May I commend you as a great story teller. You really capture the details. Beginnings and endings are abstract, except maybe birth and death. The human instrument produces a feeling as its comment on all perception. It is actually a reaction to the difference between your held “should-be’s”, and your perception. If it turns out as expected, I feel great, tension released. If not, tension increased. That tension is the alarm signal that I am supposed to do something about.
Even if I prove incapable of changing the alarm signal, (I could just change my “should-be”, but NO NEVER THAT), then I can employ the abstraction of closure. Whew, that was a tough one, but at least it is finished. If it comes again, I’ll start to run. I have a whole catalog of no-go-zones.
Beginnings and endings make for a comfortable life. I’m not saying, that if we get used to things, they do not pass into the background. And even then, as you said, they live on through their consequences.
See if this is a good metaphor:
I have dabbled into studying the history of western music, which is called the 12-tone scale. Why do these 12 tones sound like music to us, when really sound is a continuous band of frequency change, with 1,000’s of tones?? It is really a complete mystery to me? I have no idea. Bernstein at a 6-minute Harvard lecture, explains the overtones in music, which develop from the octave, to the 5th, then the 4th overtone, then the 3rd, then the triad, (tonal music) which includes the tonic and the dominate, making it diatonic.
It becomes Diatonicism balanced with Chromaticism equally powerful and presumable contradictory pathways. Please take a moment to watch these 6 minutes, which will help me get to my point. Don’t bother to try to absorb it.
Just know that there are intervals in music. In this lecture we are listening to chords made up of these intervals, but it is the same with a violin or a woodwind. Instead of cords, you have a sequence, but the feeling produced is the same. My point is music is not the notes, but it is the jump in the frequency, which is the interval between the notes. All the Intervals elicit a different feeling. The two major categories of feelings are “closure”, and “openness”, (the lack of closure), which is rest, and movement, or the start or jumping off point for further movement.
If a piece or a passage ends on an openness, you will feel uneasy. That open interval is supposed to be further movement, but where do we go from here? If every passage ends on a closure-interval, it is boring and still-born. Music is a mixture between opening and closing. At the first performance of the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky in May of 1913, there was an audience riot outside. It is the most notorious scandal in music history. Some wanted to “string him up” on a lamppost, Outrage, or others wanted at least have him arrested. They demanded the grace and elegance of traditional music, like the more conventional Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Your two stories illustrate this perfectly. Although, I don’t think anyone wanted to “string-up” Frieren? Are audiences more forgiving or more sophisticated. When Frieren started on her “after-journeys, maybe those impatient people started thinking about their shopping list; not to waste any more time??
History takes time, energy, and interest – all finite resources. I swear that I never cared about history for decades and decades. I used the excuse that so much has changed by now, that 20-30 years ago they couldn’t possibly know what is relevant in this age. But now reading it, I see that so little has changed even from 500, and 1,000 years ago. Wow, that is really disheartening.
Some seek safety by being “authority dependent. It is they who flock to validate. I can’t change them about that. Best if you can learn to sit with complexity, (without undue anxiety). At this point I would never think of shutting complexity out, because it is really no big deal. In some of my posts I try to say that contradiction (complexity) is the result of a narrow context. I can’t be sure that is always the case, but I find it where I do. And we will always have limited belief systems.
Judging from comments by others, Frieren getting more high-strung would have been bad for the final product. It might have appealed to a different taste, sure, but it wouldn't have been as interesting.
Little changing over the course of history is a little disheartening, but also pretty comforting. To know that in many cases, someone somewhere and somewhen has been through what you're going through right now, hitting all the same beats even though the details are different, is something I only felt after reading history. It's like going through your parents' photo albums at your grandparents' place and realizing they had an edgy teenage phase too, or puberty kicked in late just like it did for you, something similar.
Just the thought of having someone, somewhen be able to relate can ground you.
I was thinking of the belief in violence and force as a solution to all the differences in interest or perceived different necessities.
