General Mod note:
let's not get into quoting/posting a lot of explicit lyrics here, mmmkay?
please remember the forum rules, especially #1 and #3.
thanks.
Printable View
General Mod note:
let's not get into quoting/posting a lot of explicit lyrics here, mmmkay?
please remember the forum rules, especially #1 and #3.
thanks.
ok, so it has become quite clear as i read this thread that neither side is going to change its mind, however, the fact that anyone would try to put restrictions on a definition of art seems counter-productive. what makes art what it is, is that it continues to be progressive and provokes a reaction. moreover, art is personal. what one person considers to be art may be what another considers ''smut''. given this, no one should be brazen enough to assume that they alone can put distinctions on what is or is not art.
here are some thought provoking lyrics by a hip-hop group known as 'binary star' expressing what they see wrong with much of today's ''hip-pop'' music scene:
"Honest Expression"
I ain't hardcore, I don't pack a nine millimeter
Most of y'all gangsta rappers ain't hardcore neither
Whoever gets mad, then I'm talkin' 'bout you
Claimin you fear no man, but never walk wit' out crew
Where I'm from, your reputation don't mean jack
So what, you pack gats and you sell fiends crack
You ain't big time, my man
You ain't no different from the next cat in my neighborhood who did time
Rhyme after it's the same topic
What makes you think your hardcore 'cause you was raised in the projects?
Broke-*** finally got a hundred in your pocket
Now your on the mic, spittin' money's no object
What you say is bullcrap, if you wasn't wit' your crew
Or wasn't drunk off the brew, would you still pull gats?
You need to stop fronting or your headed for self-destruction.
Yeah, today's topic, is self-destruction
I ain't talkin' 'bout the KRS-One discussion
I'm talkin' 'bout the one-too-many ignorant suckers
Lyin' on the mic to my sisters and brothers
Every time you listen to the radio
All you hear is nonsense, they never play the bomb ****
Everything that glitters ain't gold
And every gold record don't glitter, that's for damn sure.
(Scratching Voices:)
"Y'all need to be cool as ****"
"Tryin' to teach you from the heart"
"Y'all rambling on, and ain't sayin' nothing"
"I'm busy in the mind"
"I'll go invent, I think I'll elevate my mental"
(Interlude)
See cats got confused somewhere man (confused)
About what hip-hop was, you know what I'm sayin'
Or what hip-hop is, (it's business yo) you know it
It's all business (its big money, know what I'm sayin'
that's all these cats about)
You know that's bull****, right? That's nigga talk, nigga talk
But if you want to make money though.
I got it broke down though, I got it broke down, (break it down yo)
You got hip-hop, then you got hip-pop.
Hip-pop?
Hip-pop.
Alright, (but a lot of cats want pop)
Yes. (know what I'm sayin')
It used to be real hip hop.
You got the top forty version of hip-hop.
I still got something else, something else that I wanna get off my chest
What? (know what I'm sayin'?)
How many cats you know
Speak the ill-legit rhyme after rhyme diligent
Eighty-five percent represent ignorant
Either you're innocent or guilty,
Some of my favorite emcees fell off
It damn near killed me
Lookin' at the kids that was true hip-hop
Nowadays them cats don't even do hip-hop
Rap got 'em brainwashed, with cats that don't last
And five minutes of fame, that's when it's a shame
Seein' real emcees tryin' to imitate rappers
If you ask me, they goin' out ***-backwards
Trading in respect to push a fat Lex'
Puff rhymin' on the remix, what's next?
It hurts so bad, I wanna smack 'em
My favorite crew members break up
Turn around and join whack ones.
This is dedicated to you hip-hop hypocrites
Droppin' whack songs, like you don't give a ****
I ain't got nothin' against nobody trying to make a decent living
It ain't the money that's the issue
Only if that's the reason why these cats ain't makin' decent music
That's when I got beef wit' you
And I'm a bring it to you like never
Go ahead, call me player-hater if it makes you feel better
Try to jump my crew if you cats feel boggy
You need to wake up, and smell the damn coffee.
Now this is not to say that i haven't enjoyed reading all of the posts so far; discussing these issues can be intriguing, but it's important to remember that the definition of art isn't etched in stone.
sorry bout the explicit lyrics. i just took them from a different site. won't happen again.
Dramas et al:
I would actively support any inteligent and forceful statement or act that rebukes, in no uncertain terms, the sexism/vilolence against women that is glorified in rap and hip-hop songs.
I also have to own up to the fact that I am a man and so, while I can try to understand what a woman feels in relation to songs about rape, the truth is I will never be able to actually switch places and know from the inside out.
I am white. I assume most others here are although please correct me if that is mistaken. However, whatever may be the case, I do see a difficulty in terms of white people and insitutions coming down on the glorification of violence in a music that is rooted in the African-American community. It is not that I would say that nobody but black people are worthy of their comments. And certainly gender has to be taken into a huge consideration as well. It is simply that given the amount of violence blacks have suffered from the hands of whites the whole issue of violence needs becomes complex both in terms of class, gender and race.
Hmm...well there are quite a few white rappers emerging today ghideon, and singing about the same content. There are definetly many stereotypes and racist messages about different races of people in songs, they are pretty unfair to most people.
I think US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had it right when he defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."
hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.
but according to ghideon no on is privileged to make an absolute statement about music, let alone artful music, because what defines these categories is by its very nature subjective. but we know that this is just patently false. value judgments are made every day and the basis of American law and jurisprudence makes such determinations defined by evolving standards of decency. you can't urinate in public; you can't curse in class; you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. in America, you can't walk down a residential street without clothes. you can't drink in public. certain forms of sexual representation are prohibited (child porn), the FCC regulates radio/tv broadcasting. fines are often rendered for lewd or licentious acts.
according to this attitude, absolutely everything is beyond the reach of a value judgment. the relativist thinking propigated by ghideon is quite alluring because there is a tendency to distrust government, let alone the idea of a censorship board that bans hip hop. i've said in another thread, however, that i see absolutely no literary, artistic, political or scientific value in Hitler's Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries. if they were banned, the world wouldn't lose any sleep. they espouse hate and create subdivisions and have caused more than one hate crime.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
the liberal Us Supreme Court of the 1960s and 1970s embraced ghideon's relativism (almost) in the court's evolving standard for "obscenity." check out the case, "miller vs. california - early '70s, quite interesting. it leaves many things unanswered. it's sets forth a social value "test." i don't remember it but it's three-pronged, and cases are considered all the time against it.
i strongly believe that "man is NOT the measure of all things." there are certain abiding truths in the world. plato established this philosophically over 2000 years ago. if you haven't all ready, i recommend reading his book, "Meno." and this thinking of certain "inalienable rights (self-evident truths)" is the basis of our democracy.
ghideon also goes on to admit that he can't 'entirely' identify with a woman's perspective because he's not a woman (interestingly he identifies with the black man's plight). its abundantly obvious that hip hop objectifies women; everybody knows that it doesn't make the lives of women any easier either, especially in light of their oppressed history.
i disagree. we CAN identify with each other because human beings are tied together by an empathetic cord and thereby allows access to one another's emotional space. we "feel" the grief of parents whose sons and daughters are killed in war.
relativism has been chipping away at all forms of public authority for at least the last century. what's at stake is not only authority but the very notion of a "public."
You can not randomly ban things because you feel they are inappropriate. That censorship is what fueled the governments of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Saddam Hussein, The Ayatollah, the Taliban, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Mussoulini, the First Republic under Robespierre, Qadafi, Mugabe and many others. You do have the right not to listen to rap, but never the right to tell another person not to.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
You can not make value judgements on what another person likes, to do so implies a superiority of taste and to assume any superiority of taste is degrading to the integrity of a free society. Certain prohibitions may be made against ACTIONS, the making and keeping of child pornography, urinating in public, etc because these actions, by their very nature, harm another person by themselves. They do not merely inspire injurous action, they ARE injurous action. As for FCC regulations, they don't stop anybody. Most networks keep an escrow funds just to pay the fines they inevitably incur every year.
Even suggesting banning these books shows a hatred against history. Should we should ban everything that we find offensive on a knee-jerk reaction, regardless of what important information they can shed on the darkest days of our history?Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
You know what, you're right. We shouldn't even try to understand the Nazi's from their own perspective, after all, what can we learn from a bunch of Fascists? We should just forget it ever happened, we should outlaw the very words 'Fascist,' 'Third Reich,' 'Hitler' and 'Nazi'. We shouldn't even teach about them in school, except to say that the Righteous US and her Glorious Republican (Vengeful France, Just great Britian and forget Russian because it's history is too ugly) allies overcame the power of a dark, sinister evil that was threatening to overcome the Great, Glorious True world. Why it was evil we don't really know, but why's not important. Just trust me. It was bad, real bad. So bad, we don't even remember.
After all, there have been lots of governments that have banned books they found offensive, Soviet Russia for example, where according to the Criminal Code of 1926 rap would have been illegal, under Section Ten, spreading propoganda, and since they are making money, section 4, aid to the international Bourgeoisie, Section One, counter-revolutionary activity and Section 8, terror. They would have gotten at least twenty-five years in the Gulag, because remember, thought is the same as action. Oh I forgot one, since it was distributed and ivolved more than one person, Section 11, criminal organization. You wouldn't even need a trial. You could just sentance them, the seditious, inappropriate criminals, without a pesky judge.
Not nearly as rough, in Iran they'll just arrest you and beat you to a pulp in some interrogation cell for listening to western rap, that is if you don't have the connections to get out of it.
You know what, Soviet Russia is another one of those bad places I'd rather not think about. Communism could always come back if people read about it and it'll be just as bad then. Better not give people ideas. Better outlaw that too, no Gulag Archipelago, no One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, throw them all out. Mayakovsky ESPECIALLY. We don't even want to think about it. Better get rid of Marx while we're at it, might inspire a reduction of the country-side Pol Pot style, or even Chairman Mao style. We can't have any more Greal Leaps Forward, too many people died. Oh and all those books about British Imperialism. The US gov't might get ideas about India. I'd better start throwing away everything I have by Kipling.
