Curt Doolittle

Category: Epistemology and Method

  • GOOD MUSIC? DEFINE GOOD? (worth repeading) Good music is judged like all good ar

    GOOD MUSIC? DEFINE GOOD?

    (worth repeading)

    Good music is judged like all good art: (a)craftsmanship(materials and processes), (b)design (aesthetic appeal), (c) symbolism.

    The more capital in each a,b,c, the better. The more durable the capital the better (the longer it remains in the vernacular)

    After all, that is what beauty means to mankind: the presence of resources.

    And especially if we add additional ‘resources’ by way of innovation (invention).

    Some works are well crafted, well designed, and symbolically immoral.

    Craftsmanship refers to dept and complexity.

    Aesthetics to the emotional associations it evokes through the use of properties of sound.

    Symbolism (meaning, content) refers to the narrative in correspondence with the other two.

    So deeply crafted, emotionally experiential, poetically deep.

    And in all three dimensions: inventive.

    I could compare a series of reasonably well known songs that use very simple techniques reliant upon just the voice, in increasing complexity. I would consider all of these songs objectively good, despite their range.

    Greensleves – Anon.

    Scarborough Fair – simon and garfunkle

    Hallelujia – jeff buckley

    Cursum Perficio – Enya

    Fiddle and Drum (a capella) – Perfect Circle

    O Fortuna (Carmina Burana) – Carl Orf.

    Hallelujia Corus – Handel

    We refer to these as hymns (ballads to god-nature) or ballads (hymns to love).

    In the pop genre we know how to create the ‘perfect song’, of which my favorite: “smells like teen spirit” is I think the current place holder. The staying power of Knickelback is that they have systematized if not industrialized the process of producing this category of songs.

    Lets take another series and explore the border between hymn and anthem:

    Canon in D minor – Pachelbel.

    Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.

    Sober by Tool.

    Passive by Perfect Circle.

    ( could go on forever here )

    Most of the history of rock consists of Coming of Age Music (Celebration Music) – the joy of opportunity.

    Strangely it’s hard to find a lot of great stuff in there.

    I mean, we can go thru every movement in music and do the same. And yes, I like chick pop also. I just understand that it’s novelty, not art.

    It’s hard to Beat bach, but Mozart and Beethoven are still more popular. Why? Applied to joy and celebration rather than to … you know. That churchy stuff.

    It is hard sometimes to separate a great VOICE or a great RECORDING, from great music. The usual example is one of my favorite recordings: Gimme’ Shelter, which is really a great recording but you can’t really repeat the experience again. And any number of female vocalists can sing anything, and its beautiful because they have a great voice, but it is not the music that matters so much as their production of it.

    I have a thing for the voice, key, harmony, tempo, volume changes, and the use of silence. Possibly because I was in Chorus through I think 6th grade or so. And because of singing in church. But my taste dissipates rapidly without them, so a lot of dance/house rap music is uninteresting tom me while interesting to some other aficionados. I consider their work a technical investigation, but like the philosophy of language, a dead end.

    Most advancement in music over over the past 40 years has been happening in sound for film and video games. Not in popular music.

    I think that in retrospect we evolved new distribution models: phonograph/club, am radio/car, fm radio/stadium, videos/television, portable digital and spectacular film.

    And that as the quality of the recording and playback increased, so did the richness of the material. ie: 50s/60’s sounded good on shit equipment. 70’s/80’s a little better. We got to late seventies and they started to mix loud. WE got to punk and they started to vary volume, we got to nineties and they started to combine everything. And since then the movement has been in the great movies and gaming, not so much the consumer space – which has produced a set of race-class-driven formulas for the satisfation of identities. And it’s not really collectively innovative any longer.

    I suggest, operationally speaking, the era of ‘unity’ that we saw under the advent of the universalist movements made possible by mass media, will break into mini-markets and stay that way.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukriane

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-26 05:24:00 UTC

  • The Technologies of Truth Telling: 1 – Allegorical(understandable), 2 – Reasonab

    http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/01/pre-socratics-or-first-philosophers.htmlEva,

    The Technologies of Truth Telling:

    1 – Allegorical(understandable), 2 – Reasonable(given ignorance), 3 – Rational(given knowledge), 4 – Scientific (given criticism of physical law), 5 – Testimonial (given criticism by natural law).