As you said; history from early schooling is meant to be comforting. I'm not all that sure about Asia? China went through many periods of dissolution and re-configuration, in that its continuity is actually quite weak, and there have been many ruptures. But every new dynasty wrote the history of the previous dynasty, so that in historio-graphical terms there is a lot of continuity of the myth, which in turn created a strong coherence at the level of consciousness—that “China” is a thing. But in actual life, there have been huge ruptures.
(A quote from the 3 L. post.)
In Europe: For example, when we look at truly admirable statues and paintings of the Renaissance, we lose sight of many things. In particular, the fact that all the cultural content of the Renaissance was created by the work of several dozen talented artists and humanists fascinated by antiquity, at a time when manslaughter was a daily occurrence for Western Europeans and took on massive proportions.
But neither Raphael's Sistine Madonna nor Michelangelo's David will tell historians anything about the atrocities of the Borgia papal family or the violence perpetrated by the Sforza dukes. Actually there were devastating wars that went on for centuries, and killed millions and millions. Therefore, for a person interested in what really happened, it is preferable not to confuse works of culture with the system of behavior of the ethos that created that culture.
I think that the continuity being weak is true in the political sense, but not in the sense of lifeways and home habits. While the setting is different, many of our home behaviors would be recognizable to even distant ancestors (with a little explanation). I love mundane/everyday history, like the origin stories of home-cooked food, or why houses are built in a certain way with certain features in certain places. We still live at home, go to markets, work in factories, fields, and city centers, socialize, have fun - in ways that, while novel in detail, are the same in principle.
That point about works of culture being idealized snapshots hits home. Beginnings and endings are artifacts of our theories on what is important, which means anything that doesn't fit ends up on the cutting room floor.
About life-ways and home habits, let me refer again to music in the western heritage, and the question, was it similar to now? For many 100's of years in Europe people entertained themselves with music. In the cultured families, everyone could play an instrument, and the family was a mini-orchestra, or a quartet. During any time-off they could have a party, and there was no consumption of professional musicians, (except maybe for the king).
I surmise that even in the serf families, father played the fiddle. (It is still a violin, but played in a folk way.) Most of the people worked the land. Agrarian life has busy periods and then the off-season. Jobs or Factories were for the very few, maybe the civil servants collected the taxes.
With all of the classical music composers, most of their music were dances. And these traditional dances came way before any composer thought of writing them down. People were much more "kinetic" than now, they moved, and they moved with music. If you wanted to find a lady, and to get married, it was essential to dance. Even the later and most famous ballets are take-offs on the folk dances of the earlier times.
Names of music are like:
Gavotte, Polonaise, Mazurka, Badinerie, Scherzo, Waltz, Allemande, Pavane, Polka, Sarabande, Minuet, Landler, Quadrilles, Gallop, Metelitsa, Hopak, Kozachok, Hutsulka, Kolomyika, Square dance, Tarantella, ALL dances, and there are really dozens and dozens, beyond this small sampling.
So the difference might be fundamental. People of antiquity were all self sufficient and developed skills to occupy themselves with, (like music skills or crafts). Now people are so judgemental they disregard any amateur fun and only look to the expert authorities on TV and social media. Let me be entertained by the other, because I'm a good critic, through all of my consumption, and I know which are the best talents. (Of course some people do engage with skill).
I don’t know about China, East Asia or the 10 ASEAN nations? I still wonder if former life wasn't very different, as it was in the western tradition. I just posted on another site about life in China from about 150 – 250 AD. There was so much devastation, war and killing, life was only about “how will I survive”?
That's quite a comprehensive link that you refer to on your site. About a 10 pager, and loaded with relevant details. I publish book chapters on my site, so they usually run 20-30 pages. I am used to digesting lots of details, although I admit long posts are not easy to comment on. (That's why I am here at WhyNotThink).
I am also conversant on certain periods of history and their power structures, and reasoning for encroaching on neighbors. I will look into it, and probably comment on your site, not here. It will take a little while though. Thanks for the reference.