And I reject your 'truths.' We are a species of individuals for a reason, it is not in our biology to operate as a hive of ants dancing out messages to insure conformity as we march on to the sugar. Your post here has no where even hinted at the fulfillment of our 'inalienable rights.' In fact, you have pretty much said let's throw the First Amendment out of the window. Tear it out of your Constitutions, folks, we'll wad it up for toilet paper, or at the very least we'll just color over the "abridging free speech" part.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
As I said before, the greatest works of art of the past two hundred years came about as a result of non-comformity, came about as an attack on the establishment. Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe was called smut when it was displayed, his Olympia was called pornography. Modigliani was lambasted for the eroticism of his portraits. Matisse was caled a 'fauve' because he used colors 'like a wild beast' and had no eye for 'true art.' If we had censorship the like of which YOU recommend we would have no great art, merely repititions of the past.
Examples of this kind exist not just in art, but in everything. Women being allowed to vote was considered obscene, women in pants, women in PUBLIC in some places was considered obscene, and that never would have been allowed if we were protecting the moral standards of the time by outlawing everything we viewed as contrarian and abided by 'true' 'objective' values. They even had scientific evidence of why women were inferior.
Don't forget jazz music, which grew up next to the brothels of New Orleans and was nearly as primitive as rap before it was taken to the heights it later reached. If censors had had their way it would have been nipped in the bud before it could have grown into what will be the classical music of two hundred years from now, unarguably the most advanced music form created in the twentieth century! But of course, I assume those critics then didn't know nearly as much as we do now, and our taste and moral refinenment is infinitely more sophisticated than theirs.
Lastly I would ask you who establishes these truths? Who dictates to humanity what they should do? Should we establish a committee? Only the most virtuous citizens should sit on it. Virtue, we'd have to figure out what we meant by virtue too, but I'm sure we won't have to look for for our new nomenklatura! It'd be twenty years before they were hoarding pornography in their own closets, for their own edification on the nature of the problem, of course.
In a society with censorship there is no evolution of ANYTHING. Society becomes a stagnant morass until someone stands up and fights it, and that person is ultimately labeled an unconventional, seditious, dangerous traitor by his contemporaries and a noble, moral, just man by the people of the next generation who want to impose the same restricting standard that he fought against.
What is the 'public'? Is not the rights of the individual the very thing that assures the prosperity of a 'public'? Has not history, not twenty years ago, proven that an unfettered society with a FREE exchange of ideas is infinitely stronger than a bloc with no freedom of speech and a 'unified' public? There are few places where things were welded into such a block as in the USSR, and despite their huge population, massive resources and their strangle hold on 'seditious' freedoms, such as freedom of speech, the inability of the government to encourage the work of an INDIVIDUAL choked their ability to produce, destroyed their ability to innovate and locked them in a cycle of reaction to what the West did as opposed to allowing the USSR the freedom to move on its own.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
A public need no more unity than recognizing that at certain times it need be united for the common defence and for the regulation of the HARMFUL ACTIONS of its members, not for the thought-crimes of those same people. The censorship of rap would indeed be recognition of thought-crime, and the banning of Mein Kampf, that would be even worse. It would be an insult to everyone who died in the Holocaust or who was killed in WWII. That book exists as a testament to the madness of one man and the insanity of his blinded single-mindedness and lack of perspective. I don't know if you have ever read Mein Kampf (I hope you have since you claim enough authority on the subject to ban it), but I have. It's drivel. It's mindless, and it's very unlikely to make anyone a Nazi who is not already in jack boots. But even worse, Mein Kampf wasn't banned in this country during WWII and you would suggest banning it NOW sixty years AFTER the conflict and AFTER true Fascism, not the Franco version, which is debatable as to whether it actually was Fascism, has died?
What you are suggesting is nothing more than vengeful attack on history, a subject that deserves respect not just for our country but for the entire world, and indeed, for every member of the human race, not just those alive now, but even for those who will be born after us, an uncountable number, exponentially larger than we can even understand. You would steal what is by the very fact of humanity's existence its birth-right. The understanding of themselves, where they came from, and what we've come OUT OF. You would steal ourselves.
I'm just going to say a simple little quote here, and I think it is the single most relevent and amazing quote I've ever come across:
The point that makes, is that if you have the right to censor others opinions, they by default have the right to censor your opinions.Quote:
I may strongly disagree with what you have to say, but I will die to defend your right to say it
Just wanted to add that.
I felt I had to respond to the last part of this quote, especially because I think, from what I've read elsewhere, the person posting it seems to be thoughtful and well intentioned, and I've heard other well intentioned people use similar logic. This logic appears to be saying (correct me if I'm wrong) that since black men have been opressed, it's O.K. for them to sing songs about the opression of women. I don't see how that helps things. Aren't black women then doubly oppressed? I'm sorry, but songs glorifying gratuitous violence against another human being (woman or man) should be criticised (I will not say censored) by black and white alike. Note, I am not claiming that all hip hop necessarily falls into this category, but I've heard songs that certainly do, and it's those I object to. There is no justification I can think of for lyrics like the second one that Shadowsarin posted, describing the violent rape and murder of another person, apparently for no better reason than entertainment for a group of guys, and some bizzare initiation ritual. I don't care if it's describing a bunch of white, ivy league frat boys commiting this act, or a black gang in the ghetto. It's not right, and I think everyone regardless of skin color has not only the moral justification, but the moral obligation to say it's nothing to sing about.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
Quote:
I think US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had it right when he defined obscenity as: "I know it when I see it."
OK. You "think" he had it right but do you "know"? The very construction of your sentence leans towards a non-absolutist perspective.
No. That is not a fact. The facts are more complex. One fact is that hip-hop lyrics have not always been as crude and sexist as they are now. Another fact is that not "all" hip-hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, and sexist and others have already posted examples. It is true that most of the hip-hop songs that you have listened to are as you describe. It is true that most of the songs played on the radio and played on MTV...display crude, sexist and self-indulgent attitudes.Quote:
hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.
But you see no need to actually think critically. You make absolute statements that are not. Now you may differ with me in many ways but irregardless, I believe you owe it to yourself and all readers to be clear about what is true and what is not. If you lean more towards the importance of definitive statements then fine go ahead and make them. But I suggest that when you do you do so wisely. At this point you are making it too easy to negate them. Again and again you ignore context. While your actual language is full of phrase constructions such as "I think" "in my opinion" you then go on to make pronouncements about the entire history of hip hop. Not thinking at its best.
Quote:
but according to ghideon no on is privileged to make an absolute statement about music
I did not say that nor would I.
In my post one example of an absolute statement that I would support was "Picasso was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century." That was about a visual artist but there are many similar statements I could make about music. "The Beatles Sgt Pepper album in both lyrics and musical construction reflected the rising importance of drugs, particularly LSD, and altered states of consciousness of that era."" I could go on and on. So do not put words unless you know they fit.
Now, do I have a grave problem with granting individuals and institutions "priviliged" authority above all others to define what is considered good art, decent art, art of worth. You bet I do! Are you so absolutely confident that nobody could ever think that some of your posts are worthless and self-indulgent. I am NOT saying they are. I am simply asking you if you could imagine a person in a position of authority thinking of your writing in that way and thus taking acts to silence it?
Quote:
you can't urinate in public; you can't curse in class; you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. in America, you can't drink in public
The "cursing in class" bit is close to sci-fi. My God have you even been in a HS class these days? Cursing? Folks are worried about bullets.
Now "yelling fire in a crowded movie house" is against the law and, I would assume, almost always enforced, I would hope so. I can not imagine a situation in which that could not lead to some real problems and that is probably why I have never experienced such.
Er...yea...yes,yup. You bet there is, actually tendency is not putting it strongly enough, to distrust government and the idea of a censorship board. Are you actually, on the one hand asserting the virtues of the founding principles of this nation and on the other hand suggesting that this distrust of both govt and acts by the government should simply be trusted at face value? What are you actually saying here? I actually do want to know? I am not a historical scholar but wasn't there a general agreement that the citizens of a nation should always think about their nation and its institutions and not simply blindly go along with them. Wasn't that one of the key things that the founders wanted to be different then other nations.Quote:
there is a tendency to distrust government, let alone the idea of a censorship board that bans hip hop.
Remember your hero Emerson. Why don't you imagine that you are sitting across from him and explaining why you believe people are in error when they have distrust or why you believe that a censorship board needs to be created. I suppose he would have a quixotic expression and say something to the effect "Well. You seem to be thinking independently, I admire that. I have always had great respect for those who can and do." at which point he would pause, look out the log cabin window at the Oak and Maples and go on to say "I am troubled though that such an independent spirit wishes to move our great nation away from that very act. You are one breath of independence yearning to choke the very inhalations and exhalations of others. I pray you never go, through some act of Apolo, from a breath to a storm."
"So I eschew 'selectivity' and follow free association
of mind into limitless blow-on-subject seas of
thought, swimming in seas of English with no
discipline other than the story-line and the rhythm
of rhetorical exaltation and expostulated statement,
like a fist coming down on a table with each complete
utterance, bang!"
-Jack Kerouac
You eschew free association of mind? limitless blow? swimming in seas of English with no discipline other than the story-line and the rhythm"?
Or am I wrong in assuming a relationship of affirmation between you and your signature.:lol:
Really? Well apparently Rock Music promotes Satanism and causes kids to go out and either kill themselves or shoot up a school.Quote:
hip hop lyrics are self-indulgent, crude, sexist, and, in my mind, obscene. why? i know it when i hear the lyrics and watch the videos.
