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Zorn List Digest       Saturday, March 10 2001       Volume 03 : Number 328



In this issue:
-
       Re: science, rationality, religion
       News for Lulu
       Re: science, rationality, religion
       *I* think that this is important.
       Re: science, rationality, religion
       Re: music is my wife
       re: music history question
       Re: science, rationality, religion
       Re: science, rationality, religion

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 21:46:07 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: science, rationality, religion

In a message dated 3/10/01 2:26:35 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[e-mail] writes:

>  >> Naturally I'm on the side of these philosophers.  Does this mean I will
>  > stop
>  >>
>  >> writing airplanes or use my computer or get rid of my refrigerator?
Does
>  >> questioning the limits of a thing in terms of its power and domination
>  > mean
>  >> that one must throw the whole thing out the door?
>  >
>  > No, but this kind of reminds me of the yuppies who move out to some
> charming
>  > upcountry village or town and immediately start agitating to restrict
>  > _further_ growth so as to preserve "their" community.  Funny how people
> tend
>  > to exempt themselves whenever they warn that some development has gone
too
>  > far.
>  >
>
>  What the f**k are you talking about?  Or, more politely, your analogy
hardly
>  fits.

OK, it's about this:  Airplanes and cars and frigs and the like are after all
prime technological "sources of environmental destruction," so called.  So
when someone says that "questioning the limits of a thing in terms of its
power and domination" does NOT mean questioning or limiting his own use of
these handy technologies, I've got to wonder just what "questioning the
limits" does mean.  And that goes with all the other fruits of technological
progress.  Which medicines or surgical procedures would you spurn?  Which
labor-saving industrial processes?  Which commodified mass
reproduction/communication media?  TV?  Radio? Movies?  CD players?  Player
pianos?  Computers?  No?  NONE of the above?  What about agribusiness, that's
a bad one, eh?  So do you want to go back to the days when you labored 30
hours a week to earn enough to feed your family instead of  3 hours a week?
Fast Food Nation?  Plenty to complain about there, but a century ago it was
Watery Gruel Nation for your typical working class household.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be ongoing critical thinking about the
applications of scientific rationality.  But that's not the same as sweeping
philosophical criticisms that seem to imply, at best, changes in _somebody
else's_ lifestyle.   So, yeah, based on the comments I was originally
responding to, I think my analogy holds.

I do, however, think I should have proceded more carefully before by first
asking Bill, "It sounds like what you're saying is..."   And it's not as
though the contradictions between "is" and "ought" in my own life are any
less deep than in anyone else's.

David

np: Sleater-Kinney, All Hands On The Bad One

- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 21:22:56 -0600 (CST)
From: Tom Benton <[e-mail]>
Subject: News for Lulu

Anyone have a copy of the above they'd be interested in parting with or
know in the world a person's supposed to find one?


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 22:59:53 -0500
From: Mike Chamberlain <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: science, rationality, religion

on 3/10/01 9:46 PM, [e-mail] at [e-mail] wrote:


>
> OK, it's about this:  Airplanes and cars and frigs and the like are after all
> prime technological "sources of environmental destruction," so called.  So
> when someone says that "questioning the limits of a thing in terms of its
> power and domination" does NOT mean questioning or limiting his own use of
> these handy technologies, I've got to wonder just what "questioning the
> limits" does mean.

And where did this particular straw man come from?  Look, it's *all* open to
critical inquiry, whether it be religion or science--both of which have
their fundamentalist adherents--as well as my own application of the
principles or uses of either.

> And that goes with all the other fruits of technological
> progress.  Which medicines or surgical procedures would you spurn?  Which
> labor-saving industrial processes?  Which commodified mass
> reproduction/communication media?  TV?  Radio? Movies?  CD players?  Player
> pianos?  Computers?  No?  NONE of the above?  What about agribusiness, that's
> a bad one, eh?  So do you want to go back to the days when you labored 30
> hours a week to earn enough to feed your family instead of  3 hours a week?

Hey, I live in an agricultural area and grew up in the "metropolitan" hub of
a different one, and I can tell you that without massive government
subsidization of agribusiness and the squeezing out of all but the largest
operators working on extremely thin profit margins, we'd still be paying a
lot more than we do now for our food.  So it's bought at a price that
benefits a very few large corporations and causes a huge amount of
environmental disruption.  Anyway, in this case, it's not an either/or
choice.  It's about coming to some kind of sensible balance that is
determined by more than concern for the annual returns of the shareholders.
And it's the same for other questions having to do with the limits of
technology--and religion, for that matter.