May I commend you as a great story teller. You really capture the details. Beginnings and endings are abstract, except maybe birth and death. The human instrument produces a feeling as its comment on all perception. It is actually a reaction to the difference between your held “should-be’s”, and your perception. If it turns out as expected, I feel great, tension released. If not, tension increased. That tension is the alarm signal that I am supposed to do something about.
Even if I prove incapable of changing the alarm signal, (I could just change my “should-be”, but NO NEVER THAT), then I can employ the abstraction of closure. Whew, that was a tough one, but at least it is finished. If it comes again, I’ll start to run. I have a whole catalog of no-go-zones.
Beginnings and endings make for a comfortable life. I’m not saying, that if we get used to things, they do not pass into the background. And even then, as you said, they live on through their consequences.
See if this is a good metaphor:
I have dabbled into studying the history of western music, which is called the 12-tone scale. Why do these 12 tones sound like music to us, when really sound is a continuous band of frequency change, with 1,000’s of tones?? It is really a complete mystery to me? I have no idea. Bernstein at a 6-minute Harvard lecture, explains the overtones in music, which develop from the octave, to the 5th, then the 4th overtone, then the 3rd, then the triad, (tonal music) which includes the tonic and the dominate, making it diatonic.
It becomes Diatonicism balanced with Chromaticism equally powerful and presumable contradictory pathways. Please take a moment to watch these 6 minutes, which will help me get to my point. Don’t bother to try to absorb it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt2zubHcER4
Just know that there are intervals in music. In this lecture we are listening to chords made up of these intervals, but it is the same with a violin or a woodwind. Instead of cords, you have a sequence, but the feeling produced is the same. My point is music is not the notes, but it is the jump in the frequency, which is the interval between the notes. All the Intervals elicit a different feeling. The two major categories of feelings are “closure”, and “openness”, (the lack of closure), which is rest, and movement, or the start or jumping off point for further movement.
If a piece or a passage ends on an openness, you will feel uneasy. That open interval is supposed to be further movement, but where do we go from here? If every passage ends on a closure-interval, it is boring and still-born. Music is a mixture between opening and closing. At the first performance of the Rite of Spring by Stravinsky in May of 1913, there was an audience riot outside. It is the most notorious scandal in music history. Some wanted to “string him up” on a lamppost, Outrage, or others wanted at least have him arrested. They demanded the grace and elegance of traditional music, like the more conventional Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
Your two stories illustrate this perfectly. Although, I don’t think anyone wanted to “string-up” Frieren? Are audiences more forgiving or more sophisticated. When Frieren started on her “after-journeys, maybe those impatient people started thinking about their shopping list; not to waste any more time??
History takes time, energy, and interest – all finite resources. I swear that I never cared about history for decades and decades. I used the excuse that so much has changed by now, that 20-30 years ago they couldn’t possibly know what is relevant in this age. But now reading it, I see that so little has changed even from 500, and 1,000 years ago. Wow, that is really disheartening.
Some seek safety by being “authority dependent. It is they who flock to validate. I can’t change them about that. Best if you can learn to sit with complexity, (without undue anxiety). At this point I would never think of shutting complexity out, because it is really no big deal. In some of my posts I try to say that contradiction (complexity) is the result of a narrow context. I can’t be sure that is always the case, but I find it where I do. And we will always have limited belief systems.
Thanks for a stimulating topic.
.
Judging from comments by others, Frieren getting more high-strung would have been bad for the final product. It might have appealed to a different taste, sure, but it wouldn't have been as interesting.
Little changing over the course of history is a little disheartening, but also pretty comforting. To know that in many cases, someone somewhere and somewhen has been through what you're going through right now, hitting all the same beats even though the details are different, is something I only felt after reading history. It's like going through your parents' photo albums at your grandparents' place and realizing they had an edgy teenage phase too, or puberty kicked in late just like it did for you, something similar.
Just the thought of having someone, somewhen be able to relate can ground you.
I was thinking of the belief in violence and force as a solution to all the differences in interest or perceived different necessities.
