THESIS XII
A Philosophical Review
Volume 26• Number 1Ó August, 2022
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Conceptions of Philosophy
There are many different conceptions of philosophy’s functions, methods, and purposes. At issue in this question of Plato’s philosophical views are two in particular that are dramatically distinct: philosophy as the accumulation of final, definite positions bolstered by reasoning on the one hand, and philosophy as permanently open-ended inquiry on the other. Plato’s choice of literary form, imaginary dialogue in which the author himself never speaks, and in which lines of reasoning pursued by its interlocutors are always subject to reconsideration, suggests he is in the latter camp.
My interlocutor cleverly pointed out that, if I were correct in my interpretation of Plato’s conception of philosophy as inquiry, this would surely count as a Platonic philosophical position, reflexively undermining the assertion that he had no positive teachings. (I used to hate it when students were smarter than I am, but perforce have grown used to it.) I replied, not unreasonably, that we could view this conception of philosophy as a sort of meta-commitment, itself subject to re-evaluation in principle, even if not in Plato’s own practice. Evidence that he did in fact subscribe to it as a meta-philosophical operating assumption comes from the apocryphal seventh letter, now thought by many scholars genuinely to represent Plato’s attitude toward his discipline. In it he declares that anyone who attempts to write a treatise about philosophy clearly fails to understand it. He goes on to say that there are no written works of his on the subject, and never will be.
No written works by Plato on philosophy? The student was incredulous. His dialogues practically founded the discipline of philosophy as such! I agreed that Plato wrote the dialogues, and that they are indeed close to the root of our discipline, though much of the discipline has grown a very long way from that root, and perhaps lost touch with it altogether. His point in the seventh letter seems to be that language, in its paradigmatic declarative, dogmatic role of articulating doctrines and barking orders, is anathema to philosophy. Hence the only honest way to write about it is in dialogues, which usually end in aporetic uncertainty, or otherwise undermine any claim they might have to being authoritative or final.
How, then, if Plato’s conception of philosophy is so robust, and his practice so powerfully consistent, could so many readers have attributed to him the views his various characters merely explore? This is a tough question. A conception of philosophy as the accumulation of answers (rather than a process of questioning) has proven very difficult to resist historically, and Plato’s characters are so alive in their pursuit of understanding that readers can become fascinated at the possibility of achieving it definitively. The written word is a dangerous thing, as several of the dialogues observe; warning unheeded, the dialogues themselves have often fallen victim to the deceptive sense of finality, of completeness, against which they warn.
Forms Again
But what about the Theory of Forms? he said. Did Plato believe it or didn’t he? I conceded that it’s unlikely we can determine what he thought personally of this famous approach to the architecture of knowing. On the evidence of many of the dialogues, he was clearly interested in working through its possibilities. Perhaps he adopted it for a time and later set it aside, as one conventional sequencing of his dialogues suggests (unless of course the sequence is mistaken, even distorted by scholars’ assumptions about his treatment of the Forms!). It is worth observing, though, that the opening scene of the dialogue Parmenides contains an extended and multi-faceted critique of the theory as devastating as any proposed since, so no simple-minded acceptance fits the evidence.
The student wasn’t satisfied, of course, and wanted to talk about anamnesis, recollection from past lives, in Meno, which the character Socrates proposes as an explanation for how we come to know things like Forms.
Oddly, it is not really an explanation for anything at all, and this bizarre fact acutely needs explaining. Alas, lunch was over and we both had to leave, delighted as I would have been to think it through with him. I couldn’t resist a parting shot, though, and reminded him that Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t a Christian, either.
Matt Silliman is Emeritus Professor of philosophy at MCLA
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Power, Resource, and Music
Benjamin Ross
Introduction
Human activity is inescapably shaped by politics. As highly social and interdependent animals, the process of evolution has occasioned in human beings a striking natural proclivity towards communication and cooperation. We are instinctually inclined to form social bonds, an adaptation developed in order to increase our likelihood of survival given our numerous biological disadvantages — the human cranium is so large that, in order to fit through the birth canal, we come into the world underdeveloped and defenseless; we lack organic protection from predators and the elements, such as fur or claws; we must be taught how to survive, and are seemingly incapable of existing in the wild without the production of tools. Out of necessity, our species has evolved to occupy a particular niche — that of an animal entirely dependent upon (and thus specialising in) communication (the dissemination and exchange of meaning) and cooperation (the use of communication to amplify potential for effecting change). From communication and cooperation emerge sociocultural systems, which are maintained and organized by means of power distribution.
Power
“Power” is a word used to describe the influence of action; it is a concept which I will attempt to shed light upon through the introduction of a neologism — thelemaxia — that I feel concisely captures an underlying idea of great significance. Thelemaxia is a portmanteau of the Greek words thelema (lit. “will”) and axia (lit. “value”). It refers to the valuation of volition — the perceptual-or-actual existential significance of one’s exertion of will. Thelemaxia is of great import on a perceptual level, and it is largely through its perceptual significance that it gains actual influence; conscious motivation to act is principally inspired by a belief in its significance, and thus it is perceptual thelemaxia which leads to externally significant effection. In other words, actual social influence is either hindered or augmented by perceived potential for social influence — actual power emerges to a great extent from the perceptual allocation of potential power. In this way, the popular narrative surrounding power distribution serves to actualise and perpetuate its conditions.