Don't generalise, its extremely fallacious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadowsarin
i'm not generalizing. i lump all the smut together. remember mrs. gore's initiative, putting labels on such smut and the music industry was up in arms? does anyone recall the suicides ozzy ozbourne's music triggered and his music being on trial?
that will be the day when i die defending a person for writing lyrics that degrade women and spit in the face of authority. all hip hop/gangsta rap music does not do this, but a great deal being broadcast by major radio stations/tv does. it's quite interesting - even laughable - how ghideon is a civil libertarian when it comes to free speech but when it comes to free markets he's bent on the view that "corporations are taking over the world," exploiting workers, etc. can't i easily say that the word, "exploitation" is as malleable a word as "art"? ah! another double standard...of course.
as far as my signature, if you knew anything about jack kerouac you'd know that your analogy is quite off the mark. there's a big difference between violating a mode of writing - formalism, as his generation did, and embracing musical forms which embellish violence and misogyny. a great deal of their work was actually banned initially (e.g. Ginsberg's Howl), dealing with the drug references, anti-establishment rhetoric, etc. but the totality of their work says something far greater. the same can't be said for hip hop. first read kerouac's on the road and then the Norton Anthology for black literature---particularly its section on hip hop, then tell me they strive toward the same end.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
hip hop is a social pariah, feeding on misogyny, the glorification of drug dealers, and a provocative sexual imagery. it offers nothing beyond a four-minute cheap-listening thrill and soils far more minds that has a domino effect socially. in the area of tort law, courts use what's known as reasonable person standard. and the reasonable person can be applied to defining such defiant modes of expression.
lastly, this argument about works of art that were early on banned or rejected by the public only later to be deemed great just doesn't resonate anymore to give free license to a hip hop industry that thrives on controversy. to sit there and suggest that hip hop and gangsta rap have no negative bearing on the populous is to walk through life with a blindfold on. that's giving up under the guise of free expression.
i wonder if ghideon and abdullah would adhere to the same civil libertarian sensibility if a certain form of (white) rock music became widespread that stereotyped blacks and arabs in a hostile, negative way. i'll just take a pot shot guess how it would be dealt with: the ACLU for one would run to the courts and invoke the standard of 'fighting words' in an effort to have it banned. surely the ACLU would -- in high ghideon fashion -- point to the institution of American slavery as evidence for making the distinction between the kind of stereotyping hip hop makes and that new brand of rock music against blacks.
For the first part:
No I do not see Rap/Hip Hop as art (OT: although I have still not decided on what exactly I feel does constitute art - Is it enough that it art creates an emotion inside of us when we are exposed to it?). I agree that the wide majority shown in the mainstream media is crude & bordering on the obscene (but as has already been mentioned Rap/Hip Hop is not alone in this respect) As a result I make a concious decision not to listen to it.
However
I do not believe it should be banned just because I dont agree with, or enjoy listening to it. There would be very little left to listen to if these were the general parameters.
Right, thank you.
Now, you said:Quote:
Originally Posted by Me
And in that, you yourself have said that not everyone in the hip hop community is a violent racist rapist like you seem to be implying.Quote:
Originally Posted by you
However, you contradict that point by, oh dear, generalizing with quotes such as:
Quote:
i lump all the smut together.
...Which are implying quite strongly that all Hip Hop is this evil you say it is. Not a good way to keep an argument together really.Quote:
hip hop is a social pariah, feeding on misogyny, the glorification of drug dealers, and a provocative sexual imagery.
Now, the white power thing. I haven't defended white power lyrics in the past, no, but I have, in line with the quote I adore, defended the BNP in a philosophy class. The BNP aren't a white power band, they are a white power political party. I think that kind of superseeds your point about me being a hypocrite (Ok, it wasn't exactly aimed at me, but the point still stands)
Oh, and I'm not even going to bother with the Ozzy Ozborne thing. I can just imagen you, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their little rampage in 1999, leading the protest saying it was Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom that caused it. Never mind the fact the kids had an obvious history of mental problems. It just has to be Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom.
shadowsarin,
for whatever reason the system is not letting me quote your series of quotes that crescendos with the pronouncement that i somehow "contradicted" myself because i suggest in one part that "all" hip hop is smut and elsewhere its not the case. i figured that smart people, presumably you included, would get the message that i was conceding that not all hip hop emulates misogyny, death to police, etc. when i also said, "Hip hop is a social pariah" i was not IMPLYING, i meant the whole ball of wax, that's correct, the industry as a whole. the hip hop that falls short of what i deem to be HIGHLY OFFENSIVE is not necessarily immune from what's OBSCENE and vile. there are gradations of obscenity and i was acknowledging that.
you suggested i used the word "evil" to describe hip hop. i don't ever use that word for reasons i'm not going to discuss in this thread. just know that that's not a good way for you to keep an argument together either.
shadowsarin said,
"Oh, and I'm not even going to bother with the Ozzy Ozborne thing. I can just imagen you, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did their little rampage in 1999, leading the protest saying it was Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom that caused it. Never mind the fact the kids had an obvious history of mental problems. It just has to be Marilyn Manson and Rammstein and Doom."
of course they had mental problems, i don't deny that. and i didn't claim that minus the musical/video influence that somehow that they wouldn't have necessarily committed that despicable act. undeniable is that manson and rammstein and doom and those video games allowed them to cultivate their aggressions. they used some games to hone their shooting skills.
let's face it, the music and video games don't contervail the aggressive tendency in human beings, it often exacerbates it. it's always easy to just say, "well they had mental problems---they were sickos, so what do you expect? but the vile music fuels hate---maybe not necessarily to the point where every such person predisposed to violence will act, but it draws on the worst attributes in human beings, and the potential for public harm is real.
However, what you are accusing Hip Hop of could be considered evil in a lot of peoples books. Its easier to write a single umbrella term than to copy out word for word what you said. Also, different words have different meanings to different people. I didn't quote you as saying it was evil so I'm hardly putting words into your mouth.Quote:
you suggested i used the word "evil" to describe hip hop. i don't ever use that word for reasons i'm not going to discuss in this thread. just know that that's not a good way for you to keep an argument together either.
I first watch a really violent movie when I was seven (Aliens). I first played an arcade shooting game when I was nine (Time Crisis). Since then, I have watched all manor of violence, played all manor of violence, and listened to all manor of violence.Quote:
let's face it, the music and video games don't contervail the aggressive tendency in human beings, it often exacerbates it. it's always easy to just say, "well they had mental problems---they were sickos, so what do you expect? but the vile music fuels hate---maybe not necessarily to the point where every such person predisposed to violence will act, but it draws on the worst attributes in human beings, and the potential for public harm is real.
Yet why haven't I shot up my school yet?
Or stabbed a random stranger in the streets?
How come the MILLIONS of people who play and watch and listen aren't out butchering people?
And how come there were butchers and massacres and murders and all such detestable acts before such things came along?
Oh, btw, I'm curious now, what kinds of music, if any, do you enjoy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shadowsarin
images of violence effect people differently---this is a widely accepted precept in psychology. in fact, only a very small segment of the population is adversely affected - and many are doing time for such - but the MILLIONS (including you) indirectly suffer when innocent people are brutally murdered, raped, or robbed.that is, if you believe in community.
here's the pile of cd's sitting on top of my stereo i listened to this week:
Emily Haines
Miles Davis
Hanelei
Wilco
Tom Waits
Laura Veirs
America
Regina Spektor
heather nova
dave matthews
enya
i like music that doesn't talk about bling bling and "throwing that thang back" and smoking "J's" and guns in' da' hood and babies wrapped in garbage bags. the music i listen to has class, that has a sense of place and often grapples with difficult questions and moreso to conditions that tie us together, not divide us. and love, but a sensual love, not the gratuitous degrading hip hop version.
Petrarch:
First off I just want to say thanks for the respect your post communicated to me even while you take issue with some of what I say. That is the one ingredient most neccesary for mature discussion. And it is not nearly evident as much as we would all desire.
Now, as to your specific points. The first paragraph in my post was the following:
In your response you summarized my argument as the following:Quote:
I would actively support any inteligent and forceful statement or act that rebukes, in no uncertain terms, the sexism/vilolence against women that is glorified in rap and hip-hop songs.
Quote:
that since black men have been opressed, it's O.K. for them to sing songs about the opression of women.
Short of censorship, if I could come up with some way of changing this horrible component of the hip-hop/rap culture I would. I am open to any suggestions. But I never implied or stated that I thought it was ok. It is not.
You must have read my mind because just last night, after reading some posts and writing one, that is exactly what I thought of. I imagine black women are in an extraordinarily difficult position. On the one hand they are being blatantly and repeatedly disrespected, made fun of, and made into seemingly legitimate targets of violence. On the other hand if they speak out they are open, and I bet would receive, attacks that they are on "whitey's side" and seen as traitors to their culture/race.Quote:
Aren't black women then doubly oppressed?
I agree with you 100% and admire your willingness to speak about this in no uncertain terms.Quote:
It's not right, and I think everyone regardless of skin color has not only the moral justification, but the moral obligation to say it's nothing to sing about.
Now as regards the race and gender issue that I wrote about. Any effort that is made to try and examine the causes of different violent behaviors is too often seen as making excuses or even giving justification for the acts. And as a result we only endorse measures that deal with surface issues and do not look at the deep systemic and psychological dyanamics causing the gang wars, the abuse of women, the abuse of children, and on and on...
I wish that I could wake up tomorow to a world where nobody was ever deliberately hurt by someone else. I really do. But there is considerable work to do before we can even begin to hope for that day. Hard work. Hard because the factors involved are demanding and not open to simplistic attempts at resolution. Certainly if it was easy to end violence it would have been over a long time ago. And so, while I have no problem with people speaking very clearly that using rape as entertainment is a profound betrayal of all things humane I do not think that criticism alone will be enough to solve this or other problems. I wish it was but it is not.
I want to look at just why there is such violence in hip-hop. And I do not want glib answers. The men and women willing to actually think when they would much rather just strike out are the ones who show the deepest dedication to peace making and justice. I want those here in this discussion being those who are also willing to keep on thinking and asking hard questions even when it seems we need not or should not.
The violence in hip-hop music can not be understood unless it is also seen within certain specific contexts. It is clearly a gender issue in terms of what is causing so many men, both men of color and white men, to be violent to women, to sing about such violence, to be entertained by such violence.
