> The discussion in The Republic maintains that would-be citizens of the ideal republic should be exposed to music that cultivates their good qualities, and prohibited from listening to the bad. Much modern music creates agitation and aggression. I’ll listen to serene and balanced songs like Gregorian chant and neoclassical
> The etching, and even the pressing and collating of pages were difficult processes but somehow the artists outdid us, we who can so easily create, modify and distribute images. Goodbye cartoonish web images, let me be immersed in nature and see uninhibited art instead.
The author should be careful not to confuse a desire for focus and on the lasting rather than the ephemeral with a fetishisation of the past, of the "authentic", and of the "natural". It is all too tempting to step from use of survivorship bias as a tool, as a filter, into a false belief in the superiority of things past.
> the (false?) feeling of connectedness through a glowing rectangle
This particularly gets to me. I know people who would not be here on this earth today if not for the ability to connect with others through the internet. If you feel like disconnecting makes your life more fulfilling, great! But don't project that onto others by saying that what makes their life meaningful is false. (At least he had the self-awareness to throw in a question-mark.)
Modes of communication are just that, different modes. No less intrinsically superior or inferior to one another, merely different. Literature is just words but it has great potency in communication. It can transform one's mind, it can lead to new vistas of understanding, perception, reason, and thought. It can serve as a bridge of understanding between individuals, cultures, eras, religions. It can evoke the full gamut of emotion and feeling, it can reveal the numinous, the extraordinary, the sublime, and the awe-inspiring. Many religions put their roots in literary works precisely because of the incredible potency such works can have. But the written word is hardly unique, many other forms of art can be just as potent and rich, such as music, painting, sculpture, motion pictures, and even teevee. Even blogs, twitter, instagram, youtube, or vine.
When we look at new sources of communication we often judge them based on their average use case, but this ignores the fact that the majority of nearly any form of communication is dominated by the routine and banal. When we judge literature we judge it based on its greatest successes and ignore the mountain of mediocrity underneath the pinnacle, we would be wise to do the same elsewhere. It's easy to denigrate little glowing rectangles, but it's easy to denigrate scribbles on sheets of pressed wood pulp too. But both can serve as the foundation for meaningful connections between individuals, both can provide windows into the transcendent and the numinous, and both can have profoundly transformative impacts on emotions, lives, cognition, values, perspective, everything.
I predict that this will go full circular again in a few years, and we're back to the "leave meatspace, enter the cyber world" over-enthusiasm again. And then a few years after it's vinyl/Thoreau again etc.
Everyone knows that the musical expressions of 14th-16th century white European men cultivate the most appealing qualities and are the least ephemeral.
I'm sure there's an 18th century biological treatise establishing that.
I know you're trying to be edgy, but it's actually objective fact that 14th century music still being enjoyed by millions in the 21st century is among the least ephemeral music.
I think his point is that we have no idea how long people will enjoy any of the music created today, nor can we really say how much people will be listening to classical music 100 years from now. Music from the 14th century is certainly more battle-tested, but there's nothing objectively "least ephemeral" about it that means it can't, or shouldn't, be bested.
> The etching, and even the pressing and collating of pages were difficult processes but somehow the artists outdid us, we who can so easily create, modify and distribute images. Goodbye cartoonish web images, let me be immersed in nature and see uninhibited art instead.
The author should be careful not to confuse a desire for focus and on the lasting rather than the ephemeral with a fetishisation of the past, of the "authentic", and of the "natural". It is all too tempting to step from use of survivorship bias as a tool, as a filter, into a false belief in the superiority of things past.
> the (false?) feeling of connectedness through a glowing rectangle
This particularly gets to me. I know people who would not be here on this earth today if not for the ability to connect with others through the internet. If you feel like disconnecting makes your life more fulfilling, great! But don't project that onto others by saying that what makes their life meaningful is false. (At least he had the self-awareness to throw in a question-mark.)