From: Matt the Enraged Endorphin (mpkundert@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 10 2002 - 01:17:06 GMT
Davor,
Your description of the article on Boulez and the two traditions reminded
my old nemesis, Michael Oakeshott (note to Wim: you might remember him from
when we first started at this website, over a year ago). I used to despise
Oakeshott with every fiber of my being, but I don't really anymore.
Oakeshott described what he calls, "the Rationalist." The Rationalist is
someone who learns everything by books and then wants to radically change
everything. Opposed to that were regular people who learned things by
doing and any change that happened was gradual. While I still find
Oakeshott's Rationalist to be an overdrawn stawman (I doubt many people,
when learning a trade, don't oscillate between reading and doing), I think
he has an important point: watch out for radical change. As Pirsig points
out, change ventures out into the terra incognita. Radical change may
venture out too far where there may be no static latch. People may not be
able to adjust to the change and, in some cases, unforseen problems may
arise that are only exacerbated by extremeness.
In art, there may be no life-threatening damage done by extreme change. In
politics, however, the Russian and Chinese experiements in Communism are
enough to disuade me from radical change.
Matt
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Dec 10 2002 - 01:23:42 GMT