> Fast Food Nation?  Plenty to complain about there, but a century ago it was
> Watery Gruel Nation for your typical working class household.

Regrigeration.  Higher wages.  I'm all for it.
>
> I'm not saying that there shouldn't be ongoing critical thinking about the
> applications of scientific rationality.  But that's not the same as sweeping
> philosophical criticisms that seem to imply, at best, changes in _somebody
> else's_ lifestyle.   So, yeah, based on the comments I was originally
> responding to, I think my analogy holds.

Again, you are the one who brought up the idea that we are talking about
changing somebody else's lifestyle.

How about this analogy.  Born into a household run by a physically abusive
individual who supplies the roof over the head and the food on the table.
When a complaint is made about the nightly beatings, the response is that
the beatings will stop when the food runs out and the roof falls in.
>
> I do, however, think I should have proceded more carefully before by first
> asking Bill, "It sounds like what you're saying is..."   And it's not as
> though the contradictions between "is" and "ought" in my own life are any
> less deep than in anyone else's.

Well, I haven't heard anyone who claims to have no such contradictions, nor
have I heard anyone calling on others to remove them either.

- --Mike
- --



- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 22:55:28 -0500
From: Rick Lopez <[e-mail]>
Subject: *I* think that this is important.

Today is the Fourth Anniversary of my becoming, if indeed it is one of the
things I am, a discographer. On March 10, 1997, I began the Sam Rivers
document.

(Enormous Thanks to Alan Saul.)

Quick, send me flowers!

Now with thirteen (13 ! ) and no time to even pee,
RL

 ----------
Sessionographies:
~~~   CRISPELL;  IBARRA; Wm. PARKER; RIVERS; SHIPP; D.S. WARE.
Discographies:
~~~  COURVOISIER; ENEIDI; MANERI,; MORRIS; SPEARMAN; THREADGILL; WORKMAN.

Also:
 --Samuel Beckett Eulogy--Baseball & the 10,000 Things
 --Time Stops--LOVETORN--HARD BOIL--The Interview--ETC.

all at: http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k

WHERE THE HELL HAVE I BEEN??? :
http://www.velocity.net/~bb10k/LUCILLE/splash.html



- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:18:53 -0800
From: "s~Z" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: science, rationality, religion

>>>Just think of it as "group therapy," s/Z, it's only "group
therapy."<<<


But group therapy can put you in touch with GOD!

Let's continue.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 20:14:37 -0800
From: "s~Z" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: music is my wife

>>>There are different realms of reality, ie..physical,
spiritual....music, if
it strikes the right internal chords is spiritual.  To me, music is a
direct
line to God..<<<

Well. This sounds great. Direct line to God.
Wow. Now if something is a direct line to
God, and God is....well...what is 'God'?....
the Creator?.....the ground of being?.....
I mean if Music is a direct line to GOD!!!!
....Jesus!.....what the hell do these words
mean?.....if something is a direct line to
GOD that is quite the claim......and the
experience would be pretty fucking HUGE....
I mean if soemthing puts you in contact with
GOD......shit.......that goes beyond some
pleasurable listening experience......that is
lining the listener up with the power that
created all of reality......that's no little thing....
it REALLY puts you in contact with GOD??????
...I mean if you have contacted GOD you must
be one amazing individual....you cannot come into
contact with GOD and not be permanently
transformed.....a couple of guys on bikes came
to my door the other day, and they told me
a book they read put them in contact with GOD...
they told me if I read the book, I'd be put in contact
with GOD...but I looked at them and thought, "Shit.
Can it really be true that contacting GOD results
in people putting on white shirts and ties and riding
bikes around to tell people that reading a book will
put them in contact with God?"....it's like some grand
spiritual pyramid scheme...now I don't mind riding
a bike....but I'm not putting on a white shirt and
tie even for the fucking Creator....if He or She
wants to communicate with me through music,
well that's fine with me....I'll be glad to tithe by
buying CDs and supporting musician/priests.....
but I must confess...as much as I enjoy music....
I can't say I am being placed in contact with GOD
through it....it's damned blissful.....but GOD????
.......?????.....that does sound good though....I'll
try that one on the wife to justify my expenditures....
no really.....dear......Bjork.....she's like....uh....Mary
Magdalene......and uh King Crimson got their name
from....uh.....the Blood of Jesus....really...the music is
sacramental.....an aural Eucharist...and David Bowie...
he's a......shit....how can I justify David Bowie???????