Power distribution within sociocultural systems is commonly referred to as “politics.” In accordance with the prior propositions of this essay, I define “politics” as socioculturally systemic thelemaxia — the construction and maintenance of sociocultural systems of volition-valuation.
Resource
Political structures, however, do not exist in a vacuum, uncaused and inexplicable. Power distribution (politics) is tightly intertwined with the distribution of resources (economics); correspondingly, thelemaxia (volition-valuation) and political influence can be understood through their respective interconnections with capital (resource-valuation) and economic influence. This is relationship is expressed in the bipartite “primacy thesis” of Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism:
“The first [aspect of the thesis] states that the nature of a
society’s economic structure is explained by the level of development of its
productive forces, and the second that the nature of the superstructure—the
political and legal institutions of society—is explained by the nature of the
economic structure.” (Wolff & Leopold, 2021)
Because the material existence of the human being is dependent upon the consumption of material resources, the valuation of material resources is entailed by the valuation of human existence. The essence of valuation consists in existential valuation, which arises in mutual dependence with resource valuation; therefore, a system of value quantification (money) serves to indirectly represent a measurement of existential value through its relationship with material resources. It is literally a measurement of human life, because it represents the distribution of the material resources and labour which sustain human life.
Within economic society, money is the medium through which thelemaxia is actualized. Its valuation as the very signifier of value renders it the arbiter of influence, a dispassionate metric by which the significance of human life and liberty is oppressively, unequally assessed.
Exertion of volition rests upon possession of resource, helplessly entangling thelemaxia and capital in a self-fulfilling feedback loop. To wield wealth is to wield power; it is to directly manipulate the will and spirit of others, to deprive others of their sense of influence and worth. It is to limit and dominate the horizons of fulfillment and self-actualization, establishing a system of subservience and hopelessness. Economic stratification is the backbone of empowerment and disempowerment — not merely actual forces, but perceptual, shaping the interior dimension of reality for everyone on a daily basis. It is this interplay between the perceptual and the actual which serves to produce and perpetuate these power dynamics.
Revolution, then, is tasked with overturning not only actual disempowerment, but perceptual disempowerment as well; i.e., in order to attain actual empowerment in an economic or political sense, the oppressed must be perceptually empowered in an existential sense — their thelemaxia must be affirmed. The proletariat must truly believe in the power of their revolution. This is a profound struggle in the face of the alienation, despondency, and tremendous suffering which systemic oppression engenders in its victims. A daunting challenge indeed.
Music
“Music” I will define in the context of this essay as “the sociocultural use of sound’s aesthetic qualities to express meaning, emotion, and/or values.” My primary claim is that this practice is inseparable from the systemic volition-valuation which shapes the distribution of power in society. I further claim that all art is political — and even all action, as it involves the exertion of will. I will be providing more particular reasoning in this essay, however, for my claim regarding the practice of music specifically.
Firstly, I assert that the intentionality and valuation of music itself directly echoes the valuation of volition — the ascription of existential significance to music (a product of willful action) is necessarily an affirmation of the musician’s thelemaxia, and thus equips the musician with political influence. To expand this statement, aesthetic valuation entails the empowerment of the artist, because it grants existential significance to the act of artistic creation and the meaning, emotion, and/or values which it expresses. It is very much the sociocultural valuation of art which gives it political power — its perceived importance, regardless of whether its valuation is positive or negative. Often, that which is negatively valued by a particular society or culture (taboo) is of great significance to its distribution of power, and is actually empowered by its negative valuation. An example of this might be the prohibitive treatment of poetry in the ideal city of Plato’s Republic; it is negatively valued rather than devalued, and is empowered by its description as a corruptive force.
As an interpretive form of raw expression, art is central to communication within society and culture, and has held this vital position throughout all of human history. Its sociocultural valuation is a given, which means that its political power is as well. The production of art is a revolutionary act because it serves to aesthetically appropriate the power of valuation, functioning as a vehicle through which the intensity of the subjective human experience is revealed.
Benjamin Ross is a student at MCLA
References
Adajian, Thomas, "The Definition of Art", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/art-definition/.
Farr, Arnold, "Herbert Marcuse", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/marcuse/.
Wolff, Jonathan and David Leopold, "Karl Marx", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/marx/.
-----------------------------------
Horse
settled onto the floor and the two slept.
Horse
awoke in a different and cloyingly brighter place. She gasped. She sighed, “Oh
right. I’m in Centaurworld now. That was just a memory.”
Despite
finding a new herd, Horse missed the simple routine of following Rider’s orders
instead of making her own decisions. Before, she didn’t worry about hurting
others despite participating in the war against the Minotaurs.
She
cringed.
