Unpopular Opinions

[Ken B]

Online shopping is based on several important technologies and standards: transactional databases, reliable communication protocols like TCP/IP and HTML, encryption, object oriented programming, and machine virtualization.



At this point you might wonder why I imagine that this would be an unpopular opinion. But it is clear that many here think something can only be "based on" one thing. So it qualifies.

[Karl Henning]

There is much in the full statement which practically invites the digression;  but all of jazz, blues, R&B, funk, hip-hop and everything else, is fundamentally based on ... diatonic functional harmony is a heckuva broad brush, and problematic in its own right.

To keep to my own point:  all of jazz / is fundamentally based on / diatonic functional harmony can be reasonably disputed.

[Karl Henning]

I don't see why everyone here, every man jack of us, cannot simply agree that all of is erroneous, and would be easily emended.  Instead, the complaint is that those objecting are fallaciously taking the blogger to mean "based on only one thing."

[Ken B]

Just a note that the blogger wrote all jazz.

Actually not. He actually said
"The entirety of black commercial pop music (I use that term in its most generic sense to encompass all song-based popular/commercial music), including all of jazz, blues, R&B, funk, hip-hop and everything else, ..." So he did not say "all jazz" he said "all of [a list]". The "all of" refers to the contents of the list, not the items in the list. Example: You decide to post "They're crooks, all of Trump, his cabinet, his family,..."  you are not calling Trump's left foot a crook, nor does his left foot need to be a crook for your statement to be true; if I could prove his left foot had an alibi at the time it wouldn't make you wrong.

[Ken B]

There is much in the full statement which practically invites the digression;  but all of jazz, blues, R&B, funk, hip-hop and everything else, is fundamentally based on ... diatonic functional harmony is a heckuva broad brush, and problematic in its own right.

To keep to my own point:  all of jazz / is fundamentally based on / diatonic functional harmony can be reasonably disputed.

This is a misreading Karl; see my previous comment. But as to your remark whether this can be reasonably disputed. It can. Can it be discussed without cries of "white supremacist" is the more interesting question.

[Karl Henning]

Gulda once told Erroll Garner that his music reminded him to Debussy... to which Garner replied "who's that guy?" 

May be pertinent, or may not:  less than 100% of the people who are familiar with the phrase "star-crossed lovers" know that it was written by Shakespeare.

Heck, less than 100% of the people who are familiar with the phrase "Romeo and Juliet" know that it was written by Shakespeare 

[Ken B]

May be pertinent, or may not:  less than 100% of the people who are familiar with the phrase "star-crossed lovers" know that it was written by Shakespeare.

Heck, less than 100% of the people who are familiar with the phrase "Romeo and Juliet" know that it was written by Shakespeare 

Yes. Garner heard music, went to concerts, worked with composers who would know Debussy etc. Once an influence is abroad in the culture you can't really tell exactly where it went. And in turn you can't really know everyone who influenced Debussy.  There was a similar story about Brian Wilson being told he sounded like Faure.

[Brian]

Also, white people did not invent the common triads, nor do they have a monopoly on them. A song doesn't "owe" anything to white culture just because it has a C major chord in it. Africans use that chord too.

This reminds me of the argument a GMGer - I can't remember who exactly but I think he disappeared years ago - used to make about religion, that because Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, all the western world's ideas about being kind to other people came from Christianity and we should all acknowledge our debt to Christianity for some of the most basic moral precepts which underlie every society.

[Karl Henning]

This reminds me of the argument a GMGer - I can't remember who exactly but I think he disappeared years ago - used to make about religion, that because Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, all the western world's ideas about being kind to other people came from Christianity and we should all acknowledge our debt to Christianity for some of the most basic moral precepts which underlie every society.

A flawed argument, indeed 

[Jo498]

Actually most of the pacifist stuff from the Sermon on the Mount are not at all precepts that underlie "every society". In praxis it often obviously did not underlie Christendom either (although being continuously present in the holy book and official teaching).

But Nietzsche who knew a little bit about history did not single out Judaeo-Christian morality and its secularized successors without a reason as (in his view) toxic, wimpy and snivelling "slave morality". This would not have made any sense if this was the common universal morality and while Nietzsche's main foil was a "homeric" heroic ethics one could look into other cultures and would very often find similarly ruthless "warrior codes" that are not at all like either christianity (or modern Western morals).
Even Plato and the Stoics who were in many ways predecessors of christian-style morality would have been puzzled or even disgusted at the strong focus on pity for the weak that is expressed in the gospels.

