Progressive Music as Objective Music

Silverbeard McStarr wrote: To be a real objectivist I'd say you'd have to give up religion. Religion is anything but objectivist, it's subjective and while religion can be a perfectly fine way to live your life, it's not objective. I am an objectivist myself, and while I'd love for people to get involved with the philosophy, I really don't get how religious people can so proudly call themselves objectivists.

If you'd "love" for people to become objectivists, then you can't be one, since that's subjective.

If any self-styled philosopher's ideas are posted here, in the spirit of "take 'm or leave 'm", and if they are associated in a rather haphazard manner with what we call "Progressive Music" (an extremely broad church!) surely it is acceptable to criticise them.

But I don't want to sound nasty - I really adore ProgressiveAttic's icon.

By the way, does anyone study literature here? If you do, you will know that, throughout the centuries, all authors you can think of have been subjected to criticism of a Christian, post-Christian, humanist, rationalist, sentimentalist, romantic, idealist, Marxist, feminist, anti-communist, modernist, postmodernist, post-colonialist, neo-historicist [etc. etc.] nature. You could easily do the same to "Progressive Music". To ALL its different strands. You could make your career that way - bonne chance!

Ayn Rand is an awful fiction writer.

Otherwise, Objectivism ftw.

And I'm a Christian.

How do you like that? 

MovingPictures07 wrote: keiser willhelm wrote: MovingPictures07 wrote: People on this forum are so misinformed about Rand's ideology. You should have never posted this thread; you'll mainly get sh*t responses. Most people around here take any chance they get to bash it; I've since stopped even mentioning it. have you studied it at all? il grant you enjoying her books but her philosophy is LOGICALLY wrong - objectively flawed.  I've read all 4 of her books 5+ times, and also many of her other writings. Just because you don't get it doesn't mean it's objectively flawed. Don't insult other people simply because you disagree with something, thanks. It makes you look like a jackass.

4 or 5 times each!
That must have taken years.

Just because i "dont get it" ? Now who's insulting who. ive read atlas shrugged in my own time and most of fountainhead as well as "The Virtue of Selfishness", the later of which ive STUDIED. in depth. and i wasnt just disagreeing with her philosophy, i was telling you that its inherantly flawed and her arguments dont make logical sense, which is ironic seeing as she tauted rationality as the highest order of existence (the only order in fact)

 i had no intention of insulting you, your post was just condescending enough to warrant a response. I just got uptight when you implied that everyone on this forum who disagreed with ayn rand was misinformed and eager to spew sh*t from their frothing, foaming mouths. my bad, i guess that makes me a jackass.

I Agree with Everything said in this tread.

debrewguy wrote: funny coincidence  ... my buddy was telling me about how much pot he used to smoke in college and discuss Philosophy until the pizza delivery man arrived

funny coincidence  ... my buddy was telling me about how much pot he used to smoke in college and discuss Philosophy until the pizza delivery man arrived 

I would agree that prog is indeed objective to a certain extent, and i know where your coming from because I have read a few of Rand's books. the thing with prog though is that not all of the bands are objective. I would never consider Dream Theater or Marillion particularly objective bands. However, bands like Rush, Zappa and King Crimson were all very, very objective.  I say this because they wanted to revolutionize music, and they did so by going about it their own way.  It works the same way in a lot of other genres. For example, in rap, I would consider Run DMC and Tupac to both be onjective, because they revoluitionized music with their own beliefs, regardless of how much I hate rap they were damn influential. Whereas musicians like Marillion or 50 cent just sort of refurbished other peoples concepts. My point being that their are indeed a lot of objective progressive bands, their is objectivity in a lot of other genres as well, it exists in basically all of them except for pop.

Going back to the start with Progressive Attic to show some of the downfalls of objective thinking:

1. Reason is an objective absolute? Sorry, no. Facts are not facts... they are probabilities. Hypothetical situation: You grow seven identical sunflowers in seven identical boxes in identical sunlight. After they grow, you record how they grow, the speed of growth and various facts about the plants.

Here's the clincher: You still can't say you know for a fact how a sunflower grows.

You could do the exact same test a billion times and you still couldn't give any solid facts about the growth of the sunflowers. What you can give is probabilities, and that's all you can give. Law of Gravity? Probability. Thermodynamics? Probability. There is no such thing as facts, because to prove a fact would require an infinite number of identical tests, and I don't have that amount of sunflower seeds on me at this time.