When
she first arrived in Centaurworld, she had been so eager to get back into the
fight, to crush skulls under her hooves, but now things were different. Now she
was a moral agent independent of Rider’s judgment. She had done things in
Centaurworld completely beyond what she could have imagined back home. She
apologized to a leaf! The craziest part is that the leaf yelled at her until
she did. She would have stepped on the leaves without a second thought if it
weren’t for the fact that leaves in Centaurworld were not only sentient, but
sapient too.
She
was sapient herself now, Horse realized. She could talk, count, and sing. She
hadn’t tried to cultivate such abilities; she just found she had them when they
were useful. She resisted developing her moral compass any further, but slowly
Horse had learned moral thinking was invaluable for navigating Centaurworld.
She found herself considering the moral worth of those around her no matter how
close they were to her. She was a moral agent and it hurt.
When
she reunited with Rider, Horse asked her, “Did it hurt?”
Rider
was caught off guard. She replied, “What?”
Horse
clarified, “Did it hurt when you developed the capacity for moral thinking?”
Rider
considered her answer before responding, “I don’t know. I guess I never thought
about it. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have it. Maybe when I was a
very very small child, but there wasn’t a single moment when I went from
thinking amorally to thinking with right and wrong in mind. It happened
slowly.”
Horse
nodded. Though her own moral development happened more rapidly than Rider’s, it
didn’t happen all at once. It probably wasn’t over either. Horse doubted her
moral development would ever be complete.
Rider’s
laughter broke Horse from her musing. “Remember when we were little and we
stomped on bugs for fun?”
Horse
lowered her ears, embarrassed, “Yeah.”
Rider
continued, “That was totally messed up. I’d never do that now, but at least
bugs don’t feel pain.”
“What
makes you think they don’t?”
“Do
they? I didn’t know.”
“They
do, at least here in Centaurworld. They told me themselves.”
“But
those aren’t even bugs, they’re bug-centaurs. Everything seems to have sapience
here even if in our world they wouldn’t.”
“But
seriously, bugs do feel pain. According to the Smithsonian Magazine1, insects
can feel both acute and chronic pain.”
Rider
raised an eyebrow, “How did you have access to the Smithsonian Magazine?”
Horse
blinked, equally baffled, and raised her hooves up in a shrug. Horse coughed
into her hoof and asked, “Anyway, do you… ever feel bad about killing all those
Minotaurs?”
Rider’s
disgust was evident on her face. She said, “What? No! Of course not. They
destroyed our homes and killed our families!”
“They’re
still people.”
“No.
They’re not. They can’t reason like we can.”
“Just
a few months ago, I couldn’t reason like you. Would you have been glad to
sacrifice me if you had to?”
“No!
You were always different. You're my horse. I have special obligations to
you2.”
“What
if you saw another horse in danger? Would you help them?”
“Yes.”
“Then
it’s not your care for me that stops you from hurting me. It’s something else.”
“Something
else? Like what?”
“Like
… my sentience. I’m sapient now, but I’ve been sentient ever since I was born.
I could feel pain even then. Do you feel worse about crushing those bugs now
that you know they could feel it?”
“Yeah.
I had no idea. I didn’t realize things that couldn't scream could still feel
pain.”
“The
Minotaurs did scream, though. I remember that. I looked forward to it. Rider,
doesn’t that make me a bad person?”
“No.
I can’t hold you responsible for something you didn’t know was wrong. You
didn’t understand...” Rider realized what that entailed. “…but I did. I also
had my reasons! The Minotaurs, they hurt us. They took everything from us… but
if they didn’t understand and they could feel pain… then the least they
deserved was a painless death3.”
Horse
noticed Rider’s tears as soon as they pooled in her eyes. Horse gently wiped
them away.
Horse
asked again, “Did it hurt?”
Rider
smiled and said, “Yeah.”
Jay Dante is a student at MCLA
References
(1994) Jenni,
Kathie. “Dilemmas in Social Philosophy: Abortion and Animal Rights.” Social
Theory and Practice, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 59–83.
(2019) Daley,
Jason. “Study Finds Insects Can Experience Chronic Pain.” Smithsonian.com.
(2006) Silliman, Matthew R. Sentience and Sensibility. Parmenides Publishing.
-----------------------------------
Constructivism, Education, and Toleration
David Braden-Johnson
Once upon a time, a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. ---- Karl Marx, The German Ideology
Radical constructivism
(RC), the epistemological view that one can only know what one has individually
“constructed” in experience -- has perhaps received its greatest attention as a
theory with important implications for teaching and learning. Its founder, E.
von Glasersfeld, counts among the theory’s blessings "a profound change of
attitude toward the process of learning and the mental operations of
students," with the "most important discovery" being that the
student's responses "make sense in [his or her] subjectively constructed
world" (“Knowing without Metaphysics”).
Of course, RC is far
from unique in supposing that a student’s views, whether familiar or foreign to
others, often are perfectly consonant with and give important clues to the
subjectively constructed worldview of that student: such are the dictates of
common sense and sound pedagogy. Common sense and educational effectiveness are
no doubt good things, but hardly the stuff of an exciting or “radical” theory.