[Karl Henning]

Actually most of the pacifist stuff from the Sermon on the Mount are not at all precepts that underlie "every society". In praxis it often obviously did not underlie Christendom either (although being continuously present in the holy book and official teaching).

Few American Evangelicals in our day take Blessed are the meek at all seriously, that is evident 

[Mahlerian]

Sure and Brahms' chords would sound out of place in Haydn.  Are you arguing that chord functions cease to exist if you place a 7th or 9th on the final tonic chord in a cadence?

I think you're mistaking what I'm saying.  I'm not saying that the chords don't operate in a specific way in jazz harmony, I'm saying that jazz harmony is separate from, while related to, the system of relationships, hierarchies, and so forth that is called functional harmony.  Theorists will point to chords acting as dominants, pre-dominants, and tonics in music by Hindemith, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, but the fact that such analyses can be made doesn't make the harmony common practice.

When Schoenberg said that consonance and dissonance were different in degree, not kind, this was truly radical, because it flew in the face of centuries of theory and practice.  A few critics at the time called him insane for saying it.  If someone ends a composition with a seventh chord (and not just one!), containing a tritone, and considers it a resolved tonic (there are some dominant endings in common practice), then surely there is some fundamental difference in the way function is understood.

That people today don't see Schoenberg's pronouncement as radical at all indicates a complete sea change in both thought and practice since then.

I understand that jazz theorists use the term differently and to describe other things, but in classical theory, functional harmony means the harmonic practice of the common practice period, with all of its rules.

All of this is beside the point, as amw pointed out, because triads are not solely the creation of Europe, and nor are diatonic scales.  As I've been saying, the only thing that is, is the tonal harmony of the common practice, and it's simply wrong to say that that is the underpinning of popular music today or jazz.

[Florestan]

Actually most of the pacifist stuff from the Sermon on the Mount are not at all precepts that underlie "every society". In praxis it often obviously did not underlie Christendom either (although being continuously present in the holy book and official teaching).

But Nietzsche who knew a little bit about history did not single out Judaeo-Christian morality and its secularized successors without a reason as (in his view) toxic, wimpy and snivelling "slave morality". This would not have made any sense if this was the common universal morality and while Nietzsche's main foil was a "homeric" heroic ethics one could look into other cultures and would very often find similarly ruthless "warrior codes" that are not at all like either christianity (or modern Western morals).
Even Plato and the Stoics who were in many ways predecessors of christian-style morality would have been puzzled or even disgusted at the strong focus on pity for the weak that is expressed in the gospels.

Amen!

[Florestan]

A flawed argument, indeed 

In think it was David Ross (whom I dearly miss) who made that argument, and it is much less flawed than it might appear at first sight. Jo's post is a very good start for pondering it.

[Jo498]

Of course not all other societies were warrior/caste/robber societies. (Although the homeric heroics culture so beloved by Nietzsche clearly was. When Ulysses meets Agamemnon's shade at the brink of the underworld the former is surprised to see the victor of Troy among the shades of the dead and asks if he met his misfortune while sacking a city or stealing the herds of some other petty ruler... this would have been bad luck but par for the course and not really dishonorable. Instead it was far worse: Agamemnon was murdered by his wife and her lover...)

Confucius has the Golden Rule (but note that the gospel always goes further than the Golden Rule, the latter was common rabbinic teaching at that time), there might be some buddhist teachings that also stress pity.

But all karmic religions tend to have a pitiless aspect (for obvious reasons) and a lot of this is very common human thinking. There is one story in the gospels where the bystanders ask about a lame man whether this person had sinned or maybe his parents, so the common attitude was that sickness was often a punishment for sin, even in Judaism. Jesus denies the whole idea of karmic connection and heals the guy.

[Florestan]

Of course not all other societies were warrior/caste/robber societies. (Although the homeric heroics culture so beloved by Nietzsche clearly was. When Ulysses meets Agamennon at the brink of the underworld the former is surprised to see the victor of Troy among the shades of the dead and asks if he met his misfortune while sacking a city or stealing the herds of some other petty ruler... this would have been bad luck but par for the course and not really dishonorable. Instead it was far worse: Agamemnon was murdered by his wife and her lover...)

Confucius has the Golden Rule (but note that the gospel always goes further than the Golden Rule, the latter was common rabbinic teaching at that time), there might be some buddhist teachings that also stress pity.

But all karmic religions tend to have a pitiless aspect (for obvious reasons) and a lot of this is very common human thinking. There is one story in the gospels where the bystanders ask about a lame man whether this person had sinned or maybe his parents, so the common attitude was that sickness was often a punishment for sin, even in Judaism. Jesus denies the whole idea of karmic connection and heals the guy.

Hear, hear!