It needs to be seen in a race context as well. There is a profound sense of worthlesness that I sense when I hear these songs. A need to pump up the self using guns, gold and violence because the self on its own is barely able to stand. One of the things I feel when I hear much of these songs and watch the videos are men who still are fighting off a core (you are my slave black boy) consciousness by running 1,000 miles in some other direction. They are running to some supposed place on the top of the mountain where they are the kings. It is a dream.
And because that dream is also a dream of a capitalist I dare say that we, I am talking about white people here specifically, can not stand on the side-line all the while not owning our own deep complicity in the very system that is profitting off of that mythic gold, adolescent fantasy, dream male mountain top. I read a ways back that the ones who are actually making the real real big big money, I am talking billions here, are the CEOs and top executives of the major record labels. There is no AK 47 pointed at radio stations or record executives forcing them to play these songs. No. There is, however, money and lots and lots of it. They know this. They want it and they are doing what they need inorder to get it.
(I just had a thought, want to share it, is it possible that part of what is going on in the hip-hop culture and music is the black man saying hey white folk I am beating you at your own game. Look. Now I have the gold chain and now I have the big house and now I have the limo. And is it even also possible that part of what white culture hates about this is the degree to which we do feel beaten by those we once led by chains and whips...I do not think this is going on at a level of day to day awareness but it just feels accurate in terms of deeper levels?)
The best way we can approach the problem of black male violence is by dealing with it from a point of true deep integrity. That is, that we make it clear we do not simply have a problem with the violence they are singing about. No. We stand against all acts of violence and that must include the violence that is going on in their communities as well.
This may not sound fair. It might not be. In a better world we would not have to work so hard at dealing with such blatant acts of rage and arrogance. And I also am not some (despite what jon may believe)I am not some Michael Moore Berkeley CA liberal (I live in Oakland) who would never speak bluntly to those poor, hurting African Americans. I am simply trying to de-construct what I see as the web of factors underneath the seemingly juvenile, unthinking cultural productions we are examining.
Quote:
i like music that doesn't talk about bling bling and "throwing that thang back" and smoking "J's" and guns in' da' hood and babies wrapped in garbage bags. the music i listen to has class, that has a sense of place and often grapples with difficult questions and moreso to conditions that tie us together, not divide us. and love, but a sensual love, not the gratuitous degrading hip hop version.
So, the great advocate of the absolute finally uses the words "I like..."
Jon...nobody else here repeatedly makes up lyrics. You do so again and again. I say this in honesty. It makes it all the harder to read what you say with any real seriousness.
As for "the music I listen to has class."
At this point in the thread there are probably more then a dozen posts that have already stated clearly and even with respect that your blatant arrogance is so obviously lacking in reason that I see no other conclusion except that at this point you are unable or unwilling to even look at yourself. Recall who said "Know Thy Self." hmmmm?
Is there anything that anybody could ever say and I mean this. Is there any author or govt official or priest or spiritual leader or artist or classical musician or poet who could help you finally wise up?
When you write "the music I listen to has class" you, and I mean this I am not simply writing this to get at you, it sounds just like some deeply insecure pseudo intelectual horrified that he may not be who he thinks he is. Look everybody I have class. Hah. Jon. Those who are actually quite self confident feel no need to make their personal likes into absolute truths. They feel no need to use such rhetoric inorder to shore up their ego.
You have written in praise of those who aspire to greatness. If you have any aspirations whatsoever can you please at least try to present your personal opinions as just that. Or is that simply beyond your current reach. If so then I think you too deserve a degree of understanding. Perhaps a tolerance or understanding that is presently beyond me.
Oh, I can not end just yet. You actually think that hip-hop fails to articulate a "sense of place." Can I then conclude that the songs are as accurate in their description of where you live as they might be for other areas? Violent? Yes. Sexist? Yes. But lacking in a sense of place?
At some points your writings do leave me beyond wor....
When posting on a public forum, our opinions are bound to clash, we all have different tastes and (dis)like different things, more so when it comes to discussing sensitive issues like religion or questions of race. Please, try not to personalize your comments and agree to disagree.
i think there are many members here who have wonderful musical taste. i wasn't implying that i'm above the rest, please - get real. somebody in here asked me what i listen to because he was baffled by my hip hop criticism, so that comment addressed him.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
Ghideon calls me blatantly arrogant. i said elsewhere that ad hominem is an indication that either you lost the argument or don't have one. in your case, both are true.
and yes, hip hop lacks a sense of place, i know what i said. hip hop doesn't capture the struggle of hard working families in the city or the myriad of individuals railing against the ghetto raging outside their windows, like parents working two-three jobs to keep their kid out of public schools where hip hop infestation is writ large. students are fighting back by reading books, doing their homework, taking the advice of teachers and parents, and working after school. they're "showing up" and have formulated goals. you want to sit there and suggest the term ,"ghetto," comprises an entire city of degenerates that's somehow captured by the gangsta rap and hip hop. hip hop is not nor will it ever be the mouthpiece for ghettos (it's more concerned with bling bling anyway) so i strongly disagree. there are many pockets of good works going on that's not reported in the smut music. in fact, the music distorts the reality. but how would i know anything about ghetto life? i'm a white guy from the suburbs.
to be honest with you - and i'm not saying this facetiously, i still don't quite grasp your argument - you're all over the map and that's at least partly because your thinking is intoxicated by relativism, which i've discussed in great detail above. so there's a tendency in you to lack a center, a core. you say you're deconstructing this argument? how? you take a position and in the next statement recoil. in between you invoke, "know thyself." but socrates didn't mean that we shouldn't have an opinion about things - he believed we should make informed judgments. my judgments are informed, yours are wishy washy, but wishy-washy doesn't come closer to the Socratic ideal. keep in mind that it was Socrates student Plato who wrote The Republic that called for censorship (and to think if plato could see hip hop! :eek:). you bring up socrates, have does that adage pertain to this discussion exactly? and do you even know about deconstruction? you have a tendency to sprinkle your posts with terms and big names, so i'm just checking again, because you still havn't clarified your statements on emerson and thoreau. i assume you're talking about Jacques Derrida's deconstruction, yes? how do you "deconstruct" this hip hop issue?
i assure you that any lyrics i made up in this thread are far less distasteful than the hip hop smut out there. a'ight?
gideon says
"Is there anything that anybody could ever say and I mean this. Is there any author or govt official or priest or spiritual leader or artist or classical musician or poet who could help you finally wise up?"
that's quite gratuitous, don't you think? to suggest that i'm pig-headed just because i disagree with your intellectualization call to more closely examine the causalities of hip hop is wrong. it doesn't mean i already haven't considered such.
My friend, you may wonder what I would do, but, you would be sorely wrong. I would never espouse the censoring of anything not directly harmful to a person. I believe in freedom of speech. Anyone can say anything they want to or about anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
In fact, I find it personally offensive you would suggest that I would do such a thing. In the future, please do not presume to assume to know what I would do, and I won't presume to know what you would do, which I have not in a single one of my posts done. I have only responded to the words you put on the proverbial paper.
I will say here that I think perhaps things have gotten a little heated and a little personal, but this censorship idea seems to be the unspoken center of this thread, at least to me. I, for one, have no problem admitting that the misogyny and violence espoused by rap music is no way to live. I do not listen to rap music myself, but I also do not believe that something such as 'art' can be accurately defined; meaning defined in a way that brings common consensus, thus art, I think, is much like treasure, meaning it can be another man's trash.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
In any case, I think we have hit the main issue of importance here. Hip-hop censorship, which is the part of your posts, Jon, that I find the most disturbing, and quite frankly I would call them at the very least tyrannical. Hopefully you are not.
Howver, the one thing I would ask you, beyond everything that has been mentioned here, what gives you the right to censor something that is so obviously freedom of speech, and so obviously defended by over two hundred years of legal jurisprudence, defended by a legal tradition that is upheld by not only the world's oldest existing Republic (and not Plato's Republic, but the real one) but also the world's second oldest government (not country, obviously, but only England's government has a longer continuous existence in its modern form than that of the United States)?
You have discussed at long length the evil of relativism, and pure relativism is indeed evil, but have you ever considered the evil of pure objectivism? This is the evil that drives empires, crushes men, lays low great societies, tortures men, punishes intellectuals and turns scientists into slaves dedicated not to improvement, but to the creation of war machines. I have asked you before and I ask you again, what gives you the right to make your absolutist statements? Plato? His Republic wouldn't last a second in the real world, and consequently his Republic is not ours. What makes your arbitration of taste the ultimate one? Or maybe I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?
I hope this doesn't come as a personal attack because it is not intended to be, but you have recomended to total censorship of whole volumes of human thought and history, ugly as they may be, and have said that the world would be better off without remembering some of the ugly scars that have taught us the pain of our mutual struggle to come to where we exist today. What gives you the right to say that something is so harmful that we must pretend that it never occurred, for surely erasing documents that shed light on the history of something that actually happened in a non-relativist, very absolute way would be nothing more than pretending? What gives you the similar right to pretend that what people say and consume today isn't important to understanding the people who identify themselves with it?
I can understand that we all have our own definitions of art, and I will defend mine as everyone here has defended theirs. In fact, it is the very thesis of my argument that everyone creates their own definition of art. 'Art' is not a tree. It has no leaves to whisper in the breeze. It is not green, or brown, or even any color. It is an abstract concept created in the mind of man. Indeed, the very word comes from 'artifice' meaning something created. I feel to regard art in any other way is to sell it short of something. There may be art we dislike, art we consider better than others, art we consider trash. I have hated many pieces of art in my time, and even said I don't consider 'x' to be art, but the truth is that someone else inevitably will. As a result I have given up attempting a definition of art, because whenever I do I find it irreconcilable to the other myriad of personal definitions people hold, and why is that? It is because art is like the image of God. We all have one, be He a kindly man with a white beard, a nebulous ball of light or simply a black void of non-existence. Who knows which is better or worse (of course, each will inevitably have its partisans whose rights to free disagreement are protected under the same Amendment which prohibits your cesnorship). At least we've stopped killing one another over it, for the most part.