To that end, RC’s unhappy marriage of subjectivist perspectivalism (“everything
we say about the world is said by someone” and related truisms) and antirealism
(“I can’t say anything about the extra-subjective world” and related
solipsistic musings) weds von Glasersfeld’s commonplace “discovery” to a rather
dramatic claim: that our commonsensical commitment to an observer-independent
(“real,” “objective” or “naturally existing”) world that contains and
constrains all of our subjectively constructed worldviews is both wrongheaded
and inherently intolerant.
In some constructivist
circles, a certain degree of intolerance of anything remotely realist is
apparently a virtue. In our first exchange in the journal Cybernetics
and Human Knowing, von Glasersfeld counterposed his “questions” to my
"answers,” implying that a democratic and inquiring (and untruthed)
constructivism compares favorably with the (intolerant and truth-seeking) dogma
that is realism. At the close of the exchange, he wrote:
If
you feel like answering these questions, we might get closer to specifying the
differences between our views, rather than continue trying to prove the other
wrong (“Questions Rather Than Answers,” Cybernetics and Human
Knowing, vol. 1, 4).
Attempting to answer
these questions in the name of (anti-answer, anti-truth claim) toleration would
be foolish: no one is in principle or practice opposed to answers. Even in this
instance, von Glasersfeld’s long list of questions contained nearly as many
declarative sentences designed to provide evidence for his view and against
those, like mine, which might find fault with constructivism. The passage
from von Glasersfeld continues:
From
my constructivist point of view, as you know, problems always offer more than
one way to find a solution.
And from mine. Every
interesting intellectual problem has more than one solution path. As I wrote
that very same year in the journal Radical Teacher:
Mathematical
knowledge – like musical and artistic abilities – is not the property of
experts but the reward for concentrated individual and collective effort.
When learning is our goal, creativity is more important than quickness;
doing our best to find a solution is more important than getting it; and even
partial understanding is to be preferred over memorization.
And
Of
course, students themselves often remain unaware of their own abilities,
preferring to receive (an impossibility) rather than to create (in a
quasi-constructivist fashion) mathematical understanding (“Mathematics for
the Many,” Radical Teacher, 42.)
These comments were
designed to exhibit my sympathies for what von Glasersfeld labels “trivial
constructivism” (TC) – the prosaic view that all knowledge, in
contrast to its many objects, is a construct. My point is simply that
constructivism’s radicalization, or denial of knowledge’s extra-subjective
objects, is logically incompatible with commonplace assertions about
knowledge’s constructive character. Hence my suggestion, dating from this
original exchange, that progressive educators everywhere reject RC in favor of
CR, constructivist realism.
In sharp contrast to von
Glasersfeld’s often nuanced forays into the field of education, one of his
admirers, Dewey Dykstra, once penned a meandering obloquy against something
called the “elitist-realist paradigm.” In Dykstra’s view,
“elitist-realism” emerges as a “rationally and ethically” suspect paradigm
resting at the heart of standard instructional practices and secreting its
attendant, evidently evil, notions of “truth” and “reality.” Though
Dykstra does provide some welcome nudges in the direction of student-centered,
exploration- and/or misconception-based classroom practices, the unseemly view
Dykstra describes as “realist” is simply a position made of straw. I am
referring to his contribution to the premier issue of Constructivist
Foundations; a journal that, in its very mission statement, farcically
rejects in the name of a “less dogmatic and open approach,” contributions
critical of radical constructivist dogma. It is hardly surprising, then, to
find this bit of cake-and-eat-it-too thinking buried in the journal’s “scope
and aims” section:
Constructivist
approaches entertain an agnostic relationship with reality, which is considered
beyond our cognitive horizon; any reference to it should be refrained
from.
(We
are to forgive those references I assume.)
And, mimicking von
Glasersfeld, Dykstra embarrassingly warns would-be critics against attempting
to “prove RC wrong,” rather than to “understand” it, as, apparently, none of
his critics by definition ever will. Consider also Humberto Maturana, the
neurobiologist and creator, with Francisco Varela, of the theory of autopoiesis
(the self-organization of the living), who famously labors to persuade the rest
of us to reject all truth-claims on the basis of his truth-claim that each and
every claim is nothing other than an illegitimate "demand for
obedience":
Whenever
we want to compel somebody else to do something according to our wishes, and we
cannot or do not want to use brutal force, we offer what we claim is an
objective rational argument. We do this under the implicit or explicit
pretense that the other cannot refuse what our argument claims because its
validity as such rests on its reference to the real. We
also do so under the additional explicit or implicit claim that the real is universally
and objectively valid because it is independent of what we do, and once it is
indicated it cannot be denied ("Reality: The Search for Objectivity
or the Quest for a Compelling Argument?").
In
a similar fashion, Stuart Umpleby writes:
One
implication of the notion that each person constructs his or her own reality on
the basis of experience is that one should not impose one's views on
another person by force or coercion. Efforts to influence others should be
limited to conversation and persuasion, to comparing and interpreting
experiences. That is, given what we know about the biological basis of
knowledge, no one is justified in believing that he or she has a correct
understanding of the world and that others are wrong. Some views or theories
may be superior to others in that they fit a larger range of phenomena,
but no view can be shown to match "the way the world really
is." Hence, even the creators of highly regarded scientific knowledge
should be suitably humble about their achievements. (Target Article
86; Karl Jaspers forum.)