As you said; history from early schooling is meant to be comforting. I'm not all that sure about Asia? China went through many periods of dissolution and re-configuration, in that its continuity is actually quite weak, and there have been many ruptures. But every new dynasty wrote the history of the previous dynasty, so that in historio-graphical terms there is a lot of continuity of the myth, which in turn created a strong coherence at the level of consciousness—that “China” is a thing. But in actual life, there have been huge ruptures.
(A quote from the 3 L. post.)
In Europe: For example, when we look at truly admirable statues and paintings of the Renaissance, we lose sight of many things. In particular, the fact that all the cultural content of the Renaissance was created by the work of several dozen talented artists and humanists fascinated by antiquity, at a time when manslaughter was a daily occurrence for Western Europeans and took on massive proportions.
But neither Raphael's Sistine Madonna nor Michelangelo's David will tell historians anything about the atrocities of the Borgia papal family or the violence perpetrated by the Sforza dukes. Actually there were devastating wars that went on for centuries, and killed millions and millions. Therefore, for a person interested in what really happened, it is preferable not to confuse works of culture with the system of behavior of the ethos that created that culture.
.
I think that violence and force, as direct threats and methods of survival, are necessary underpinnings for everything else. See below:
https://open.substack.com/pub/argomend/p/power-and-influence?r=28g8km&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I think that the continuity being weak is true in the political sense, but not in the sense of lifeways and home habits. While the setting is different, many of our home behaviors would be recognizable to even distant ancestors (with a little explanation). I love mundane/everyday history, like the origin stories of home-cooked food, or why houses are built in a certain way with certain features in certain places. We still live at home, go to markets, work in factories, fields, and city centers, socialize, have fun - in ways that, while novel in detail, are the same in principle.
That point about works of culture being idealized snapshots hits home. Beginnings and endings are artifacts of our theories on what is important, which means anything that doesn't fit ends up on the cutting room floor.
About life-ways and home habits, let me refer again to music in the western heritage, and the question, was it similar to now? For many 100's of years in Europe people entertained themselves with music. In the cultured families, everyone could play an instrument, and the family was a mini-orchestra, or a quartet. During any time-off they could have a party, and there was no consumption of professional musicians, (except maybe for the king).
I surmise that even in the serf families, father played the fiddle. (It is still a violin, but played in a folk way.) Most of the people worked the land. Agrarian life has busy periods and then the off-season. Jobs or Factories were for the very few, maybe the civil servants collected the taxes.
With all of the classical music composers, most of their music were dances. And these traditional dances came way before any composer thought of writing them down. People were much more "kinetic" than now, they moved, and they moved with music. If you wanted to find a lady, and to get married, it was essential to dance. Even the later and most famous ballets are take-offs on the folk dances of the earlier times.
Names of music are like:
Gavotte, Polonaise, Mazurka, Badinerie, Scherzo, Waltz, Allemande, Pavane, Polka, Sarabande, Minuet, Landler, Quadrilles, Gallop, Metelitsa, Hopak, Kozachok, Hutsulka, Kolomyika, Square dance, Tarantella, ALL dances, and there are really dozens and dozens, beyond this small sampling.
So the difference might be fundamental. People of antiquity were all self sufficient and developed skills to occupy themselves with, (like music skills or crafts). Now people are so judgemental they disregard any amateur fun and only look to the expert authorities on TV and social media. Let me be entertained by the other, because I'm a good critic, through all of my consumption, and I know which are the best talents. (Of course some people do engage with skill).
I don’t know about China, East Asia or the 10 ASEAN nations? I still wonder if former life wasn't very different, as it was in the western tradition. I just posted on another site about life in China from about 150 – 250 AD. There was so much devastation, war and killing, life was only about “how will I survive”?
.
That's quite a comprehensive link that you refer to on your site. About a 10 pager, and loaded with relevant details. I publish book chapters on my site, so they usually run 20-30 pages. I am used to digesting lots of details, although I admit long posts are not easy to comment on. (That's why I am here at WhyNotThink).
I am also conversant on certain periods of history and their power structures, and reasoning for encroaching on neighbors. I will look into it, and probably comment on your site, not here. It will take a little while though. Thanks for the reference.
.
I posted my comment on Argo's site at the link above. 12-25