Art is not a mathematical equation, and y never equals x because none of us play the game with the same variables, and the moment we try to fix those variables, the moment we attempt to FORCE our ideas upon another we have lost that essentialy individual thing that powers great artists to transcend the normal and the banal. By denying the freedom of hip-hop to be coarse you deny the freedom of the impressionist to paint a shadow green, the jazz musician to improvise and the author to write a stream of conscious narrative that breaks the rules of literary narration.
Hip-hop as it lives today may be untenably rude and vulgar, but its rudeness and vulgarity is an expression of a segment of our culture. It may not be a pretty segment, it may not even be an acceptable one, but it is one that exists and closing one's eyes to it does not make it go away. You can not fight it with a blindfold or fingers in your ear. Outlawing it legitimizes its form, it gives it a forum (again I refer you to the great Salon des Refuses in both its year of inception and the later years of its tradition) from which to proclaim that society is afraid of its raw 'truth' when its raw 'truth' is nothing more than the self-indulgence of a few angry men trying to posture themselves into what they perceive as greatness. This is one of those things that if killed will live on to choke its enemies when they are finally forced to eat it. You can never understand something you kill out of fear and disgust, and you can never end something that you refuse to look at. Our problems will live on if not in rap music than in something else. All things must be created, and they are created not because someone decided they should, but because they complete an idea someone felt needed to be completed. It is the idea that may be bad, but not the medium it is expressed in. An idea can only be negated once it is understood and once its adherents are shown a better way, which they never will come to see if led to it by a nose ring like a recalcitrint ox on a yoke.
And by the way, Jon, I like music you would describe as having 'class' too. As I have said before, I don't listen to hip-hop for the very reasons Kilted Exile said he does not. I don't like it. I don't like its message, and I don't like the content. I prefer jazz, the blues, a little bit of bluegrass, some oldies and even on occasion a bit of doo-wop, which I think is as far from rap as you can get. Just listening to music with 'class' does not confer a right to sit in judgement over the music of someone else. Elitism is not necesarily a bad thing, but much like absolutism and relativism it is something best taken in strides.
Wow.
There is nothing that I can add to the above. I once was told that a writer is someone "who has something to say and a way to say it." There is nothing more I can add in terms of insight regarding the advocacy of censorship. Nor is there anything I can add that would make the above statement more eloquent. It has all been said and said well. I offer my deep thanks to the individual who posted the above Sheyk Abdullah. I now have an example of an argument that is both sound, persuasive and written with heart. Quite good.
I have gone from feeling:crash: :brickwall
:argue: :rage: in this forum.
to;) and that is quite a nice way to feel on a rather chilly Oakland night.
i already discussed in great detail that absolute freedom of speech is a chimera. i'm not going to repeat that one again. you have a duty to read people's posts before making such remarks. wonderful rhetorical flare though. and the hip hoppers will pay homage to your fanatical spirit of freedom, however illusory it is.
abdullah
In fact, I find it personally offensive you would suggest that I would do such a thing. In the future, please do not presume to assume to know what I would do, and I won't presume to know what you would do, which I have not in a single one of my posts done. I have only responded to the words you put on the proverbial paper.[/B]
i presume what you would do based on the comments you left here. it's called an educated guess. isn't that part of my right to say "anything i want to or about anything"? or do you deny me that freedom that i cannot deny gangsta rappers who demonize cops and hip hoppers who make women out to be objectified meat? c'mon.
abdullah
I will say here that I think perhaps things have gotten a little heated and a little personal, but this censorship idea seems to be the unspoken center of this thread, at least to me. I, for one, have no problem admitting that the misogyny and violence espoused by rap music is no way to live. I do not listen to rap music myself, but I also do not believe that something such as 'art' can be accurately defined; meaning defined in a way that brings common consensus, thus art, I think, is much like treasure, meaning it can be another man's trash.
i've already made my case that hip hop is not "art." well, like i said earlier, if art can't be defined then "exploitation" can't be defined when it comes to foreign workers and child labor in a way that can bring common consensus. but the fact is legal interpretations define terms everyday.
abdullah
In any case, I think we have hit the main issue of importance here. Hip-hop censorship, which is the part of your posts, Jon, that I find the most disturbing, and quite frankly I would call them at the very least tyrannical. Hopefully you are not.
jon1jt
that's a wee bit hyperbolic, no? to use the word "tyrannical" to apply to me? i haven't heard that word used in a while. i came across it in the Federalist Papers once as it was used to connote an infrequency of the majority, "Tyranny of the majority." i think it was madison who said such a majority couldn't hijack government because power was divided and dispersed. it reminds me that there's a tyranny of the majority today which sustains hip hop and other egregious modes of expression (e.g. porn) used to disgrace women. and such is relativistic liberalism at work the last half-century, some of which is rehashed here (by you and not me) for edification.
abdullah
Howver, the one thing I would ask you, beyond everything that has been mentioned here, what gives you the right to censor something that is so obviously freedom of speech, and so obviously defended by over two hundred years of legal jurisprudence, defended by a legal tradition that is upheld by not only the world's oldest existing Republic (and not Plato's Republic, but the real one) but also the world's second oldest government (not country, obviously, but only England's government has a longer continuous existence in its modern form than that of the United States)?
what a burst of rhetorical exaltation! but don't you know, speech, both written and spoken, can be subject to government scrutiny? such is known as defamation, seditious libel, slander, etc. there are court-imposed "gag rules" --- also, read Miller v. California for the strict scrutiny test that limits speech.
cont. below
abdullah
You have discussed at long length the evil of relativism, and pure relativism is indeed evil, but have you ever considered the evil of pure objectivism? This is the evil that drives empires, crushes men, lays low great societies, tortures men, punishes intellectuals and turns scientists into slaves dedicated not to improvement, but to the creation of war machines. I have asked you before and I ask you again, what gives you the right to make your absolutist statements? Plato? His Republic wouldn't last a second in the real world, and consequently his Republic is not ours. What makes your arbitration of taste the ultimate one? Or maybe I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?
to answer your question, no, i have never seen a world in which objectivism was tried. neither have you. but i've read enough about it to know that it's no less brutal than the brand that permits the smut we see emulated in schools, on tv, radio, etc. what you present here is nothing more than theoretical speculation. and i have more to go on given the history of relativistic liberalism that reveals numerous examples of an erosion of democratic institutions and culture.
abdullah
but let me get to the part that really raised my eyebrows is your question:
I should say the penultimate, since you concede greatness to the Ancients, and in that case I would ask what makes them, those who had died nearly two thousand years before the founding of our Republic, greater authorities on our laws and our Constitution than we ourselves, than the Supreme Court Justices, one of whom you have quoted?
jon1jt
actually - what raises my eyebrows is your lack of knowledge regarding the literature, particularly the realm of philosphical literature as it pertains to the framers drafting of the declaration of independence and US Constitution. the framers -- particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison -- the producers of those great documents, were quite clear that without the guidance of the nearly two thousand years of history that came before them they could never have fashioned the system's ideological underpinnings in the relatively short time it took in the glorious summer of 1787. ah! just feast your eyes on the correspondence between jefferson-madison-washington and especially madison's notes to the constitutional convention, which are replete with references to solon, pericles, plato, aristotle, alexander, later - theres the age of enlightenment thinkers they borrowed from: montesquieu (spirit of laws); jean jacques rousseau; voltaire; david hume; kant; etc. i can go on and on but you get the point. to suggest that the past didn't inform their judgments or doesn't inform our judgments now is just wrong. i recommend that you read the federalist 10, 56, 78, 84. :lol: even jefferson himself acknowledged that the constitution was "perpetual" in it's need to be reconsidered continuously through history and even in one writing suggested that every 20 years it should be replaced! the constitution was seen then as "evolutionary" in that it adapted to changing circumstances, but that the past would inform the present, always. see USSC decisions, esp. justice reinquist and scalia, which are a major part of the historical record on this subject matter.
abdullah
I hope this doesn't come as a personal attack because it is not intended to be, but you have recomended to total censorship of whole volumes of human thought and history, ugly as they may be, and have said that the world would be better off without remembering some of the ugly scars that have taught us the pain of our mutual struggle to come to where we exist today. What gives you the right to say that something is so harmful that we must pretend that it never occurred, for surely erasing documents that shed light on the history of something that actually happened in a non-relativist, very absolute way would be nothing more than pretending? What gives you the similar right to pretend that what people say and consume today isn't important to understanding the people who identify themselves with it?
look, you want to retain Mein Kampf, then so be it. :lol: i didn't say that we ought to pretend it didn't happen - that's pathetic you would suggest that - i'm not saying ban the teachings, we need that. i raised the issue of whether banning Mein Kampf would fundamentally alter such teaching, and i don't think it would. on another level, i'm keenly interested in those things that extend beyond the sphere of private that pour into the realm of public harm. and i've already discussed the impact Mein Kampf is having on the modern day in the way of parmilitary and neo-nazi groups. you're not reading the posts abdullah and wasting my time. please at least read the postings, not selectively. such takes great effort, but the dialogue will be that more spirited!
abdullah
art we consider trash. I have hated many pieces of art in my time, and even said I don't consider 'x' to be art, but the truth is that someone else inevitably will. As a result I have given up attempting a definition of art, because whenever I do I find it irreconcilable to the other myriad of personal definitions people hold, and why is that? It is because art is like the image of God. We all have one, be He a kindly man with a white beard, a nebulous ball of light or simply a black void of non-existence. Who knows which is better or worse (of course, each will inevitably have its partisans whose rights to free disagreement are protected under the same Amendment which prohibits your cesnorship). At least we've stopped killing one another over it, for the most part. Art is not a mathematical equation, and y never equals x because none of us play the game with the same variables, and the moment we try to fix those variables, the moment we attempt to FORCE our ideas upon another we have lost that essentialy individual thing that powers great artists to transcend the normal and the banal. By denying the freedom of hip-hop to be coarse you deny the freedom of the impressionist to paint a shadow green,the jazz musician to improvise and the author to write a stream of conscious narrative that breaks the rules of literary narration.