“One should not impose
one’s views on another person," not because of our prior commitment to
some ethical principle or other that forbids it, but because “each person
constructs his or her own reality”? Given “what we know” about the biology of
cognition, “no one is justified in believing that he or she knows or has the
“correct understanding of” anything? And the world (really) is such that “no
view can be shown to match the way the world really is”? How ought one, in the
name of toleration, reply to such a dizzying barrage of non sequiturs?
Acquiesce to its illogic and accept the invitation to proselytize in favor of
Maturana’s antinomous autopoiesis? Take refuge in the cozy, solipsistic
confines of one’s subjectively constructed bubble, all the while insisting that
one’s constructed “others” – especially those pesky “critical others” -- do the
same? Better simply to point out that RC’s very radicalism tragically subverts
that theory’s every claim to toleration. More formally, here is the Maturanian
and RC position I reject:
(1) To claim to know S is to be intolerant toward those who do not
claim to know S. (The “intolerant realist”)
(2) Not to claim to know S is to be tolerant toward those who do
or do not claim to know S. (The “tolerant constructivist”)
The problem is that
neither (1) nor (2) is at all plausible. Intolerance is not a property of
just any knowledge claim, but arises in connection with claims
to know some proposition S, where S is a defense or instance of intolerant
behavior. Moreover, those who oppose intolerance cannot but accept as
true claims that oppose intolerance, just as there are truth- and
reality-claims aplenty in Maturana’s missive against truth claims above. Truth
is a coefficient of toleration, notwithstanding these antirealist divagations.
The case against intolerant behavior or beliefs entails identifying and
attacking pro-persecution premises and not, as Maturana would have it,
knowledge in general. Notice, for example, that RC's claim that all
views are "equally legitimate" is, of course, just one view
among other supposedly equally legitimate views, including the intolerant view
that only one view is legitimate and the realist view that many, but not all,
views are legitimate. (I do not, of course, deny that I find RC – and not its
defenders or their legal and moral right to believe what they wish -- an
illegitimate, because self-reflexively inconsistent, epistemological
view.) In this sense, RC must remain silent about the relative merits of
its own view. What is worse, however, is that RC is again self-inconsistent,
for the view that all views are equally legitimate requires that we do what is
certainly impossible, namely, accept as equally legitimate the opposing
view that not all views are equally legitimate. A radically
constructivist view of toleration founded on the wholesale rejection of truth,
objectivity, and the real, provides no justification for persecution or
intolerance, nor any check upon them. Rather, it is specific convictions or
beliefs thought to be true -- in particular, the beliefs that persecution and
intolerance are wrong or should be avoided -- that render us tolerant toward
others and provide the theoretical space for a plurality of critical
discourses.
There can be no doubt
that RC has proven itself to be an immensely popular doctrine. The explanation
offered here is that most self-described constructivists are in fact committed
only to a trivial version (and, therefore, to a constructivist version of
realism), while the antirealist excesses simply go unnoticed. It is possible
that still others enjoy the sense of novelty and radicalism that often
accompanies the wholesale, yet flawed, rejection of tradition (in this case,
traditional realist epistemology and metaphysics). Of course, trivial
constructivist claims, together with the constructivist realism that
substantiates those claims, are entirely compatible with the progressive focus,
in educational theory, philosophy, and social life generally, on diverse
perspectives, versions, and ideas of the world.
David Braden-Johnson teaches philosophy at MCLA
-----------------------------------
Love, Playing God, and Musical Education
Amelia Simmons
School curriculums teach and require students to explore a variety of subjects they may not enjoy or find applicable to their life or passions. This is a good thing. How will we know what we enjoy without being exposed to it? The problem with teaching these variety of subjects is that they are not given equal attention. Subjects like English, Math, History (pretty exclusively U.S. history), and Science can be easily observed as taking priority. Those subjects are mandatory and remain mandatory throughout institutional learning. Those subjects are allotted large blocks of time, and succeeding in them results in concrete praise, and statewide competition. These subjects become the metric for a school’s success. Meanwhile subjects like art, and music, are often dismissed as "electives". Electives are given less time, less money, and less meaning, or power in judging a student’s success. Electives are often creative pursuits, in which measurements of understanding are less objective. This leads to these creative subjects being taught in ways that cater to measurable success. The creative subject this essay focuses on is music, and the ways people are often miseducated to miss out on the joy, community, and freedom music contains.
Music is creative and concrete, intuitive and rehearsed, free and formulaic, and naturally attractive to diverse kinds of learners and thinkers. Music education should be funded and taught in a way that reveals and benefits from its multi-faceted nature.