2. 'Reason is man's only means of perceiving reality, his only source of knowledge...' Close, but not quite. Actually, perception is man's only means of perceiving reality. As proven above, reason is an empty idea. Man has no reason, save the reason he creates himself.

You talk as if reason was some universal force, sweeping across humanity to help rational people make good choices. That's the biggest load of bullocks I've ever heard.

3. Yeah, I got nothing. This is basically true on a biological scale, where self-preservation is only overpowered by the need to reproduce. However, sociologically, self preservation and happiness is not a higher purpose than anything else: there is no higher purpose, no reason for us to do one thing instead of the other.

Stick that in your objective pipe and smoke it.

4. Capitalism will never be the ideal political-economic system. I don't know what is, but laissez-faire or not, it's not the big C.

Unfortunately, now that we've started the capital rocking bull, it's not ever gonna stop. It's like someone who is immortal, but still gets older. It just keeps getting worse and worse, but you know it's never gonna die.

Why does everyone, even proggers, think that pretensiousness or elitism is a bad thing? It's no better or worse than being simplistic and base. It's just different. Christ, this pisses me off.

Honestly, you probably are really well-read and have excellent thinking, but this just sounds like me when I first read Alan Moore... just some guy who thinks the universe has opened up to them. Then again, i did to a very similar thread.

rdtprog wrote: Progressive music is "super subjective".

Precisely.

Proletariat wrote: Also i feel that it would be pop rather than prog that would dominate in your "perfect" capitalist world

Yeah. It would rely on tried and true methods, and that's not prog (no, not even prog-by-numbers bands)

Slartibartfast wrote:   Noam Chomsky or Orwell anyone?

Doesn't Chomsky hate subjectivity? He always came across as a real right-winger... maybe I'm just taking this off him getting angry at post-modernists.

The point about pop having less value objectively than prog... yes this is true completely. It is less.... everything!

rdtprog wrote: Everyone fall into the same trap of putting subjectivism over objectivism.

That's because it is over objectivism.

rdtprog wrote: Something that brings everyone together despite everyone taste and opinions.

No. That is called a 'super-cultural artifact' in post-modernism. It's something that pervades all cultural groups because it is an intregal part of their cultural construct. Everyone may love Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rahpsody, but all that shows is that they are pervading cultural boundaries(I could explain how but it would take me a long time), not that they are 'universally loved'. Ask if you really want this explained more.


In an objective world, we could think of ourselves as looking for 'heightened music' much in the vein of philosophers trying to define poetry (what is poetry? we can only say 'heightened language') than we can say that mainstream music is less heightened - musically, emotionally, mentally. It would then be easy to prove this to everyone, and we could overcome the pathetic attempt at music that we call 'The Top 40' and all would be good in the world.
Oh and the classic Genesis lineup would announce this kickass tour and then afterwards go into the studios and record seven albums simultaneously and destroy cities with their magnitude.

Sadly, we do not live in an objectivist world. If there's one point teenage pop-lovers have taken away from post-modernism (and they repeat it until you want to goddamn kill them) it's 'Well, that's just your opinion!'

And they're right. It is just my subjective opinion. We are all socially constructed by our environment, so how can we say our choices are subjectively better than anyone elses? We can't, not in a subjective world where there is no truth, no facts. Musical depth? Can't prove anything. All music, whether it's a 200-strong orchestral suite or a thirteen-year old stumming on an acoustic, all the figures in the world couldn't say one is better than the other.

So here's a new tact to take. If someone says to you (and they will) 'All music is equal, man!' Say back to them, 'You can say all music is equal, but then you have to say not all music is given equal chance.' Because prog isn't, and this is the only holding card we've got. Mainstream shies away from music with too much complexity or depth, and we must demand that this music is given equal publicity with all the cheap, cookie-cutter music.

P.S. Moving Pictures07 - Rage, man. Rage all you want. But it doesn't mean that Rand's philosophy is any less objective and therefore LOGICALLY and PHILOSOPHICALLY wrong. You brought it upon yourself with 'sh*t responses'. Yet again someone carried away in their own 'mystic snake oil'.

I can't prove subjectivity to anyone. But that's the whole goddamn point.

fuxi wrote: 1. Moving Pictures, you react to rational criticism (of Rand's ideas etc.) in a highly emotional manner. .

Edited by Alberto Muñoz - November 06 2009 at 17:16