[NewMusic] More anti-carbon floop-print poopoganda

[Alicia Byer]

Well sure, I'm not saying I even really buy into the mentality of striving
for moral perfection (seductive as it is), I was just using 'integrity' as
short-hand for somehow being outside the economy. I'm guess I'm trying to
say that our entire society functions as a unit, and the individuals
involved have essentially very little choice as to whether or not to support
the whole shebang, because we have to function in the economy. Any dollar
bill we handle represents the ENTIRE economy, Bush included. All money is
blood money; Democracy as a mode of choice is a prop undermined by the
demands of the economy.

This is true of any society ever, yeah and I am lucky to be complaining
about this now rather than under a feudal lord. I just think that Americans
in particular have this delusion that we are enlightened, autonomous
individuals making "choices" and ignore the collective effect. I just wanted
to point out that we really don't have meaningful choices about whether or
not to participate in the US agenda unless we want to try to live in a cave,
which doesn't help anyway, and then we're not really 'in the US'. The idea
of "consumer choice" and the idea that not using myspace, buying a hybrid
car or having leftist bumper stickers will make a significant change or
bring about the revolution is in my mind, just an ILLUSION of power and
control feeding off the delusion of individuality. Maybe it makes the
individual feel better but that's just buying your salvation like at Church
or something. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person to feel this way.

 If anything, I think that personal consumer choices will make very little
change and that real political change comes from tons of people doing
something TOGETHER, and I have no idea how that will ever happen in the US
if we continue to believe that we are rugged individuals that can absolve
ourselves with the right individual actions.

-alicia

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 11:51 AM, Matthew Goodheart <
matthew at matthewgoodheart.com> wrote:

> > Alicia wrote:
> >  either you sell your soul to the machine little piece by piece, day
> > by day, or you try
> > to retain some integrity, which forces you to live on an extreme
> > fringe
> > that may warp you and is not always necessarily good for your
> > objectives
> > either.
> >
> > I'm not saying I have an answer, just pointing out that there doesn't
> > seem to be a convenient(tm) way to exist with any integrity in
> > America.
>
>
> I'm not sure that's how I see it. To begin with, this proposes that
> integrity is some kind of absolute, measurable thing, and a reasonable
> argument could be made that it's a pretty subjective measurement (such
> as Mother Theresa's acts vs. her personality. . . apparently
> personally she was a tyrant). Secondly, it implies that "fringing"
> equals moral integrity, which I think is a particularly specious
> cultural meme (and one that lines the pockets of Murdoch as well,
> actually.)
>
> Secondly, the lack of the ability to exist in some kind of absolute
> moral state is hardly particularly American, I think it's rather an
> essential nature of the human condition; there is always some systemic
> evil/good paradox; doesn't matter if it's American, the Roman Empire,
> fuedalism, the Khwe bushmen, or whatever. We tend to see our own
> modern problems as the paramount evil, but frankly I'd rather have to
> deal with trying to survive in the face of corporatism run amok than
> theocratic absolutism or tribal honor codes.
>
> Integrity, it seems to me, rather falls on how one strikes their
> balance. One cannot exist without participating in systems which
> create simultaneous positive and negative results.
>
> mg
>
> Matthew Goodheart
> composer ~ improviser ~ pianist
> matthew at matthewgoodheart.com
> http://matthewgoodheart.com
> http://myspace.com/matthewgoodheart
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
> NewMusic at music.mills.edu
> http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic
>