Most children are encouraged, or often forced, to pick up a musical instrument, yet most adults do not even touch the thing their chubby childhood hands fumbled over at the command of their instructor. Horror stories are horribly common. At any given moment, somewhere on the globe, prepubescent tears fall upon piano keys, a tuba hyperventilates, violins erupt, violently. Bleary-eyed in blind pursuit of perfection seek decomposing composer praise; the notes begin to swim in their horizontal prisons. Classical pieces are neglected, or else agonized over. Playing music becomes miserable, becomes a chore. Less than 50% of students who have received music education continue playing their instrument after the age of seventeen (Warner-Czyz, 2021). This is a massive failure on the part of musical education. Music is not despised. Music is a cherished, and unavoidable fixation of humankind. The problem with musical instruction is that it is far removed, not only from the student’s relationship with music, but also from what music joyously and intrinsically is.
Joy. I want to talk about joy, happiness, bliss, ecstasy, pleasure, and all their pulchritudinous synonyms. People are pleasure-seeking animals. People learn, do, and learn to do things because they are pleasurable. People learn the most pleasurable things involve work, discomfort, even pain. People are willing to sacrifice for pleasure, willing to sever themselves from what is predictable and easy, willing to grease their elbows, and put their respective noses to their respective grindstones. It is not an accident almost all songs are love songs. Love is pain and love is pleasure. Love is work and love is play. To love something you have to be a part of it, a hand in it, holding. Loving something goes beyond a singular autonomy, to love is to explore, and to know, and to know you will never know. Love must involve you, and love must be free of you. Love is a labor we willingly resign ourselves and our time to.
People love music. People seem unable to live without music, and yet so many young music lovers find themselves completely discouraged by their musical educations. One could argue this is because some people are lazier, or less musically inclined than others. Just as some students are more attracted to math and sciences while others are enamored by the humanities, only certain kinds of students are willing to dedicate themselves to practicing and playing music. Sure. Some students are more willing to spend an hour everyday rehearsing the song they have been forced to rehearse, in exactly the way they are supposed to rehearse it. Some students may love doing that, and other students may be more capable of doing things they don't love, but what about the other students? What about the pot lid cymbal crashers, and tightrope guitar string walkers thinking they've just invented the blues? To love is to invent. Work without invention, is to work for someone else, some real asshole. Taking the invention and creativity out of something people love will make them quit, and not because they are lazy, but because caring, and working is hard enough when it results in pleasure, and nearly impossible when it's devoid of it.
Music is so universally loved because it is more than one thing. It is a limitless sonic atmosphere. To play music is to play God striking lightning across a sea of possibility. Of course, a sea of possibility is vast and daunting, but we all want to shoot lighting out of our fingertips every once in a while. In most educational environments students are, understandably, taught they are not God. How could they be God when they did not invent the dense musical mathematics waiting for their input? Gods are supposed to be omnipotent, all knowing. Gods have big hands and hit no wrong notes. If the student is not God than the student must make do with God’s word, sprung from God’s staff, splattered across God’s sheet music. Maybe Chopin gets to be God, or Mozart, but not the lowly student, the student doesn't even get to worship at the church of their choice.
For musical education to be effective it must cater to its students the way music does. Of course, there is groundwork to be laid, scales to practice, and parts to memorize, but this is only a piece of musical creation, it is only a means to expression. People make art as a means of expressing something, and that something is often an extension of themselves, a feeling, something for which a map, or manual does not exist. If expression is not taught and exploration is not encouraged, faith is naturally lost.
Even if we know how music ought to be taught, and the benefits of teaching it a major barrier still exists, lack of funding. Musical instruments cost money, and can't exactly be passed down like textbooks, which are less fragile and don't get repeatedly blown into and aggressively fingered. The public school system's solution to this financial problem is the plastic parental nightmare of: The Recorder. The recorder is no one’s favorite instrument, but it is small, simple, and costs approx. seven dollars. I have distinct memories of elementary school recitals, fifty kids on risers, lips pressed to plastic in perfect unison. We sounded fine. We sounded like fifty kids playing recorders, or pretending to play recorders, because the only thing worse than a recorder symphony is a recorder cacophony. Actually, I think my only distinctive memory of those concerts is someone falling backwards off the highest riser. I don't even know what songs we played. The fact of the matter is cheap or unexpressive instruments further erode the joy of playing music.
Music programs do not receive proper funding because the importance of music is consistently undermined by educational metrics. It could be said that musical knowledge does not lend itself to other disciplines. Music can't inform English composition in the way mathematics are necessary to inform scientific research. Musical achievement is also difficult to measure, especially when taught with a more creative and holistic approach. Musical achievement very rarely leads to grants or extra funding to schools in the way that academic success does. Defending the value of music and creative exploration in a system built on defining and achieving "success" appears grim, but what if playing music can do something nothing else can? Playing music activates a brain more fully than any other activity, full on neural synapse mosh pit. Playing music benefits cognitive function as a whole and therefore cannot afford to be neglected. To shamelessly quote Albert Einstein, "I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music... I get most joy in life out of music."(Viney, 2016)
Amelia Simmons is a student at MCLA
References
Ruth N, Müllensiefen D (2021) Survival of musical activities. When do young people stop making music? PLoS ONE 16(11): e0259105.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259105.
