Klarinet Archive - Posting 000237.txt from 1998/07

From: Rick Lones <lones@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Re: Cultural Relativism (was Mozart and the V word)
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 1998 00:48:49 -0400

> Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 13:35:38 -0700
> From: "Sherry Katz" <slkatz@-----.com>
> Subject: Re: [kl] Cultural Relativism (was Mozart and the V word)
>
> The reason that a "fact" is not a "fact" is more than just the question of
> subjective vs. objective. Just what is "objective." If you say meat is
> contaminated - that is really a generalization - that the meat is invaded by
> a bacteria. But is that really contamination - not all bacteria is bad and
> all meat has bacteria. And what is the bacteria. Calling something a
> bacteria is also a generalization and subjective observation, as is calling
> something "meat". There is really no level that is finite enough that you
> can definitively say that it is a "fact".

This may be "correct" from some theoretical philosophical and/or
political points of view, but it seems like a fairly useless approach to
real life decisions and problems.

If someone were to say to you, "Don't eat that potato salad, we just
found out it's contaminated with salmonella!", would you pontificate
about the problem of knowledge and the conundrum of what a bacterium
really is as you chowed down?

> Another factor is that when it comes to playing music, no matter how much
> training you have, the music that comes from a particular individual is
> always an interpretation. That interpretation comes from the sum total of
> what that individual is. That's why you can "copy" someone else's style and
> still be uniquely original. No person playing in the twentieth century - no
> matter how much they use authentic instruments, choose an "authentic" hall,
> study the performance style of Mozart, or anything else is anything other
> than a person in the 20th century playing Mozart.

Another factor? I must have missed both the first factor and what it
was
supposedly a factor of.

> This may be cultural relativism, but it's also they way it is. Oh yeah, I
> graduated from Law School and passed the bar in a couple of states and even
> worked as a lawyer for 15 years or so. <g>

And I'm a software engineer. Is my legal opinion as good as yours,
relativistically speaking?

As far as I could tell, Leeson was pointing out that making music well
is not some fuzzy, mystical Grail, it's a craft which is learned
(paradoxically) by immersing oneself so deeply in the details that it
sometimes seems as if what you're doing has nothing to do with making
great music per se at all. I think this is a deep truth about the
nature of excellence in human endeavor, and a far cry from comforting,
trendy babble about relativism.

Regards,
-rick-

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