with a shrug, so I don't take Rand to mean this in a disrespectful way Just like Rand says, that it's "It’s no reflection on you or on me. It’s simply that sense of life is very private." Since then, I wanted to know WHY this was, why one person feels one way, since music was said to be a "universal language."

I don't see where Rand says it is impolite...

Make of it what you will, Kendall.

From Orpheus Remembered: Ayn Rand made this public request during a Q&A session, as presented in AYN RAND ANSWERS: "Speaking of one’s ability to know another’s sense of life, now might be a good time to make a request: Please don’t send me records or recommend music. You have no way of knowing my sense of life, although you have a better way of knowing mine than I have of knowing yours, since you’ve read my books, and my sense of life is on every page. You would have some grasp of it-but I hate to think how little. I hate the painful embarrassment I feel when somebody sends me music they know I’d love-and my reaction is the opposite: It’s impossible music. I feel completely misunderstood, yet the person’s intentions were good. Nobody but my husband can give me works of art and know infallibly, as he does, that I’ll like them. So please don’t try it. It’s no reflection on you or on me. It’s simply that sense of life is very private." This is interesting in light of the many debates I've seen on Objectivist forums about music. A pattern that emerges is that when someone wants to defend or convince another about the greatness of a certain song or performer, they post a video or mp3 file. It's almost as if this is done in a "Roarkian" manner, i.e. , throw some pictures on the table and say "the defense rests." This rarely seems to lead to that "Eureka!" moment, which often leads to disappointment and confusion (and, on occasion, a moral denunciation of those who "don't get it." The irony is that Rand and Objectivism are evoked as justification for this "superiority," yet here we have Rand asking people NOT to do this to her! Food for thought.

Hi, King, You CAN reword that, but that opens up a whole 'nother can of worms...like asking, "would an Objectivist consider this cooking? or science?". Objectivism warns against "arguments from authority." The "objectivist" approach would be: is this integratable" as music, cognitively speaking. (See "Art and Cognition" for Rand's full argument, but here's a sample: she wrote, regarding "conditioning one's ear": it is not the ear that needs to be conditioned, but the mind.) The other consideration is to take the word music "literally." What is music without the Muses? Does the sound make you muse when you hear it, does it make you contemplate? Is it "music" to your ears? I did want to say something earlier, but I forgot, but usually when I see talks of "Objectivist" music, the discussion heads straight for the lyrics. It IS a lot easier to have Objectivist ideas in lyrics, as in the case of Rush. But when you discuss melodies, etc., well, it's like saying chocolate frosting is Objectivist...it doesn't work. But we still have chocolate frosting

King, in response to the question in your subject header: Whether Rand thought it was trash, or not even music, she herself said there is no such thing as "Objectivist" art. (Incidentally, she didn't disqualify as art something based on her personal opinion.) But this is what she said: "So many combinations of premises are possible that you can't make a rule applicable to everyone who claims to like all kinds of art. You can say the same about people who claim they only like "romantic" art or-be careful here-"Objectivist" art (if there ever were such a thing, which there isn't.) You cannot always be sure what a person's premises are; most people are inconsistent." Since you're interested in the matter, you might be interested in my blog, Orpheus Remembered, where I discuss the relationship between music and Objectivism. Shine on, Joe