Viney, Liam. “Good Vibrations: The Role of Music in Einstein's Thinking.” The Conversation, 3 Sept. 2020, https://theconversation.com/good-vibrations-the-role-of-music-in-einsteins-thinking-54725.
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The Immorality of Torture
Henry Box
According to the French philosopher Michel
Foucoult, torture is defined as the extraction of confessions by interrogation using the
systematic application of pain. This pain
can be physical or psychological. The
Geneva Convention, adopted first in 1929 and updated in 1949, became
international law and set a standard for humanitarian treatment during war. It
made torture illegal in all cases (Mayerfield). However, despite its universal
unlawfulness, torture continues to be justified by those in power as a moral
necessity and utilized, in most cases, without punishment of the offending
parties. The authorities who use torture claim it to be morally justified
because it provides them with information that saves lives. Torture is never
justifiable from a moral position because there is a great risk of an innocent
person being tortured and the information gathered from torture victims is
generally unreliable, negating any justification for undertaking such extreme
measures.
An example of the use of torture in recent
history is the story of Abu Zubaydah who was tortured by the CIA at a secret
prison in Thailand beginning in 2002. The US used the term “enhanced
interrogation techniques” in a thinly veiled attempt to disguise its actions.
The popular sentiment at the time, fearful after the attacks of September 11,
2001, was anxiousness and a desire to track down al-Qaeda leaders to prevent
future attacks. Politicians, military leaders, and intelligence organizations
had a “do whatever it takes” mentality to accomplish their goals. Zubaydah
describes being kept awake for as long as “two or three weeks.” He was put in
stress positions that included confinement in small boxes that made movement
impossible. He was also the first prisoner to be subjected to waterboarding
whereby a prisoner is strapped down to a table naked and has water poured over
their hooded mouth and nose while their head is in a lowered position. Zubaydah
suffered these inhumane treatments because the CIA believed him to be a top
al-Qaeda operative. Ironically, he was not. He was a jihadist, but he did not
have access to the master planning of the terrorist organization. He suffered
this torture over a four-year period (Rosenberg). This case gets to the heart
of the immorality of torture. The basis of the United States’ judicial system
recognizes that a person needs to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in
a court of law before being condemned to punishment. However, the use of
torture does not offer that process and thus is rife with the potential for
error. As in the case of Zubaydah, assumptions are made without a thorough
review of the evidence. There was no impartial judge or jury. The idea that the
prisoner has information that is critical and timely to extract inevitably
creates a situation where the captors are not able to rationally assess the
truth in that moment. The rush for what is deemed critical information makes it
impossible to ensure that the prisoner has the information that the captors
want.
It is only in hindsight that the intelligence
gathered during torture can be evaluated for truthfulness and usefulness. The
rush to torture combined with the time it takes to fully investigate the
information extracted during this process makes the information of little to no
value. It creates a perfect storm for mistakes to be made and, as in the case
of Zubaydah, for a prisoner to be held and tortured over a long period of time
without cause or even benefit to the torturing parties.
Proponents of torture believe that there is a moral
obligation to extract information by any means possible when it has the
potential to save lives (Johnson). However, history has shown that this
justification is unsound. To begin with, under extreme pain and duress,
prisoners will say anything to make the pain stop. This includes making up lies
to temporarily satisfy their tormentors. Courts have recognized this trap for
many years and routinely discount any evidence that has been gathered under
torture or the threat of torture. Zubaydah’s false confessions, extracted over
the course of his years long torture, was inhumane but also wasted valuable
time as operatives investigated his baseless claims made in an attempt to
temporarily halt his pain (Rosenberg). Torture rarely yields good information.
This happens even in less severe situations when police interrogation
techniques create anxiety enough to provoke false confessions by the
interviewee in an effort to end the psychological stress they are under. The
long historical precedent of innocent people being subjected to torture and the
poor information that is gathered from the technique obliterates any moral
justification that authorities offer to defend its use.
Henry Box is a student at MCLA
References
Braden-Johnson,
David, and Silliman, Matthew. “Tortured Ethics.” Social Philosophy Today, 2008.
Mayfield, Jamie. “In Defense of the Absolute
Prohibition of Torture.” Public Affairs Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2008): 109–28. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40441485[DBJ1] .
Rosenberg, Carol. “What the C.I.A.'s Torture Program Looked like to the Tortured.” The New York Times, December 4, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia torture-drawings.html
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Pulchritudinous
Nicole Braden-Johnson
"Sometimes I think someone upstairs saved me from being ordinary." -- Michel Petrucciani, French jazz pianist (1962-1999)
Perched precariously on the piano bench,
Is a short, square,
spectacled, sparsely haired man.
Beneath the skin,
his many-fractured bones ache,
And in his mind, he
knows he is inching toward the grave.
The monster looms
before him,
With its rows of
ebony and ivory teeth.
At four years old,
he took a hammer to the incredible beast—
Now bare-handed he tackles it with the same zest.
And from deep within all this pain and fear,
The
ever-constricting mortal coil,
Spills forth all
the feeling of life—the good, the hopeful,
The pulchritudinous.