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 05:07:31 -0000
From: "thomas chatterton" <[e-mail]>
Subject: re: music history question

>From: [e-mail] (Joseph Neff)

>        ....one last question: read in "Free Jazz" about an album that
>features Coltrane playing with Cecil Taylor, called "Hard Driving
>Jazz".Jost says it is a disaster, largely due to the non-communication
>between Kenny Dorham and Taylor. Anybody heard this? Is it as bad as Jost
>says?

This date is actually called 'Coltrane Time' (originally on United Artists,
reissued by Solid State), and although it's a very strange lineup (Trane,
CT, Dorham, Chuck Israels bass, Louis Hayes drums) I certainly wouldn't call
it a disaster. Cecil seems to be having a hard time 'playing between the
lines' sometimes, especially when he's comping through some pretty standard
changes (two standards, Just Friends & Like Someone In Love are played, plus
a Dorham tune Shifting Down, and Chuck Israels' Double Clutching). Sometimes
seems like he's trying to draw the other players 'outside', but they're not
quite ready to go, even 'Trane. Flawed, but certainly worth a listen...
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 05:26:41 -0000
From: "Bill Ashline" <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: science, rationality, religion

>From: [e-mail]

>But you wrote "technology is the _source_ of 'instrumental reason'" (e.a.)
>-
>not (as you seem to be saying now), that technology continued or further
>developed instrumental reason.  In any case, I kind of see the idea that
>individual human beings are valuable in their own right and not as mere
>instruments of some greater purpose (king, God) as arising during the
>Enlightenment, in defiance of religion.  And the coincidence between that
>and
>the emergence of the scientific method is not, well, a coincidence.

All of this is hard to explain in such a small space.  And I'm simply
paraphrasing better articulated sources.  If you are interested, write me
privately for references.  I hold to my original point however.

>
>It sounded before like you were dismissing the whole idea of "progress" -
>putting it in quotes.  Talking about its dark underbelly - without the
>quotes
>- works OK for me.

Well I am dismissing the whole idea of progress because there are always
aspects to progress that are not at all progressive, which put the notion of
progress into question.  Thus the quotes.

>Actually, the record keeping during the Inquisition was mind-bogglingly
>thorough.  Don't have time now to give you a sample of the checklists used
>during interrogations of the accused, but can provide later if you want.
>Trust me, though, in this respect the Nazi's, the Khmer, the KGB, had
>_nothin_ on those old friars.

I've worked personally at the Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh and I'd beg to
differ.

>I definitely don't want to get mired in a how-unique-was-the-Holocaust
>discussion.  I think it was unprecented and unduplicated (in a way that
>even
>the genocides in Cambodia and in the Soviet Union under Stalin weren't),
>but
>it's precisely for that reason that I would be very careful in terms of how
>much of it should be ascribed to general tendencies toward
>"instrumentalism"
>or "bureaocratic rationality."

On this topic, I have published.  I'd say that the particular cases of
Cambodia and Rwanda were more "unique" then the Holocaust, a topic that has
been beaten over the head in the west, to the neglect of other more current
atrocities.

>I, on the other hand, thought that I was hearing
>science being reduced to instrumental rationality, and I took exception to
>that.

No.  The movement of scientific thought in the twentieth century has been
coextensive with instrumental rationality.  I hate to use this word, but
perhaps it might be useful for you to think of this phenomenon as
"scientism."  We see it in the adaptation of certain incommensurable
scientific procedures in certain of the social sciences and in studies in
education etc.  We see it in the affording of credentials such that one is
never qualified for a job unless one has had immediate prior experience.
Camus would have never been able to become a journalist in these times,
e.g., since he never attended journalism school.  These are very simple
examples that I cite for the sake of time.

>
>And I do think, as I wrote in my reply to Mike, that you're being pretty
>fuzzy about what constitutes "scientific progress" and what counts as a
>"bastardization of science."

I think I've addressed both phrases very clearly based on past discussions.
Progress= CDs, airplanes, medical advances (maybe--humans live longer but
then populations expand).  "Bastardizations"= nuclear armaments,
environmental destruction etc.


>Less power?  Sure?  Less blind?  That's another matter.

I think American ideology is far more dominant than that of any marginalized
opposition group.

