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From:  "Caio Rossi" <caioross@z...>
"Caio Rossi" <caioross@z...>
Date:  Tue Oct 24, 2000  12:54 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Re: Entrenched Thinking or Pops VS Ops


Tako wrote:

> Well, then, this is where I wanted us to get. You are equating elite with
> better. Just wanted to get that out into the open.

Here we go again: No, I'm equating better with elite ( logically, that is
the same. Linguistically, not ). In the past, as the masses didn't have any
access to education, they were hardly ever 'better'. Nowadays, although the
masses have more access to becoming elite, due to that harmful 'leftist'
influence our 'elite' has lost the ability to distinguish 'better' from
'worse' and thinks tradition is useless. That's destruction of civilization.
Barbarians take seat.

> You mean their own arts. I can't believe you are suggesting the poor did
> not have any interest in or create art. Crafts are a kind of art, they
> just happen to be useful. Of course, if your idea of art requires useless
> abstraction, then crafts are just stuff.

Artesans have never been really poor people. BTW, they have generally
represented a 'middle class'.

I won't discuss here whether useful craft is art or not, but culture is
something that you accumulate. And that is not useless accumulation: that's
in order to learn more and do things better next. You can't compare how far
pop music has gone to how far classical music has. I've never heard of a
singing technique based upon popular concepts of what singing is.

Also, you can't compare how far science has gone in terms of understanding
how the
universe works and the concept 'populace' has about scientific matters. 50%
of the American 'populace' doesn't even vote, and most of them justify that
saying that they see no relation between
their lives and politics. That's ignorance: if they ever read they'd never
say such nonsense. I've read almost 50% of Americans don't even know which
is bigger:
an electron or an atom ( In Brazil, that question would be a bigger
disaster, for sure ).

> Art was valued by the rich, but was too ghosh for most rich people to do
> as more than a hobby. The professional artists were of poorer classes who
> pandered to the rich. Think castrati.

And you want to convince me they displayed their popularly-learned
artistry!?

> ... they were so incredibly opressed they
> didn't have time to waste in artistic pursuits.

In practical terms, they didn't care. They cared about surviving only (So
some say. In fact, during the Middle Ages, peasants used to work about 4
hours a day only. The concept that people were overworked during the Middle
Ages was newly-born capitalist propaganda. How do you know that: academy! )

>Has it ever occured to you
> that the rich created these pretty things with the money, power, and free
> time afforded to them by peasants?

No, never! :-) Of course they did, but that has nothing to do with saying
that what was created by getting money from 'peasants' has the same quality
as what was created by peasants ( I'm using here the word 'peasant' to
simplify our discussion, but, in fact, if you're sponsored by the rich, or
the church, to have access to non-popular culture and share
a wealthy life style, than you're not a real 'peasant'. You're a 'petit
bourgeois', or lumpen proletariat, in a more modern and critical
conception ).

> Who exactly are you talking about here? You've thrown around a bunch of
> terms, but it doesn't sound like any leftists I know...

American universities and their political correction and Relativism. Richard
Rorty, the American relativist star. Except for the Labor Party and AFL-CIO
(sp?) , the
rest of the left ( democrats included for sure).

>of anthropology, it seems you haven't really examined the
> cultural biases behind your assertion that elite/rich = better. Are you
> wealthy yourself? If not, maybe you've been sucked in to the myth of the
> american dream yourself.

No, I'm middle class. And I equated elite=rich=better referring to the past,
not the present. Nowadays, elite is Bill Gates. No comments!

Concerning cultural bias, I can't imagine how someone can belong to a
culture and not see things through cultural bias. Everything you say or do
is based on cultural bias. And thinking that you must not have cultural bias
IS cultural bias ( ot the 'leftist' kind, of course ). As anything that
denies itself must be discarded ( Aristotles ), cultural relativism is one
of the most important signs of the harm caused by the politcal correction in
human thinking.


Bye ;-)

Caio Rossi




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5896 Re: Entrenched Thinking or Pops VS Ops Tako Oda   Tue  10/24/2000   2 KB

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