Nicole Braden-Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Konstanz
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Patriots and Power
Aris Yu
The youth of today's America are so unpatriotic that
they've resorted to drastic means to express their distaste for their country;
they've gone so far as to leave unflattering comments on the U.S. Army's
Twitter. Somewhere along the line, the apathy that I know much of my generation
feels towards the constant barrage of history-making events we live through
turned to disdain for the country at the center of so much of it. It's
understandable: the banner of "patriotism" has been used to justify everything
from the war on Afghanistan (Hartig 2021) to spending millions of dollars on a
border wall (Roberts 2016). By definition, patriotism is nothing more or less
than "love for or devotion to one's own country" (Merriam-Webster),
which sounds harmless. However, through observing the actions of so-called
"patriots" throughout history, one can see that its definition has
been repeatedly perverted to justify acts like white nationalism, caging
immigrant children, and mass bombings of civilian areas. In all these cases,
the perpetrators took "patriotism" to mean something more along the
lines of "my country's interests are my interests, and they take
precedence over all else". These acts are, of course, inexcusable, but
they are what we have come to know patriotism for. This means that while a
moral and rational person might still choose to be a patriot, doing so requires
them to intentionally ignore the societal norm of "patriotism" and
forge their own path.
It should be made clear that the idea of patriotism, of putting one's own country first, is not in and of itself an issue. We need not abandon any prior commitments to our nations. To be a moral and rational human being, one must of course care about those outside of one's own country, but to prioritize one thing over another is not necessarily to dismiss the other as unworthy of attention. Otherwise, to give one example, working as, for example, a teacher, would mean a lack of concern for human life because you could instead be going to medical school. Similarly, patriotism—to support one's own country most, in accordance with both one's ability and one's emotional investment—need not mean a lack of concern for other nations. It is obviously easier to make change when one is familiar with what they intend to change, meaning that the way to best make a difference might well be to focus on the immediately relevant.
This raises the question of how an innocuous concept could be used to rationalize so much harm. Examining the things that people attempt to justify this way, the primary issue quickly becomes clear: these people take "patriotism" to mean the protection of one's ideal of the country, rather than the country as it already is. This new "patriotism" is then used to commit atrocities against groups seen as "other", like immigrants or minorities, because in the perpetrator's eyes they are not part of the country. In doing so, they make a choice to place their idea of their country over the real people who live in it. To declare that the protection of one's country as it "should be" is more important than the lives of the people who do not fit into that ideal is callous at best and morally bankrupt at worst. If patriotism is not itself bad but "patriotism" as most use it is, then it stands to reason that the issue is with society's version of the term. Knowing this lends credence to the idea of needing to separate oneself from the word as it is now commonly defined.
Given all the baggage that patriotism carries, though, one might ask: why bother? It would be easy to dismiss "patriotism" as corrupt beyond repair. While an individual can hold onto their patriotic pride and not be a worse person for it, it is impossible for such a concept to go uncorrupted as it spreads further. Patriotism has always devolved into nationalism wherever it goes; the reprehensible acts mentioned in the initial argument are, after all, by no means localized to the States. It would be reasonable to expect a renewal of patriotism to end the same way it always does. To hold onto the idea as something noble, to push it forward without being wary of the consequences, is to refuse to accept the inevitability of others tainting it once again. I would agree that to continue to push forward with patriotism in the current political climate is to further fuel the fires of toxic nationalism. However, it is shortsighted to blame this on patriotism itself. To say that patriotism is "corrupted" to form these destructive ideas is to concede that it has been twisted along the way; ergo, the original idea of patriotism is not the problem. The only way to stop this corruption from seeping in once more is to teach patriotism better. The arguments against patriotism do little good if they never reach those who need to hear them. Ensuring that those who preach the ideal know its shortcomings and pass them on will snuff out the seed of toxicity before it has the chance to bloom.
As for why one would choose to cling to the idea considering all the trouble it has brought thus far, the answer is simple: patriotism is power. After all, those atrocities were fueled by something. Even those deeds I consider reprehensible came from a genuine concern for the world, and I believe that can be used. If patriotism is cleansed of its poison, what is left is only the intense desire to see one's country at its best. In my experience, passion like that is what brings humans to want change in the first place. Holding onto patriotism is certainly dangerous, and I have no intention of denying that. Still, if encouraging people to adapt their national pride with the times rather than destroy it has a chance to help usher in a better future, that's a risk I'm willing to take in the name of hope.
Aris Yu is a student at MCLA
References
Hartig,
Hannah, and Carroll Doherty. “Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11.”
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2 Sep. 2021, https://pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/02/two-decades-later-the-enduring-legacy-of-9-11/.
“Patriotism.”
Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster,
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/patriotism.
Roberts,
Dan, and Rory Carroll. “Trump Pledges to Promote American 'Patriotism' in
Schools as President.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Ltd., 1 Sept.
2016,
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/01/donald-trump-american-patriotism-schools-immigration.
U.S. Army
[@USArmy]. "Ready. Willing. Able. @FortBenning turns civilians into
Infantry and Armor Soldiers ready to fight and win our nation's wars as leaders
in the #USArmy." Twitter, 16 April
2022, https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1515455914656026626.