[Karl Henning]

In think it was David Ross (whom I dearly miss) who made that argument, and it is much less flawed than it might appear at first sight.

I don't quite see how we can rationally argue that in our day, all the Western world's ideas about being kind to other people came from Christianity, only partly because of all the syncretism.  And while it is tempting to cast the point back to an earlier age, I am not sure we find a point in history where the argument is clean.  There is a kind of Triumphalism at work in there.  And our much-esteemed David Ross also (IIRC) endorsed the (as I am afraid I see it) jingoistically triumphalist religion which is American Exceptionalism.

All the Western world's ideas about being kind?  All?

[amw]

I think that the whole "cultural appropriation" thing is foolish. (Obviously the culture of origin is not expropriated by the appropriation. When the Vikings switched from runes to the latin alphabet the people using the latin alphabet did not lose the use of that alphabet because now the Norse used it as well.) It is done all the time, mostly mutually beneficial and almost always an estimation of the part of culture that was "appropriated". I mean, all the "traditional" Jazz instruments are of European origin, not from Africa or the Southern US. Should the Belgians sue for cultural appropriation because Charlie Parker played Saxophone?

I also think that it is an abuse of the term "white supremacy" if someone points out the de facto world domination of Western ("white") culture.
(Of course many origins of "Western" culture stem from the Levante or generally the Mediterranean and those guys were not milky white like anglosaxons.)
The latter is just a fact whereas "white supremacy" is supposed to mean that someone in a diverse culture should have special privileges simply by being white or even worse "master race" stuff.

Cultural appropriation is not generally a problem; it is simply rude and disrespectful when what is being appropriated is a cultural feature that is or was discouraged or punished in the appropriated-from. For example a white person in Germany wearing a keffiyeh or burqa, which they can do without negative consequences, whereas a middle eastern person wearing one will be seen as potentially a terrorist or encounter harassment etc. That's basically rubbing in your privilege and it's not a very nice thing to do. But if you want to be not very nice, I guess it's your call.

And it's not white supremacy to point out that white people have waged a successful war of conquest against the remainder of the world's cultures, no. But by implying that white culture is superior to other cultures, or responsible for the success of things that come from other cultures, one is basically supporting white supremacy. Also claiming all commercial jazz, rock and pop music to be "black" is a common axiom presented by white supremacists, although they usually use it to explain why music is terrible now and promoting the degeneration of society and they only listen to music with a pure European pedigree, such as singing the entirety of Das Ring der Nibelungen at the start of every KKK meeting, as they were forced to do until country music was invented in the 1950s.

[Ken B]

All the Western world's ideas about being kind?  All?

I'm going to pound you on this. The "all" you make such a fuss of is part of Brian's hostile characterization. It is not part of any argument made or quoted here. No-one actually made that claim from what I have seen presented here.

[amw]

Of course not all other societies were warrior/caste/robber societies. (Although the homeric heroics culture so beloved by Nietzsche clearly was. When Ulysses meets Agamennon at the brink of the underworld the former is surprised to see the victor of Troy among the shades of the dead and asks if he met his misfortune while sacking a city or stealing the herds of some other petty ruler... this would have been bad luck but par for the course and not really dishonorable. Instead it was far worse: Agamemnon was murdered by his wife and her lover...)

Confucius has the Golden Rule (but note that the gospel always goes further than the Golden Rule, the latter was common rabbinic teaching at that time), there might be some buddhist teachings that also stress pity.

But all karmic religions tend to have a pitiless aspect (for obvious reasons) and a lot of this is very common human thinking. There is one story in the gospels where the bystanders ask about a lame man whether this person had sinned or maybe his parents, so the common attitude was that sickness was often a punishment for sin, even in Judaism. Jesus denies the whole idea of karmic connection and heals the guy.

The karmic attitude isn't particularly supported by Judaism either -- Job is ours and its message is basically that when bad shit happens, sometimes it's to totally good people for reasons beyond human comprehension (at least if we take God's answer to Job seriously, or more seriously than the story about Satan taking over God's throne for a day which might just be allegorical anyway). There is a lot of smiting one's enemies in Judaism, although they sometimes deserved it, but also a thread of belief that to save one life is to save an entire world, and plenty of teachings stressing empathy and peace. Of course we're talking multiple books spanning many centuries written by scholars of various persuasions who may have been influenced by other religious and philosophical traditions of their day.

Most Native American and Aboriginal Australian belief systems also seem to be fairly big on kindness, connection and communitarianism, but I'm hardly an expert and I know there are a few that aren't. Buddhism and Taoism are also pretty heavily focused on suffering and the reduction of it.