Wider and narrower senses of "progressive rock"

rogerthat wrote: HackettFan wrote: rogerthat wrote: Well, they are not necessarily very political, at least not all the time but then not a lot of prog rock bands were either. It was just that their worldview identified more readily with the left. In the case of Rush, more with the right. The gist of 2112 is basically that the world only exists to discourage you the uber talented, ultra genius musician and you can 'show' them blah blah blah. The focus on the individual in itself is a right wing outlook. Leftism can be statist or voluntary but it always focuses on the needs of society at large and the have nots in particular. Hence the emphasis on redistribution. We have different ideas about what the left is then. I've never known cultural conservatives in this country to be focused on the individual, just the opposite. They're all about conformity. (I mean, just look at the American Right Wing's stance on gay marriage and the Right's reasons for opposing it. The strained idea that it will affect marriage for society at large). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for instance, though it runs afoul of both the left and right, is more highly understood and supported by the left. To me, leftism is quite the opposite, all about protection of the individual. But I understand these things are understood differently elsewhere. Yes, cultural conservatives uphold conformity but this argument is often masked and presented in the form of protecting individual liberty.  The liberty, that is, of the discriminator to discriminate because it is his 'choice'.  This is why libertarianism is so right wing in America; that's not the case elsewhere.

I agree totally. Individualism is part of the American narrative and self-image, so they do try to claim it. Hypocrites.

rogerthat wrote: Because conservatives who only care about economic freedom also get called libertarians in America.  So a white may argue it is his choice to turn blacks away and not associate with them.

In principle libertarians hold that freedom ends at the point where it denies someone else freedom, but like you say, they are normally not very vigilant about it except where it concerns economic issues. They also promote smaller local governments as the ultimate arbiter when disputes about individual rights arise even though they have been historically very poor at protecting those rights.

rogerthat wrote:  The social progressive on the other hand recognises the rights of those individuals who are not of HIS race or religion etc too.  Specifically the social progressive is much more interested in protecting the rights of the minority, be it the poor or blacks or homosexuals.  The reason is the social progressive is much more interested in creating an ideal society while the conservative finds nothing wrong with society as it exists and dislikes what he sees as the progressive's intrusion upon HIS individual liberties.  Of course, the dynamics of this have changed possibly to some extent in the aftermath of 9/11 where the right sees all forms of policing as necessary to protect the nation from terrorists while it's up to the left to argue in favour of individual liberty.  I was referring more to the classic right-left split from a libertarian point of view.  Most rock musicians are at least slightly libertarian and unlikely to be statist right a la Hitler.  Of course there are exceptions to every rule.

e.g. Frank Zappa's early Freak movement. I've always considered this liberal in nature, but that was part of a lively dispute I was a party to in another thread.

rogerthat wrote: HackettFan wrote: There's an alternative allegory in the lyrics, by the way. Maples are a tree that is highly symbolic of Canada. The United States are the big and powerful oaks... Interesting argument and one I had not thought of.  So how does it reconcile with the union thing?  Was there some economic/trade pact between the two at the time?  I thought NAFTA happened in Clinton's term.

The trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and NAFTA. I think the "union" was a hypothetical/fictional thing for the song, articulated with past tense while cast in the future, as sci-fi typically does. Actually, I've often wondered whether the Oaks were full members of the union spoken of. The lyric only says that the Maples formed a union.

Well, sorry all for getting off topic sort of, but some of the same difficulties arise in defining political Left and Right as arise in defining Prog/Progressive Rock. Lame? Possibly.

Atavachron wrote: rogerthat wrote: <span style="line-height: 18.2000007629395px;"> HackettFan wrote: </span>There's an alternative allegory in the lyrics, by the way. Maples are a tree that is highly symbolic of Canada. The United States are the big and powerful oaks... Interesting argument and one I had not thought of.  So how does it reconcile with the union thing?  Was there some economic/trade pact between the two at the time?  I thought NAFTA happened in Clinton's term. These are over-interpretations.  As Peart says, it was an image, not a message.   Non-artists seem unable to grasp the fact that the vast majority of material that is interpreted to mean something more does not.

Another way of interpreting the lyric is that it's portraying anti-colonialism gone awry. Now I'm not proposing that Neil Peart was specifically thinking about Moamar Kadafi or anything, but I think that all of these interpretations are valid and part of a cluster of impressions (or images, as you say). I think the ultimate meaning perhaps is that the Oaks were genuinely exploitive and the Maples had a capacity to over-react, so make of that what you will. How'd I do with that?

Atavachron wrote: You did fine, except for everything.   Interpretation very rarely exists except in the mind of anyone who chooses to do so.   Metaphoric translation is not only most often wrong, but misses the point entirely, if there is a point at all.

Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.

BTW, "misses the point" is a metaphor.

Edited by HackettFan - August 03 2015 at 02:42

HackettFan wrote: Atavachron wrote: You did fine, except for everything.   Interpretation very rarely exists except in the mind of anyone who chooses to do so.   Metaphoric translation is not only most often wrong, but misses the point entirely, if there is a point at all. Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. BTW, "misses the point" is a metaphor.

