Re: Eno and discrete arguments

[rosen%ji.Berkeley.EDU@Berkeley.EDU (Rob Rosen)]

> [Doug:]
>Then, Mr. Rosen, what has been the point of all your recent postings?

	A very good question, indeed.  The point I was trying to make, believe
it or not, has very little to do with Eno, music, or IED.  It has much more to
do with personal philosophy.

	I originally issued the "Eno has SINGLE-HANDEDLY..." statement as an
experiment.  I wanted to see how certain people would react to that sort of
statement, and then hopefully use their collective responses to make a point.
(In all actuality, Eno is not my idol and I had no right to make the statement
about Eno single-handedly creating the rebirth of minimalism in modern music.
However, such a statement provided a convenient vehicle for the point which will
soon be articulated.)

	The point I'm trying to make is that music is fundamentally artistic
expression, and it just doesn't seem plausible to assign universal and absolute
terms such as ``good'' and ``bad'' to any product of one's personal experience.
It just doesn't make sense to me to describe Kate Bush's music as ``good'' while
Madonna's is ``bad'' (I'm picking two somewhat random examples here).  I could
justify my apprehension toward abolutist statements through a long and rather 
tedious discussion of certain tendencies exemplified in Western philosophical 
studies, but that would be totally out of place in this newsgroup.  It would 
also piss a lot of people off.

	It's also highly insulting to have someone imply that if I don't think 
what s/he listens to is ``good'' then I must be some sort of moron because his 
favourite music is ``so obviously good.''  To add insult to injury, my music 
is ``bad,'' so I'm doubly stupid for (a) not acknowledging the inherent 
goodness of his music, and (b) thinking my music is good when it's really bad.

	What it all seems to boil down to, then, is an expression of ego 
insecurity.   If you've been following the responses to my recent postings, I 
think you'll find that they amount to expressions of wounded pride; certain 
individuals are reacting in a manner similar to the way I react when someone 
issues a statement which has insulting overtones or implications.  I'm human, 
and so I occasionally get frustrated when people continually insult me, although
for the most part it takes a long time for me to get irritated enough to take 
the somewhat radical step of actually TAKING TIME to RESPOND to these sorts of 
statements.  I promise I won't do it again for the next year or so :-)

	In any event, as someone sagely said, ``let's shut the fuck up 
already.''  There are more productive things to be discussed.  If we could
somehow unwrap the holier-than-thou shell so that we can expose the infor-
mation underneath, we would be much richer in knowledge.

	%%Rob
-- 

		Rob Rosen
		Computer Systems Support Group
		University of California

	rosen@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU (the syntactically correct address)
	ucbvax!rosen (for people who actually LIKE source routing)