Cultural relativism

I think my avoidance of music is down to the late 1990s when I worked in a factory that made cassette tapes, CDs and DVDs...


Part of the job included Quality Control and some weeks I had to listen 8 hours a day, 5 days a week non-stop to the current in-music like Vengaboys and Sash...


I haven't been interested in music since then. I like movie soundtracks though, particularly classical sounding stuff like John Williams etc... but music in general has absolutely no meaning to me.

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There's a big difference between someone's preference and an opinion expressed as fact. If you prefer Beiber over the Beatles, that's your right. If you don't like the Beatles, that's your right. There's no argument there. When you say the Beatles suck, there's an argument. And you lose.

And reality isn't shaped by the person who debates most effectively.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

Of course opinions are subjective, but then there's things that just aren't true!

On second thought, it's impossible. xD

Rodent is a musical expert. The Beatles had no competitors in the 60's. xD

The reason why people listen to popular music and watch mainstream cinema is because they are ignorant. Okay, that sounds like an accuse, but the thing is most people don't care about all the hidden gems and lesser known alternatives. They just let the TV/cinema/radio create their tastes and they are okay with this. There could be many reasons for this. Some people aren't that much into music nor film and just have a very little doses of them from popular sources. They don't mind listening to mainstream, because they don't mind listening to music at all. Then there's another group, the "it's popular so it has to be good"/"it's not popular so it has to be bad" one. It's a little worse than the previous one, because although ignorance is bliss, incorrect argument is incorrect. Of course, I could go on, how these people that are into mainstream limit themselves, but who cares...

There's that saying "We have equal rights, but my rights are righter" or however it goes in English. All people are entitled to their own opinion and generally all art is equal, but still there are certain believes, conventions etc. Some movies are believed to be masterpieces in certain circles and if a person with different taste shows up he gets scolded. Like, imagine a person who loves low American comedy films like American Pie and hates Werckmeister Harmonies, Taxi Driver, Casablanca (), Citizen Kane... (put whatever your favourite movie is, wait, it's American Pie? You dummy!). Yeah, it should be alright, because everyone can have their own taste and opinion, but hell, isn't he perceived as inferior and unfamiliar with >>true<< art. The point I'm making is that as far as tolerance goes there are certain norms. But what if norms are mainstream? Then go for norms of cool people who watch obscure films and listen to Tuvan throat singing and laugh out loud and these stupids who are not aware of your cathartic metaphysical transcendental experiences with art. Hell, because you are so great and patrician and they are plebs. Hell, that's a very common mindset among obscure music lovers on the Internet.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

It's not there fault that studios and such constantly spurn out crap knowing that it will make money. They are just brainwashed by the media and profit motivated world. It's only through education and exploration that any ignorance they have can be eradicated, but who's going to provide this education or ignorance? Not mainstream media. People will grow more knowledgeable about things if they are open to it and if they are curious, but it's ultimately yourself who has to be willing in the first place. There's no problem in people liking mainstream or 'bad' stuff, they're the ones who could be missing out

It's harder to argue for moral relativism than for cultural relativism, but they are based on the same premise of the individual's right to free will against what is universally true. A cultural relativist tells you that cannibalism or human sacrifice may be morally justified in the name of tradition, and western civilizations have no "right" to criticize a foreign tribe's way of living. They confuse "rights" with "moral obligations". Similarly for those who argue that they have the right to enjoy certain kinds of mainstream music, but refuse to consider the nature or content of what they are listening to, they have failed to make that distinction. It's like if I tell you to "think for yourself" and you reply "stop telling me what to think". That's the knee-jerk reaction you get when you try to get these people to explain themselves why they feel a particular form of art is superior to another, or why they prefer one to the other.

Seanc, that's a darn good point about art reflecting one's self. That's why one person can see magic in a movie's story and another doesn't see it at all. A good example is the movie, The Big Blue. Read the reviews about it and some claim it changed their lives. However I give that movie 2 thumbs down.

"In just 2 posts I have proved a point. I gave what could be considered an opinion... everyone freaked and tried their best to invalidate it.".... Rodent, that's actually a good test and a way to make a point. Yes, some opinions are so dangerous as they go against the main stream, they are labeled heresy.

BTW the Beatles do rule!

I think the idea that opinions are technically unfalsifiable is simultaneously a) true and b) a cop out. If someone says that to literally only establish the principle, it's fine. But if it's being used to avoid accounting for an opinion (and that's virtually always the context in which it's used), then it's not. Because while your opinion can't be proved wrong, it can be proved that you arrived at it with very little consideration and/or knowledge, and that's usually the real point of contention when someone questions it. It's kind of like defending an irrational act by saying "it's a free country."

All that said, and understanding that the story from the OP is just a jumping off point, I think Justin Timberlake is very talented. Which is not, I would note, the same thing as saying his music is particularly deep or meaningful.

