Am 04.09.2010 11:49, schrieb Patrick Shirkey:
On Thu, September 2, 2010 6:41 am, Hartmut Noack wrote:
Am 02.09.2010 08:47, schrieb david:
Hartmut Noack wrote:
Atrocities and genocide are no inventions of the modern times: in
reverse! In modern times most cultures have learned to name things
atrocities, that were known as "perfectly normal" or even "heroic
deeds" in ancient times.
What Rome did to Carthage after conquering it would certainly be
considered genocide by modern UN thought. Slaughter the population,
enslave the few survivors, transport them away from their country.
Demolish the city-state. Sow the soil with salt so it couldn't be used
to supply food. Rome did not intend Carthage to ever rise again.
And the Roman general who destroyed Carthage was rewarded very highly.
He cited Homer in greek on the smoking ruins and he was given the name
Africanus to honor him.
But the romans usually avoided genocide. They where out to conquer
peoples to make them pay taxes.
There are many other candidates though, from the Saxons of the 4th
century to the Mongol storm of the 12th to the Nazis here in Germany in
the beginning of the 20ths century.
All *before* mind-crushing popmusic with "subliminal messages" emerged
to drive everyone "mad with sex and violence".
We have always had pop music. Doesn't it give you a cause for concern that
we were able to create so much damage in the past without the modern mass
media system brain washing us into complicity?
NO! Rock/pop music with all its wildness, its unpredictability and its
absence of formal written rules is a cultural sign for more humanity,
more freedom and more self-awareness.
That may have been the case when rock was considered a new form of art and
it was not at that point considered commercially viable enough to warrant
the interests and adoption of the mass media. It was in effect rebelling
against the system by making it viable to feel and express sexual and
violent emotion.
My concern is that we have now come to a point where the producers making
pop music are crafting works that explicitly aim to perpetuate a frame of
mind that is beneficial to the ongoing production of their artwork (bank
accounts) at the expense of disabling or hobbling the "positive"
progression of the listener.
In this I can agree. Only that I do not see any "plan" to corrupt
pop/rock culture. It is system-immanent: mass media tends to pick the
most mediocre out of the available spectrum. Many producers are corrupt
enough to listen to a top-20 format radio and to say: "So this is the
way you do it! I'll cast a good-looking singer tomorrow and produce
something that fits here and then let the money rush in!". But nobody
says: "I will produce music that makes people distracted and thoughtless
and then I try to find some NWO-people to pay me for that service."
IMO music and associated media that defines it's listeners as only
interested in the emotions stimulated by sexual/violent imagery is given a
priority on the airwaves over more intelligent options. I find it to be a
detrimental and callous attack on the listener. It also makes me seriously
concerned for the potential of society to improve when we are constantly
being told what to think by the mass media who can only come up with the
imagery of sex and violence as a sustainable business model.
I also would love to see the kind of media programms you mention here to
disappear.
But who would be the one to decide who is good and progressive and who
is bad and destructive?
I have lived for about 23 years in a society that had people in charge
to make such decisions and I can assure you: it does not work and it is
worse than the recent situation.
It is a self fulfilling system whereby the people who are prepared to
participate in it are the ones reaping the rewards offered and the ones
who are not are sidelined and kept out of the discourse even though the
ideas they have to offer are just as valid and potentially more powerful
than the status quo.
By maintaining and accepting a system where the callous, manipulative and
selfish are the ones who get rewarded we are allowing for the future
generations to be subjected to the same abuse.
Hence combating this abuse with carefully crafted subversive pop using the
same production techniques with the explicit aim of rendering the effect
of the more callous music null and void or at least significantly
decreasing the effect seems like a reasonable use of an artists time.
Commercial corruption of art cannot be combated with art that is
politically corrupted.
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