>I've just sat
>through too many one-sided polemics where "globalization" is condemned by
>people who are absolutely closed to considering how limited and
>impoverished
>their own lives would be in the absence of trade, where "American cultural
>imperialism" is condemned by people who embrace as their own the older
>American cultural influences already absorbed by their "native" cultures,
>where capitalist "growth" is condemned by people who until fifteen years
>ago
>were boasting that socialism provided more of it...  Ah, I could go on and
>on.  Forgive me if I've unfairly lumped you're arguments in with this
>stuff,
>but the anti-instrumental-rationality schtick has also been part of the
>intellectual armament of the
>beat-American-capitalism-with-any-stick-you-can-find crowd.

Well lump me in if you want.  I see the effects of American trade practices
first hand, and I don't like many of them.  The US demands IPR adherence in
the third world but doesn't follow it when it comes to taking the indigenous
knowledges of various cultures.  You call it trade.  I call it economic
coercion.  For more, see Vandana Shiva's book "Biopiracy."

>Well, it was an analogy.  I think I explained it in the response to Mike.
>I'm
>jammed into a pretty tight hole myself (as the Rrrrrrster can testify  ;-).

Well sorry to hear that.  But as an analogy I'm afraid it was a gross
misrepresentation of what was at stake in the discussion.  There's a big
difference between enjoying a CD or a refrigerator and hating the broad and
sweeping domination of a particular line of thinking which makes its
presence apparent everyday, to those who are willing to see and pay
attention.  I believe Rrrrrr's favorite writer is Samuel Beckett.  He
articulated all of this better than anyone.

>OK, but can we go back to talking about our favorite modern improvising
>pianists soon?

Fair enough.  I would have never entered into the fray if the earlier hasty
and misinformed denunciations hadn't polluted my inbox.  Some young cat on
the list wants to see some connection between an elderly and smart
gentleman's work, like Gadamer, and some ideas about art and music.  He
shouldn't be shushed down by some malcontent who hasn't bothered to read.
This attitude bothers me.

Back to music and off the tangent....
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.


- -

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 01:27:53 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: science, rationality, religion

In a message dated 3/10/01 11:00:18 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[e-mail] writes:

>  > when someone says that "questioning the limits of a thing in terms of its
>  > power and domination" does NOT mean questioning or limiting his own use
of
>  > these handy technologies, I've got to wonder just what "questioning the
>  > limits" does mean.
>
>  And where did this particular straw man come from?

I didn't make up the conjunction of statements.  It seems quite legitimate to
me to ask what the concrete consequences of critiquing technology are.

>  benefits a very few large corporations and causes a huge amount of
>  environmental disruption.  Anyway, in this case, it's not an either/or
>  choice.  It's about coming to some kind of sensible balance that is
>  determined by more than concern for the annual returns of the shareholders.

When you get down specifics and the difficult search for "sensible balance,"
I'm in.  It was what I perceived to be the absence of nuance in the earlier
posts that I was objecting to.

>  > I'm not saying that there shouldn't be ongoing critical thinking about
the
>  > applications of scientific rationality.  But that's not the same as
> sweeping
>  > philosophical criticisms that seem to imply, at best, changes in
_somebody
>  > else's_ lifestyle.   So, yeah, based on the comments I was originally
>  > responding to, I think my analogy holds.
>
>  Again, you are the one who brought up the idea that we are talking about
>  changing somebody else's lifestyle.

No, it was implied in the combination of general-purpose attacks on
technology and "progress" (not my quotes) with the seeming absence of any
specific personal consequence of attacking.

>  How about this analogy.  Born into a household run by a physically abusive
>  individual who supplies the roof over the head and the food on the table.
>  When a complaint is made about the nightly beatings, the response is that
>  the beatings will stop when the food runs out and the roof falls in.

But there's not really much room for "coming to some kind of sensible
balance" in this scenario, is there?  I just don't think it's helpful to pour
incendiary "you've-nothing-to-lose-but-your-chains" type rhetoric over
situations where (as for example in your discussion of agribusiness above) at
the end of the day the real aim is reform.

>  > And it's not as
>  > though the contradictions between "is" and "ought" in my own life are any
>  > less deep than in anyone else's.
>
>  Well, I haven't heard anyone who claims to have no such contradictions, nor
>  have I heard anyone calling on others to remove them either.

But I was the one pointing up the contradictions, so I thought it needed to
be said that I wasn't exempting myself.  The intent was conciliatory.  It
beats "What the f**k are you talking about?" in my book.

D


- -

------------------------------

End of Zorn List Digest V3 #328
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