I agree Yoda. Saying art is subjective can be a cop out even though it is true. I also dont think all art serves the same purpose. What I do think is true is that people engage with it for different reasons. When I get irritated is when people think that their favorite things are somehow superior to anothers especially when those people are engaging for different reasons.

I guess my simpleton way of putting it is that I don't think all smart people like smart art nor all dumb people dumb art. Unfortunately I think a lot of people frame the conversation that way.

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Letterboxd

The Nazis were right in exterminating the Jews and Slavs.

The Jews were the oppressive class of foreigners (hundreds of thousands which were on German soil!) who exploited the hard labor of the German workers to satisfy their greedy desire for profits. For example, in the 1920's and 1930's the German people suffered greatly under the hands of the Jews (directly and indirectly: for example, the US was controlled by the Jews who caused the Great Depression in 1929 and made unemployment rates in Germany reach 40% by 1932, is one of the most obvious symptoms). The Jews live in a secluded sub-society and do not take part in mainstream society (for instance, they only marry among themselves) even though they may be inhabiting a country for hundreds of years they never integrate themselves into that country only taking it as their host and acting like a parasite class of people whose relations were restricted to maximum monetary extraction from the "host" society. They had no real purpose for European society and showed their scorn over the people that tilted the soil that feed them and that sawed the clothing that they weared, by not integrating themselves into society but by etching their income "working" as money sharks who only exploited the working people by loaning capital. As Marx said, capital only serves as a mechanism to exploit the workers from their labor value by paying each worker only the labor value of the means of subsistence required to sustain the labor class. The Jews, by making themselves the owners of capital, become not only a class isolated from mainstream society in terms of customs and leisurely convivence but also maintained themselves by ruthlessly exploiting the white christian workers of western civilization. To end this oppression of the German working class by these evildoers and to make this evil race pay for their crimes, extermination was the only right answer: this race had no right to exist.



What about the Slavs? Historical change always meant the substitution of one inferior race by one superior race. In the North American continent the superior Europeans (mostly of pan-Germanic descent of course) colonized the continent and transformed it into a glorious extension of Europa by exterminating the sub-human natives whose miserable existence spread through this glorious continent like a cancer. In the same way, to preserve the means of subsistence of the German workers (who constituted the most numerous and most gallant of all European races) and to expand civilization into the Russian steppes, a "substitution" of the currently inhabiting sub-human slavs by the highly evolved German peoples was in order.

Unhappily, a tragedy happened as the Jews turned their puppets, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin as means to stop progress. Neither the Jews cared about the slavs at all as all their puppetry in WW2 still meant the deaths of tens of millions of slavs, however, what they truly wanted was the destruction of a unified Europa under a government who wasn't a puppet of their race, as nothing would be more fearful to these evil monsters.


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Whoa I am going to puke.......

well i don't think anybody's gonna top that.

No? I give 3 better from before 1960:

Haydn


Mahler


Mendelssohn


In terms of popular music Jazz, Blues and Rock were already well developed by the mid 1960's when The Beatles were beginning to have any influence.

I don't think the analogy is valid. That would be true for ancient Mesopotamian music perhaps.

I personally never got into the Beatles, once I tried: I listened to all their famous albums several times to try to perceive their greatness. Their songs are catchy and they obviously were very talented given how much they influenced other artists but I personally think that the main reason for their fame and influence was that they managed to produce perfectly mediocre music: music that perfectly nailed the middle of the quality distribution of music, being not very good, sophisticated or audacious but also not bad, too simplistic and very plain. They exactly hit in the middle and so managed to fit the tastes of the largest number of people simultaneously.

Guap really knows when and how to jump into a "conversation".

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
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I just think it's funny how people are still jumping on my statement... even after I explained I was just making an example rather than being serious.

Interestingly that my defense of nazism did not drawn any attention at all.

Well, go to any Bieber concert and show the girls there a couple Beatles songs. They certainly will prefer Bieber's songs. There are millions of people who would find Bieber better than The Beatles. Given the subjectivity of art there is little that one can add to this fact: Bieber is better for certain groups of people while for other groups of people, the Beatles are better.

Making an example contradicts being serious? How?

Ok Mark. I already had a small talk with you regarding the fact that I made you angry. I see that you are still at "war" with me, for reasons that I actually do not understand. You shouldn't interpret everything I post as personal attacks against you. I have no desire to cultivate our enmity but it appears that it is impossible.

We seen your post.

For the record you were making an analogy? And not actual believing that pro Nazi drivel?

Must remember not to make innocent comments about Guap's posts.

@Guap:

The arguments of the Nazis were all very easy to demolish rationally. That's why they needed an extremely repressive, fascist authority to shut up the sceptics. They didn't properly explain or defend their opinion (and you didn't either, because it's a defense full of untruths, illogical holes and absurd implications). The Nazis just destroyed everyone who dared speaking out against them and they used flat propaganda, based on lies, to keep the public on their side.

What they did falls nowhere under the category of "properly explaining".

History proved me right and the original Nazi opinion has now been reduced to one of the most invaluable opinions of all time.

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Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019