No, it's just missing the point.   Metaphors We Live By looks like an interesting book but it was written by two scholars, not artists.   Further, its thesis seems to imply that metaphor is more a product of the self and mind, rather than symbolism that is carefully placed by an author.

Atavachron wrote: HackettFan wrote: Atavachron wrote: You did fine, except for everything.   Interpretation very rarely exists except in the mind of anyone who chooses to do so.   Metaphoric translation is not only most often wrong, but misses the point entirely, if there is a point at all. Metaphors We Live By, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. BTW, "misses the point" is a metaphor. No, it's just missing the point.   Metaphors We Live By looks like an interesting book but it was written by two scholars, not artists.   Further, its thesis seems to imply that metaphor is more a product of the self and mind, rather than symbolism that is carefully placed by an author.

"Miss the point" is indeed a metaphor. There is nothing in the statement actually traveling on a trajectory. It is a metaphor plain and simple.

The book is about a cognitive approach to meaning. True it is not directed specifically to artistic use, the book is about semantics in general. Semantics in general applies to poetry and everything else that uses language. Yes, people can get metaphorical interpretations wrong. They can also get them right. I see no indication people are any worse of with metaphors than they are with any other type of inference.

Atavachron wrote: 'Missing the point' may be a linguistic substitution but that's not the same as adding cloaked meaning into literature or songwriting.   More often than not, we see or hear what we think they're trying to tell us, instead of forgetting about all that nonsense and enjoying the craft, the friggin' C R A F T, of whatever medium ~ film, cooking, cock&ball torture, it doesn't matter ~ is being presented.

Well, I actually think it is the same in every way except perhaps the degree of conventionality. However, the Canadian flag provides a highly conventional source for the Maple as symbolic of Canada. So, the idea that the metaphor is too cloaked to be a reasonable interpretation is not greatly compelling to me. We also use and negotiate cloaked meanings in everyday communication (I will go into a specific example only if requested), so I don't see any difference in kind there. Anyway...

Atavachron wrote: Forget what you thought Twain or Poe or Hemingway meant, just dig the artistry.   You know why guys like Hemingway went off to do all those crazy things?   It wasn't to be macho, it was to get material.   Not symbols or messages or morales.   Just material.

Well, I'm concerned about what authors mean, but I'll give you this. I don't think there's much to gained in terms of learning about author or artist themselves from studying their work, as literature studies often attempts to do.

Atavachron wrote: 'Missing the point' may be a linguistic substitution but that's not the same as adding cloaked meaning into literature or songwriting.   More often than not, we see or hear what we think they're trying to tell us, instead of forgetting about all that nonsense and enjoying the craft, the friggin' C R A F T, of whatever medium ~ film, cooking, cock&ball torture, it doesn't matter ~ is being presented. Forget what you thought Twain or Poe or Hemingway meant, just dig the artistry.   You know why guys like Hemingway went off to do all those crazy things?   It wasn't to be macho, it was to get material.   Not symbols or messages or morales.   Just material.

Yeah, really. If Rush can be perceived as having anything to do with the left, it must be from a North American prism where Democrats = far left. Certainly any number of leftist thinkers or even politicians down here would be up in arms at the words of Trees. Hell they would probably make Mr Modi a bit uncomfortable.

I have read the lyrics of Spirit of Radio obviously and I interpret that as more typical of the libertarian suspicion of Big Business.  Right doesn't automatically mean pro-business or pro-nuclear bombs; most economic libertarians for example aren't pro-business, rather pro-free markets.   But a strong bias towards individual freedom does suggest rightwing to me.  Or...if somebody is actually able to be a fan of Ayn Rand and still profess to be leftist then they have got it all mixed up.

rogerthat wrote: I have read the lyrics of Spirit of Radio obviously and I interpret that as more typical of the libertarian suspicion of Big Business.  Right doesn't automatically mean pro-business or pro-nuclear bombs; most economic libertarians for example aren't pro-business, rather pro-free markets.   But a strong bias towards individual freedom does suggest rightwing to me.  Or...if somebody is actually able to be a fan of Ayn Rand and still profess to be leftist then they have got it all mixed up.

It's the left that is suspicious of big business in the US. Libertarianism as I've known it here has never had any suspicion of big business at all, just suspicion of government. Historically, they were even in favor of monopolies under the banner of survival of the fittest. Restoring free markets by breaking up monopolies was the position of William Jennings Bryan back in the earliest part of recognizable leftism in the US. I think, to be fair, modern libertarians may have moved away from acceptance of monopolies, though. While the left here certainly takes collectivism into consideration, the measure of it is always whether it can be done without sacrificing individual freedom. Support for the arts or public news programs would be one example. Democrats are in favor of supportive funding but are also strongly against government influencing content. Republicans are just the opposite on both accounts. The notion that we've got it all mixed up, though, actually has some appeal to me. I think I can accept that. I'm a little concerned that we've gotten to talking about a Canadian band through a US lens. Canada is typically quite to the left of the US.