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In Reply to: Here's a 'must read' article... one that makes me somewhat sad... posted by Enchantment1.6s on April 8, 2007 at 15:52:13:
A number of respondents have "poo-pooed" the entire "experiment" as not "valid" because the conditions were not ideal for the enjoyment of beauty, but to me, that completely misses the point. I'm reminded of the great utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, who described in his "Autobiography" how, after a nervous breakdown, he found solace in the poetry of Wordsworth. But if you read this section of his "Autobiography" carefully, what you will see is that his approach to adding emotion to his stunted life was like putting a bandaid on a serious wound. Or, to quote my own paper on this, it's like coming home at the end of a long, hard day in the world and "popping open an ice cold can of Wordsworth" to enjoy in your Lay-z-boy in front of the tube. The point is that this approach to resolving the divide between reason and emotion, the material world and the inner world, is an artifice, and I would argue ultimately unfulfilling. Indeed, this is one of the central themes of the Romantic movement in literature.My point is that the notion of saving the enjoyment of beauty only to those times and places where it's convenient for us (e.g., when the lights are dimmed in our dedicated music rooms or in our high-priced music halls) is, to me, as pathetic as Mills' Wordsworth bandaid.
I was at that metro stop the morning Joshua Bell played the violin. From approximately 100 feet away, down an escalator in a cavernous space, I knew that what I was hearing was beautiful. I actually took out a single dollar bill before I even got on the escalator, well before I could see the artist, because I appreciated the beauty that I was hearing. But I am disappointed in myself for not welcoming this extraordinary opportunity more fully into my life that morning. I gave the artist a dollar, but I didn't stop. I am fairly ignorant with respect to classical music, so I don't know if I'm capable of appreciating the difference between a Joshua Bell playing a Strad, and a good student from George Mason University playing a new $3000 violin bought from Guitar Center, or wherever it is one buys a violin. But my sadness is that I missed an opportunity I may never have again in my lifetime, an opportunity to enrich my life experience, whether or not I ever subsequently discovered that it was Joshua Bell and a Stradivarius. So I am a little sad, but also chastened -- I hope to have re-learned an important lesson about being more open to these moments, whenever they may occur.
Follow Ups:
While I understand your feelings and, indeed, your apparently above-average aesthetic sensibility, I also still believe that the experiment only proved that busy people pre-programmed into their daily routine of commuting can easily ignore even the great Joshua Bell busking in diguise.Meanwhile, as others have commented, his results would likely have been immeasurably better with the very same group of people. Context WOULD have mattered. Had the same busker been plying his trade on a weekend afternoon in a sunny outdoor shopping plaza - he'd have fared much better. Same people, different context.
So it's not that anyone is "saving" the time to appreciate beauty ... it's that our minds tend to operate in modes of attention depending upon the context of our activity. It's simply that, I believe, when we give ourselves the opportunity to dismantle our daily armor, we are better able to perceive beauty more deeply.
It is not pathetic ... and it is. Pathetic (as meaning "pitifully inferior") doesn't seem to apply here, but rather - as derived from Pathos - something that moves us emotionally and incites a sympathetic or empathetic resonance in our souls, the term then seems best employed.
You did not miss an opportunity - no need to be sad. What you have gained is an opportunity - to discover the hidden beauty that we often ignore in our hastily armored rituals of daily "life." So, while I suspect the experiment itself proved nothing more than something we already knew - the mind of a busy person is usually armored to resist or ignore anything that doesn't have to do with the business of their busyness - it also teaches us that if we don't force ourselves out of certain programmed attention modes, we may be missing some truly wonderful experiences (as you so aptly noted).
Some say that the kingdom of God is here, one needs but only to notice.
Could be something to that ...
%22In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.%22 - Yogi Berra
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I actually agree with your observation as to people's behaviors. The fact that most people behave as they do, slipping into and out of their "daily armor", is actually part of the point. The argument is that modern culture has caused these behaviors, and that this is in fact very different from what was previously considered normal behavior. Nathanael West's novel "Miss Lonelyhearts" has a great take on this. One of its major themes has to do with the commercialization and commoditization of emotion, which, of course, has the ironic effect of robbing us of our ability to feel. To draw this out a little further, the more we don our daily armors, the deeper the divide grows between our work-a-day selves and our inner selves, that which some might call our souls. Over time, the inner self becomes one of our leisure activities, which we buy and sell like every other commodity intended to amuse us.Sorry for the pedantry. Obviously I don't think that our failure to appreciate a street musician has caused the end of civilization as we know it. But I think one can make a plausible argument that it is one of many indicia that our inner lives are under duress.
Regardless of what you think of that, however, it appears that you and I are in complete agreement that it is up to us, individually, to change our behaviors so that we can be more fully alive every day. And in that regard, I loved your point about the Kingdom of God.
Hi SLL,RE: Changing our behaviors
The socioeconomic "system" we survive in seems to impress upon most of us a state of anxiety when it concerns the otherwise mundane aspects of working to live, such that many of us are living to work. Snapping out of this can be pretty difficult.
My father, for example: A man who has worked his entire adult life as an electrical contractor, with a small stint back in the 1990's as the owner of a car body repair shop. In my 40 years alive as his son I can say with no fear of contradiction that he has taken a proper vacation twice: both times to Italy to visit family, once to also drive around the country and enjoy the sites away from Triste/Friuli. Even on short times away from home (long weekends, etc) he could not snap out of the mindset of work, and is unable to enjoy his down-time because of his habit of worrying about work. Now, at 65, he still works, still worries, but is finally considering slowing down a little.
Culturally I think that the American work-ethic is tremendous, among the highest in the world. I think, also, that our work-ethic has *become* our culture and that we seek to squeeze in only slivers of the nutrition needed for our souls. The iPod has fastfoodized our aesthetic culture, allowing us to transport with us some facsimile of the sounds and sites of "art" - and now with iPhone approaching (and I will admit, when it comes out, I'm getting one - the Mac Kool Aid has long ago been drunk by this cult denizen), our little portable entertainment compartment will be encroached upon by work (phone, calender, internet, blah blah blah).
But - as Korzybski teaches us - the map is not the territory, and the menu is not the meal. What we have replaced real art with seems to be just facsimiles of art or indicators of art, but not the actual thing. We do not get the actual experience, so the nourishment value is somewhat lower. I think this is why we strive to get our audio systems to perform with as much "lifelike" authenticity as possible ... the desire for the whole nourishment.
%22In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.%22 - Yogi Berra
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