    Pre-Socratic work is limited to Allegorical methods. Socrates gives us reasonability – a way of conducting criticism of our ideas to determine whether they survive. In this way, he is the first thinker to evolve criticism as a test of truth: falsifying, rather than using ideation as a means of invention: imagining.

    Socrates is the first step in a long evolution to the completion of epistemology that unites Truth, Science, Philosophy, Morality, and Law.

    The pre-socratics were not able to give us this technology. Socrates did.

    So the distinction between the socratics and the pre-socratics is as relevant as the distinction between religon and science, and science and testimony.

    They are not equal in merit.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-26 02:20:00 UTC

  • Current. Contemporary. Traditional. Modern. Medieval. Ancient

    Current. Contemporary. Traditional. Modern. Medieval. Ancient.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-24 04:41:00 UTC

  • Sometimes I think ideology is basically an excuse to compensate for reading disa

    Sometimes I think ideology is basically an excuse to compensate for reading disability. ‘Cause it’s not like the information isn’t out there. It is.

    Yes, I understand it’s hard to know which books, and yes, I understand that it is far better to ask other people to educate you than to read – some of us enjoy educating others.

    But that is different from needing a vent for one’s frustration at the world, and clinging onto a life raft that justifies your rebellion.

    Propertarianism doesn’t tell me I’m right or anyone else is right. It tells me that the only way we know what is right is through exchange.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-21 02:59:00 UTC

  • meaning to understand. Names for truth

    meaning to understand. Names for truth.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 17:31:56 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689862940661583872

    Reply addressees: @soapjackal @DIA_operative @Outsideness

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

    IN REPLY TO:

    @soapjackal

    @DIA_operative @curtdoolittle @Outsideness Too complex to start out with but if you are comfortable with it then you may see illustartion

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

  • Once meaning is transferred we must transfer truth using names not analogies

    Once meaning is transferred we must transfer truth using names not analogies.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 17:31:26 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689862813737709569

    Reply addressees: @soapjackal @DIA_operative @Outsideness

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

    IN REPLY TO:

    @soapjackal

    @DIA_operative @curtdoolittle @Outsideness Too complex to start out with but if you are comfortable with it then you may see illustartion

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

  • Analogy can be used to transfer properties and relations. To load false p/r. Or

    Analogy can be used to transfer properties and relations. To load false p/r. Or to obscure p/r.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 17:30:29 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689862572896579584

    Reply addressees: @soapjackal @DIA_operative @Outsideness

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

    IN REPLY TO:

    @soapjackal

    @DIA_operative @curtdoolittle @Outsideness Too complex to start out with but if you are comfortable with it then you may see illustartion

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/689703038110461953

  • Humanity has been infected with a great set of mental viruses. Humanity needs a

    Humanity has been infected with a great set of mental viruses.

    Humanity needs a cure.

    The Cure is Truth.

    The procedure is going to be very painful.

    I hope there are enough of us to conduct the operation.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 14:49:00 UTC

  • IF I WAS IN A UNIVERSITY? I assume they would try to force me to lie

    IF I WAS IN A UNIVERSITY?

    I assume they would try to force me to lie.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 13:47:00 UTC

  • THE WORD ‘ART’? WHAT DOES IT MEAN? We use the term ‘art’ to refer to (a) that wh

    THE WORD ‘ART’? WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

    We use the term ‘art’ to refer to

    (a) that which man makes,

    (b) that which he crafts well,

    (c) that which he imbues with design for aesthetic pleasure,

    (d) that which he crafts for the purpose of conveying meaning, and

    (e) that which we craft as monuments to be remembered.

    We have separated work and art because of artless industry. Prior, all craftsmanship was simply ‘art’.

    The root of “art” is ‘ar’ meaning ‘arm’.

    Produced by the arms (hands) of man.

    See?

    Now technically we still produce the following:

    Craft and Materials, Design and aesthetics, Meaning and Monument

    With these three measures all art can be compared.

    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-20 09:43:00 UTC