jon1jt
the only thing i want to address here is your variant of the slippery slope argument that goes that banning x (hip hop) will necessarily result in banning (y) an impressionist's right to paint a shadow green, etc. here's my formula: apples (x) and oranges (y).
abdullah
]Outlawing it legitimizes its formit gives it a forum (again I refer you to the great Salon des Refuses in both its year of inception and the later years of its tradition) from which to proclaim that society is afraid of its raw 'truth' when its raw 'truth' is nothing more than the self-indulgence of a few angry men trying to posture themselves into what they perceive as greatness. This is one of those things that if killed will live on to choke its enemies when they are finally forced to eat it. You can never understand something you kill out of fear and disgust, and you can never end something that you refuse to look at. Our problems will live on if not in rap music than in something else. All things must be created, and they are created not because someone decided they should, but because they complete an idea someone felt needed to be completed. B]
jon1jt
the last i checked outlawing slavery didn't legitimize owning slaves. tossing hip hop to the gutter from which if came and whence it return won't legitimize anything other than seer into the collective conscious the notion of an irredeemable America which decisively rails against the glory of drug dealers, big money, and objectification of women and that such thinking will not be tolerated in this great country.
you've also spun quite a number of metaphors in your last paragraph, which is wonderful if it was a poem. you do not once CONSIDER the potential or actual public harm (to women, etc), not one sentence devoted to it. you acknowledge the problem but are steadfast against the possibility that hip hop is harmful and whether the government has a compelling state interest in it, to the extent that it's polluting the youth (and sadly, some adults) who listen to it. yes, it's true as you say that problems will always exist. but is that all you can say??? (sigh) we call upon the mechanisms of law and justice to remedy such problems. but your not interested in minimization, only furtherance. that thinking does not help people, that's giving up.
abdullah
[/b]And by the way, Jon, I like music you would describe as having 'class' too. As I have said before, I don't listen to hip-hop for the very reasons Kilted Exile said he does not. I don't like it. I don't like its message, and I don't like the content. I prefer jazz, the blues, a little bit of bluegrass, some oldies and even on occasion a bit of doo-wop, which I think is as far from rap as you can get. Just listening to music with 'class' does not confer a right to sit in judgement over the music of someone else. Elitism is not necesarily a bad thing, but much like absolutism and relativism it is something best taken in strides.[/b]
jon1jt
i think our musical interests suggest that we'd get along just great. :lol: but your idea that i'm being elitist for aforementioned informs me that you didn't read my qualifications on that issue either - another oversight? ...surely as you've done throughout. let me leave you with a rhetorical flourish of my own: in the words of the great kurt vonneguet, "So it goes." :D
i apologize for the page not being bracketed -
if you don't mind me asking ghideon, this sideline display wouldn't in any way suggest that you can't handle being in the arena anymore, now is it? should i just hand the scalps to you then? :DQuote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
Thanks for the reply. Just so there's no misunderstanding, I didn't mean to suggest that you personally did approve of the misogynistic nature of this music. Because your remarks about being reluctant to criticize the violence of young black men came after your remarks about violence toward women though, I thought they were connected points. I can see from your subsequent post that what you were suggesting was that we ought not to unreflectingly dismiss angry young men because they are angry, but should try to look at and understand the roots of their anger. I do agree that race, and poverty and violence are complex issues, and so I agree with you about trying to understand the point of view of people whose experience may be very different from our own (or at least, very different from my own). I can only follow this philosophy of understanding to a point though, especially where violence toward others is concerned.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghideon
This I agree with entirely. Ideally, no violence should be tolerated, though as you sadly and rightly said, this often remains an ideal, since there is no easy end to violence.Quote:
That is, that we make it clear we do not simply have a problem with the violence they are singing about. No. We stand against all acts of violence and that must include the violence that is going on in their communities as well.
I said that I follow your philosophy of understanding this "hip hop" point of view only up to a point, because it does become problematic if taken too far. Instead of only understanding it becomes justification (which I'm not saying you're doing), and there isn't a good justification for gratuitously violent acts against other human beings (as I'm sure you agree).
The other huge problem I have with this line of thinking when carried too far is that it makes this a black and white issue, when in actuality there are many black people who aren't a part of a culture of violence and/or don't want to be (and obviously there are white people who are and do). By getting too caught up in the idea that past wrongs done to black people are the reason for present black youth being fascinated by violence, we run the risk of not only turning this into a justification for violence, but of perpetuating stereotypes by making it sound like the violence of hip hop and rap is somehow a black thing, and representative of black culture. As we've both already suggested, the more violent and objectionable kind of hip hop really doesn't represent black women. If anything it demeans them further. It also doesn't genuinely describe the lifestyle of a lot of black men. I think this is what the Juan Williams article that Virgil posted on the other thread was trying to get at. This kind of music shouldn't be regarded as the cultural statement that represents a whole group of people. On a personal level, I have had black friends from different economic backgrounds (upper middle class suburbs, and poor area of Chicago's south side) tell me that they resent the assumption by people, both black and white, that because of their skin color they in some way identify with thug life as described by rappers or would think it's okay for someone to go around calling them "nigga" or "b****" or "ho." This is not to say that there are not black people for whom this kind of music is a part of their culture, or that there aren't some hip hop songs that honestly represent peoples' experience in less blatently offensive ways, but it seems to me that if you generalize too much that it's only to be expected that black people will sing about violence and even be violent because of their race, that this might become all that people expect from that race (and worse, all that young black men expect of themselves), and that surely is not fair to the many people of color who also come from a background of opression and do their best to live kind and peaceful lives.
You have mentioned a lot of names, gone through a lot of Classical philosophy and even quoted a Supreme Court justice, but you don't seem to be actually proving your point, you just say 'look at this, look at this. I'm right, your rights are an illusion!'Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
Admittedly, you do get mention the case Miller v California lower, and I will address it in its turn.
Say anything you want to. That's fine, but this forum has a policy of not personally offending the posters, and I was just letting you know that you had done just that by assuming to know myself better than I, and I would hope that since I have not offended you, or at least not consciously or intentionally, in the spirit of civilized discourse you would not do the same to me. In any case, I fail to see what part of my comments on this thread have suggested I prefer the freedom of speech of one group over another. If you can point out where, exactly, you think I said that perhaps we could clear up the confusion on why you would think I feel that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I don't see the connection, and I don't think you've made a cohesive argument. Could you explain the realtion between art and labor exploitation? Sometimes I may be a bit slow to grasp something.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I'm sorry I misused my pronouns. I call the idea of censoring hip-hop tyrannical, and not it is not hyperbolic. Any censorship is tyrannical, a usurpation of our freedoms, some of it is necesary, but if it goes too far there is no limit to its rampage.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
Our checks and balances have worked, they have saved us from the censorship you suggest. The fear you have regarding hip-hop is not unlike the fear the Nazis instilled in Germans regarding Communism and the Jews. Of course, your suggestions have a long way to go before that, and will probably not degenerate into genocide, obviously, but any step backward from what we have achieved is a defeat. You would fear-monger about rap until it were thrown into a legal as opposed to a merely social ghetto, and from a social ghetto there is a chance for enlightenment, from a legal one there is only damnation.
The fear of the 'tyranny of the majority' refers to exactly what you are espousing we do, it is designed to be set in place in the event a mob mentality sweeps the nation and that majority shoud USURP the rights of a minority. The framers of our constitution, being the classical liberals that they were, would never have created a document that restricted the free exercise of a citizen's rights. For proof of this one need merely look at the Amendments to our Constitution, and with the exception of the Eighteenth, which was passed on the mob-mentality created by the Temperance unions that alcohol would destroy society if it went unchecked, none of them RESTRICT THE FRANCHISE OF RIGHTS (I put the emphasis because I feel it is important, indeed, central to a Republic and our ideology).
And let me ask another question, how well did that cesnorship of prohibition work? If I remember correctly it created the mob.
Of course I know that, but in order for something to be considered libel or slander it has to be demonstrably false with an intention to harm. Something that is true is NOT slander or libel, and if slander and libel were so easy to prosecute how many tabloids would you expect to be in existence?Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
However, such cases are NOT scrutinized by the gov't. They are civil lawsuits brought against an individual by ANOTHER individual, namely the party who has been slandered. Thus the legal system does not act as a gag over the speech, but as artbitration between a wronged party and its accuser, between two PRIAVTE parties, it does not exercise a censorship function on its OWN BEHALF, and thus does not restrict freedom of speech. We could go back to duels over slander and libel. I don't know I would object.
I have looked the case referred up on wikipedia (I'm sorry, but I lost the website I normally used as a reference for Supreme Court decisions which was a little official. If anyone has it, it is a web-list of all their decisions, I would greatly appreciate it), and it seems to say that a work of art could only be banned under SLAPS; if it has no redeeming scientific, political, literary or artistic value; the thing in question was jusdged to be purient by THE COMMUNITY'S STANDARDS (not national standards, meaning the Fed gov't cannot ban it, and meaning in the Ghetto it can be legal) and the work describes explixitly sexual or excretory functions, which admittedly some rap does.. I would say rap has both social and artistic value, but the last may just be because I am in this matter, as you have accused me of being, a relativist. In any case, I certainly can't see how it doesn't have social value.
Oh, we both have seen a world where objectivism was tried. It was called the USSR. There was no relativism, either you agreed with the objectivist view of the State or you went to a Gulag. Another example was early Communist China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, need I go on?Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
Perhaps I am ignorant regarding the literature, but maybe it's just because agroikos eimi, ten skafen skafen lego. I assume you don't need a translation of this Classical Greek since you are so familiar with the classics.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I don't see anything here that has demonstrated I have a lack of understanding of philisophical documents. I have said that many of their suggestiosn are impractical and antithetical to an American perspective, but they were written over 1500 years ago. To assume they have some supremacy over our Constiution is, to say the least, unprecedented, and not just in a legal sense.
You would not consider a 'reconisderation' of our founding document, you would throw the baby out with the bath water! What freedom is there in censorship? You would have us turn our backs on our entire tradition as a nation, as a country. You have quoted some SC cases so I will cite some, Brandenburg v Ohio which says that inciting another to commit a crime verbally is protected by the First Amendment (exactly why you would censor rap, I believe) . The only speech not protected by the decision is that which supports criminal activity in speech that is likely to incite imminent action, likely to directly cause such action and whether the direct intent is to incite criminal action, and rap's purpose is not to INCITE such action. It may glorify, but it never says 'Go out and rob a bank,' which is required to be banned. In other words, the test fails to ban rap on all three counts. The violent impact of rap is not guaranteed and it will not drive people to crime by just listening to it.
PLease do not insult me. I have read the posts, and such a mentality toward Mein Kampf would be tantamount to what I described. After all, the very knowledge that there was a National Socialist Party could drive people to Naziism, and that's what you want to avoid, right? I think it was a quite logical extension of your argument. You want to avoid negative ideas by destroying the source of those negative ideas. How many negative ideas could we get rid of if we just destroyed history. My reasoning is perfect, flawless. I am taking exactly what you have said your purpose in banning Mein Kampf would be and expounded it.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I assume you do not study history, or have not at a serious level. The one thing that is most important for a Historian to have is as little prejudice as possible. Even when studying the Nazis the historian must not look at them as an evil group, or even as a bad group. Such objectivism does not mean the historian condones the ideas that the group espoused, but it does mean he will be able to understand the events that ocurred as a result of the ideology, and believe it or not, the absence of Mein Kampf, an incredibly important document for the era, would seriously undermine historical attempts to understand the period.
And what you actually raised was not the issue of whether banning Mein Kampf would effect teaching, what you said was;
pg 4, first post, Jon1jtQuote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
Those were the words I responded to. You didn't say anything about teaching, you said the world in general would be a better off place if they were banned because they give rise to hate crime.
It is people that give rise to hate crime, not ideologies. People merely use the ideology as a tool, just like all culture is a tool, that justifies and enables their actions.
[QUOTE=jon1jt;307880]the only thing i want to address here is your variant of the slippery slope argument that goes that banning x (hip hop) will necessarily result in banning (y) an impressionist's right to paint a shadow green, etc. here's my formula: apples (x) and oranges (y).[QUOTE]
There is a relation whether you see it or not. Those art movements in their conception were seen just as degrading as you see rap. They did not spring fully formed into genius out of the artist's head.
Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe was labeled as pronographic smut because he depicted a nude outside the social conventions, his Olympia was threatened with destruction because it protrayed a prostitute in full frontal nudity, unashamed by her profession. Modigliani came uder constant attack for the same vulgarity for his paintings of the female form which were very correct. That is how banning hip-hop strips the art from an artist. Banning one thing considered 'vulgar' inevitably leads to the banning of something else considered 'vulgar' and then you are left with nothing. The things you are saying now about rap are nothing different than what was said of the Impressionists, the Beats (as has been brought up before) and many others.
Of course, the difference now is people call one art and the other crap, but would these same people call the beats art if they had been born seventy-five years ago? Or would they have been campaigning for the censorship of smut? Would they have liked jazz if they were around when it was played in the brothels of New Orleans, or would they ask it be banned for the sake of society, as it was?
Outlawing slave-holding did not legitimize slavery because slavery didn't derive its cachet from illegitimacy. Rap does. Because of that outlawing it would be giving it an endorsement and would say to all of its adherents, 'your country doesn't care about you. It's afraid of you, so feel empowered!' I would rather those people feel empowered because they are taken seriously enough to be understood well enough that their problems, the things enciting them to violence, are solved.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I have been saying all along THE GOVERNMENT HAS NO INTEREST, COMPELLING OR OTHERWISE, IN CENSORSHIP. I did address rap's harmful effects, and I said they are NOT alleviated by censorship, but only by understanding. We do not need a Criminal Code of 1926 such as they in the USSR to eliminate our problems.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
As has been said before, saying "I listen to music that has class" is an elite statement as it implies what you don't listen to is worthless.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
abdullah you ought to read ayn rand's objectivist philosophy who wrote quite extensively and borrowed from aristotle before giving me examples like the USSR and China.
ABDULLAH SAYS,
Outlawing slave-holding did not legitimize slavery because slavery didn't derive its cachet from illegitimacy. Rap does. Because of that outlawing it would be giving it an endorsement and would say to all of its adherents, 'your country doesn't care about you. It's afraid of you, so feel empowered!' I would rather those people feel empowered because they are taken seriously enough to be understood well enough that their problems, the things enciting them to violence, are solved.
jon1jt
i want to respond to this right now briefly, asking whether you are unaware that the United States fought a bloody civil war and it was such a sensitive issue that lincoln himself acknowledged the slave owner ideology and made compromises regarding the institution leading up to it. the slave owner, however, felt as much the "right" to own as the rapper to make his smut. if you don't buy this argument, i recommend glancing John Calhoun's Union and Liberty. scholars today are baffled by it's logical precision in its establishment of a natural, absolute, and inviolable right to own slaves. he was from the south and was removed from Jackson's administration as Vice President - quite interesting. again, you need to learn the history and philosophy before making false analogies.
and your point that i have a superficial understanding of history because i'm not objective in my reading of it is just not true. how do you know my disposition when i read history?? look, everything is perspectival -- even great historians like gordon wood and john keegan (and jacques barzun) acknowledge that. this idea that we can somehow be transcendant eyes perusing the annals is gibberish. i've removed myself in the same spirit as you and the rest, but you deny me the right to have an informed opinion on history, and that's where you're wrong.
and for your info i studied greek for only two semesters and i'll admit not having as much of an interest at the time as latin. i felt latin had more to offer me for where my interests were heading and so took three years of that. so there you have it.
you have made many interesting points that i would like to respond to later when i have the time.
I had to re-register so my name is different. But the man behind it? Still good ol Ghideon.
Jon1: OK. Somebody asked you what you listened to? That is a simple question and could have been answered simply. My feeling is that the list of artists you listen to speaks for itself in terms of what your personal likes and dislikes are. Why did you feel the need to say that your music has "class?" And then, after having written that statement, you now say that you were not implying that your taste was of some higher type then others. Then what were you trying to actually get across to readers when you used that phrase? Certainly you are aware that many people, upon reading a statement "my music has class" is a loaded phrase. Either you were not aware of the likelihood that most readers would make the same inference that I and others have made or you were aware of that likelihood and did not care about it. In the first case you lacked a particular understanding of language and its use in this society. In the second case you did not care if your writing was misunderstood.Quote:
i wasn't implying that i'm above the rest, please - get real. somebody in here asked me what i listen to because he was baffled by my hip hop criticism, so that comment addressed him.
Additionally, since I have read many of your posts in which you have stated that hip-hop is smut and that quite a few other genres are not then I think that most readers would also assume that you believe hip-hop lacks class and other forms, such as the ones you listen to, do have "class". Am I wrong?
I am not responding to any one individual, but reading through this entire thread all I've noticed is the lack of any one persons experiences while they give quote after quote.
I, me, I have lived in violence. When I was 5 my Dad kicked me with steel toed boots b/c I changed the channel on the TV which I wasn't even aware he was watching. (Which led me to believe for a long time afterward that I was deserving of punishment no matter how extreme and it didn't matter if I knew what it was for.) He moved out when I was 8, but up until that point there were many nights of screaming and fighting and all manner of abuse. When I was about 9 or 10, visiting him, he smashed my head and my brother's head against a wall because we were laughing and he couldn't hear the TV over it. My house has been broken into 5 times. 2 of those times we were home. I have been attacked more than once walking home from school. Two of my brothers were mugged. My sister was attacked by a prostitute who thought she was taking her picture. I have had someone banging at our door for over 15 minutes, screaming unitelligibly, and found out later it was b/c they were beaten with a hammer one street over. I have myself, cleaned up after a man and his girlfriend got into a fight with a broken beer bottle. I've helped pack up the belongings of someone who commit suicide after a lifetime of crime and jail. A car drove into a house and hit the gas line, no explosion, and me and my mom going out to see what was going on find a man who had been stabbed over 20 times collapsed in our yard, which was as far as he could make it from the car.
So I say without reservation, ANYTHING that GLORIFIES violence, is NOT ART!!! Any lyrics, in any song, in any genre, or any book, or show or ANYTHING which GLORIFIES THAT(!), is NOT ART!!!!!!!!!!
Do I think it should be censored? Perhaps to your surprise, no, I don't. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. My late pastor taught me that. Our church and it's community groups have fought against drugs, abuse, massage parlours, prostitution, pawn shops, private clubs and fought for better housing, better funding, and more involvement from the actual community. My pastor was very vocal in that people make their own decisions, and should be personally accountable, and believe in God or not, how else could a New York kid who almost died of an overdose, have grown up to be hailed a hero and crusader for those in need in the inner city of Winnipeg? It is by compassion and understanding that a difference will be made. When he found out that a house was dealing drugs in our neighbourhood, he got up early one morning and while trying to think of what to do he opened the Bible randomly hoping for a passage that would say, “go do this . . . or go do that”. What he found was a passage about darkness not existing where there is light. So if the drug dealers are the darkness what is the light? Then it hit him and while it was still early he went and put flyers up all over the neighbourhood 'advertising' for these crack dealers. Boy did it come as a surprise to the dealers when a news crew showed up at their door that morning. That crack house closed down so fast b/c no one would be caught dead going to a house with so much heat. As for music that 'speaks out against' this, it is no doubt going to have controversial content, but to ban it would be to sweep it under the rug. It would be to take everyone living in the midst of terror and abuse and tell them, we don't want to hear about it because it is 'unpleasant'. It would be to take a drug dealer, a hooker, an addict, like one of my brothers, or anyone and tell them you aren't a person to me, in need of love, and consideration and understanding. And who are we to decide who is worth 'saving' and who isn't. Let us not be so quick to judge, ANY music, rap and hip hop included, that denounces such things, is both necessary and ART! Deeply moving and beyond placing a value upon.
One quote I leave you with, not because you will even recognize the person that said it, but because I believe it to be inherently true
"Those who are too timid to embark in some venture of love are finally left on the desert shore of a life without interest or hope. We never live so intensely as when we love strongly. We never realize ourselves so vividly as when we are in the full glow of love for others. Love establishes the fullest intellectual contact with the world about us. It has a passionate desire for full comprehension, whereas selfishness loses interest as soon as it has made the other serve its ends. To understand things and people we must love them.”
-Walter Raushenbusch
Having stated my opinion, I will not be posting on this thread again merely to repeat myself. Thank you for reading.
Why? did you forget your password or something?Quote:
Originally Posted by jgx
Quote:
I can only follow this philosophy of understanding to a point though, especially where violence toward others is concerned.
This is a healthy discussion we are having. When all is said and done ending violence is the most important objective for humanity.
When you say that you can "only follow this philosphy of understanding to a point...when violence towards others is concerned" you actually illustrate the importance of working hard at building bridges between those who act violently and those who are the victims
The issue here is that most victims of violence would say what you have just said. The guy who got shot standing outside a corner store would say the same thing if another person wanted to figure out the deep reasons why someone shot him. I am a Jew and I know that on an emotional level I would not have too much patience for deep understanding of why the Nazis did what they did. And so women also fear that the effort to understand will turn into justification.
Now the crisis this poses is real. The black men who are supporting the violence against women will tell you that they are quite sick and tired of the violence their community is subject to. And both sides in this discussion will be reluctant to listen to each others grievances because what they are fundamentally and emotionally attached to is their condition and not the condition of the 'other'.
Couldn't you very easily imagine a scenario where a person of color gets sick and tired of the violence that has been done to them and really says exactly what you have said, that they really are a hell of alot more concerned with ending it then all this discussion, dialouge, talk and attempts at understanding.
On a fight/flight emotional survival level we are set up to care much more about our own suffering then the suffering of others. And this is most certainly the case when we are being targeted with violence.
Art, for me, is grand because it expresses that which is most human, our ability to think, create, and act in ways that go far beyond core survival modes of fight,eat,drink,sleep. We can create works of such depth, complexity and intensity that art is the affirmation of spirit.
And in that same sense, I have no doubt that humans are capable of reaching out to those very people and communities that they may hate or that may hate them; that they may be attacking or that may be attacking them.
I really see no other way out, other then blood.
We either move forward by building bridges of mutual respect and concern or we build walls, moats and castles with large iron cauldrons of oil to pour on anybody angry, desperate or brave enough to try and scale them.
I have done violence to others. Nothing that has ever resulted in serious injury but that is not what seems so crucial to me. I understand, at least on a personal level(and through the books I have read and the people I have talked to)that those who do violence are the very same who believe firmly in their heart that they have been horribly victimized as well.
If we want to hold on to the one truth that is most dear to me, that all human beings share a granite rock solid core of absolute humanity, then there can be no other explaination for violence other then the one doing it believes and feels it was first done to them.
There are other important points that you raised in your post that deserve attention. I will stop now however and perhaps get to the other points in later posts.
ghideon;)
The other night I wrote a poem and posted it on one of the forum threads. Then I discovered the poetry site that is connected to this one. I went there and logged in and tried to post the poem there. But it did not seem to work; I did not see any box or anything that I should click inorder to post. So I just assumed that I had logged in with the wrong password. I then clicked on the "forgot password" button and after going through the process I got an eight digit number emailed to me that was my new password.
Then I used that password with the same name "ghideon" and on the one hand it told me that I was only a "guest" until I registered. I did not want to register all over again with a different name. So I tried this two other times. Each time it told me I had to register again and when I tried to just go to the "ghideon" control panel with to change things it told me that there was already a user with that user name.
Ugggghhh....:(
Finally, this morn I caved in and created a second self (this is diffenitely vitual land) named jgx with a different email address and a different password. It is ok I guess but I do not know how to still have access to my message center and collection of past posts under the "ghideon" name.
Oh, I did send a "having problems" email to the web administrator and he sent me an email back saying that the poetry site was not working. I guess I am glad to know that now. But, one, I replied to him that, if possible, there should be some way of letting us folks know that. If I had known that my difficulties were because of the site I would never have tried to fix my password.
Also, knowing that the poetry site is not working does not resolve my password/ new identity problem. I wrote another email to him saying this but have not heard back.
Sorry this was not a short answer but I guess I figure that some of the info above is important for some boss type folks to be aware of. As well as me wanting to fix my problem.
(sorry but I guess you are in that boss group...but not really :) ;)
look forward to your reply
ghideon
or am I
jgx?
I don't understand why I need to read Ayn Rand before giving you examples like the USSR and China. Am I not capable of drawing my own opinions from my reading? Is my reading of the subject matter, which has always had an interest for me and thus I can claim to be fairly well read on the issues, moot? Is my understanding of things inferior because I have gotten it from The Gulag Archipelago or Conquest Without War (excerpts of Khrushchev's speeches) and not from The Republic or Fountain Head?Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
I have cited examples of things to back up my statement that the USSR and China we absolutist, but aside from quoting authors you have said nothing to refute them. You have merely claimed I need to read more before stating my opinions.
The absolutism of the afore-mentioned regimes is undeniable. Their jurisprudence of thought-crimes and their belief that any act against Socialism, or any act neutral to Socialism, or any failure to act in its support are acts of political criminality should prove sufficiently that their thought process was comletely absolutist without even the tiniest allowance for realtivism. In fact, I would say that is the definition of absolutist.
Besides, I have read Ayn Rand and I disagree wih her on many things. I believe I have also disagreed with almost every political opinion of Aristotle and Plato (which in truth I disagree with many of their views on government) you have brought up thus far.
However, if you believe the mentioned regimes were not absolutist perhaps you should explain how they were not, even if it requires the reiteration of other's words. After all, I have explained myself in simple enough terms.
I should point out here I made no analogies, false or true, as far as the slavery argument is concerned. You made the analogy. I only pointed out how it is a false one.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
The difference between slavery and rap are the sources they draw their legitimacy from, which is why outlawing one was be effective where outlawing the other will only encourage it.
Slavery drew its justifications from a tradition in the legal system, both legislated and by common interpretation. Rap draws its legitimacy from the street, from its OPPOSING tradition in both society and the legal system. Its current cachet is that it is on the edge, that is scares people. If we outlawed it we would be proving to rappers and their listeners that it is on the edge and that we are afraid of it, the very reasons they participate in the 'hip-hop culture.'
The difference between the two is, again, the source of the legitimacy of each. Just because they were both social questions, and social problems, does not make them the same.
Great historians like Gordon Wood admit they have a prejudiced view of history when they turn back to it, that's true, but the marker of a good historian is the minimilzation of such prejudices. Every historian will inevitably analyze history in a personal way, according to a material dialectic, according to a Hegelian dialectic, etc, but they try as hard as they can to avoid value judgements. As such, they never say such in books "Calligula was evil" or "Hitler was a dark, sinister man who deserved to die, and the allies glorious and they triumphed as justice would have it." Which is the kind of historical analysis required to outlaw historical documents.Quote:
Originally Posted by jon1jt
As to how I know your view of history, it is again from what you said. You said there is no room for relativism, which means there is no room for perspective. If there is not room for relativism, if there is only a righteous truth, then history is not a study of the events of humanity but a morality tale frought with victories and defeats.
You said we should outlaw Mein Kampf because it encourages undesirable ideas and opinions, again not something a historian trained in his discipline (Gordon Wood included) would ever say.
I would also make the interesting point that you are arguing that a perspectival view (relativistic) of history is acceptable, where the same relativism is unacceptable elsewhere. Could you explain why. After all, if there is a moral truth, why is everything perspectival?
As to GimmyDiamond comments, I think they hold the solution to the problem of hip-hop, which you are so concerned with Jon. It is not by ignoring it and illegalizing it that the ideas it currently popularly expresses are overcome, rather it is by the concerted efforts of certain individuals that have the courage to overcome the situation they find themselves in and act. If the person in his story had simply closed up shop and pretended nothing was going on around him, tried to reject the reality of where he lived by maintaining an internal censor he never would have been able to do anything about it and the corruption would continue going on around him.
JGX/Ghideon's post is a perfect example of why we can not censor rap, regardless of how low-brow it is.
GimmyDiamond--I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your experience with this thread, and the wisdom and insight you have managed to take from truly terrible experiences. You have summed up very eloquently some things that I think Ghideon and I have been trying to sort out.Quote:
Originally Posted by GimmyDiamond
Thank you. I think that speaks for itself.Quote:
So I say without reservation, ANYTHING that GLORIFIES violence, is NOT ART!!! Any lyrics, in any song, in any genre, or any book, or show or ANYTHING which GLORIFIES THAT(!), is NOT ART!!!!!!!!!!
Your pastor sounds like a very wise man. We cannot just ignore the darkness, we must see it, acknowledge it, and find a way to shine light upon it. This must be a very difficult thing to do, and I have nothing but admiration for those like your pastor who have the strength to try it.Quote:
Do I think it should be censored? Perhaps to your surprise, no, I don't. Darkness cannot exist where there is light. My late pastor taught me that...
I am in complete agreement with this as well. I do not have a problem with lyrics that describe hard or "unpleasant" things in a serious way in order to bring these problems "into the light" as you might say. Thank you so much for this heartfelt and thoughtful post.Quote:
As for music that 'speaks out against' this, it is no doubt going to have controversial content, but to ban it would be to sweep it under the rug. It would be to take everyone living in the midst of terror and abuse and tell them, we don't want to hear about it because it is 'unpleasant'. It would be to take a drug dealer, a hooker, an addict, like one of my brothers, or anyone and tell them you aren't a person to me, in need of love, and consideration and understanding. And who are we to decide who is worth 'saving' and who isn't. Let us not be so quick to judge, ANY music, rap and hip hop included, that denounces such things, is both necessary and ART! Deeply moving and beyond placing a value upon.