How are Americans Pioneers?

[JBI]

...in order to suggest that Americans were especially pioneering - actually or metaphorically - you'd have to show that they produced more of this kind of stuff than any other nation.

Considering America's relative youth as a nation in comparison to England... to say nothing of China... this might be a bit of a stretch. I do suggest that there is a certain pioneering spirit in the US as an inherent result of the manner is which it is a nation of immigrants. When one considers what it takes to migrate to another nation, leaving your native culture, family, friends... even your language behind, one must recognize that immigrants are certainly rather motivated individuals. This is something they undoubtedly brought to the nation... and I'll note that historically, a great many of the most dynamic cultures were those which had such an influx of outside influences. It is thus sadly comic that so many Americans... often children or grandchildren of immigrants themselves... have grown increasingly isolationist and hostile to "outsiders".

It's the frontier that is both the father and the killer. As people came, opportunities widened with the spreading America, as it pushed westward - economic opportunities, coupled with cultural and innovative creations moved with them - music, for instance, changed with the changing landscape - money was brought in, and immigrants found a new prosperity.

Of course, the frontier sort of was swallowed, and in the world the new frontier has opened up, as American vision of police and developer of the world grew with the frontier - to the moon even. Mexico was largely swallowed by the US, but even more recently influence in all nations has taken hold - the central idea has remained the same.

The problem comes when the backlash hits. Simply put, the frontier has become to wide - like a modern day Rome, the spirit cannot hold, and the backlash is an economic disaster - the frontiers in China, for instance, care not for the identity - they just care for the profit. Likewise, in Canada, generally the sentiment is we like you if you pay, but if you have no money to buy our stuff, we wouldn't mind selling it to someone who could.

The vision of the collective identity, and the pioneer spirit was unable to pass the eventually established border, and as a result, we have this so called "economic recession."


What to me seems the centre of the pioneer spirit, which is something taken in by Fitzgerald and Willa Cather, is something of a faith in the coming prosperity in the expansion - that conquering the frontier will bring a new prosperity - it is the general attitude that really stands behind the war ethos (if not the wars themselves, as they are products of another mentality) and creates the image of the noble, flag planting soldier which dominates cinema. Is it a myth, or does it have ignoble repercussions? Generally that is the attitude - some are left behind, others paved to make way, and others still used as pawns - but the spirit, in its innocent phases, seems the lasting effect of an American vision, which is ultimately unique to itself, and the basis of the whole culture. If I were to make comment, I would suggest that the 1860s were the real time of independence for the US (or at least the white, anglo half of it). And that the earlier wig-wearing independence seekers were still more or less colonial subjects, with some of them anticipating the boom that would follow.

[Emil Miller]

I didn't say it was an impact that everyone would consider beneficial. But, consider, apart from staying in your house all day, when's the last time you got through twenty-four hours without hearing an electric guitar? How much money do you think is generated each hour directly or indirectly by the use of the electric guitar? You, Brian, often refer to 'teenagers of all ages' and the way in which their tastes dictate so much in the world. What would you say was the single most potent agent in the development of that cult of eternal adolescence? I'd suggest it was the electric guitar.

The senior politicians - left and right - who now run for office are the children of the sixties and seventies. They understand the power of electric guitar music - the resonance and the associations it has for their prospective voters. Sarah Palin, who's about as reactionary and conservative as it's possible to be within mainstream US politics - used Barracuda - a mundane rock song screaming with electric guitars - as her rally theme. Clinton used a Fleetwood Mac song. All of them want to get rock stars on their campaign platform. There are very few clarinettists up there with them.

The electric guitar is at the root of many aspects of the modern world, because it was the focus for the very phenomenon on which you blame several of the world's ills - the cult of adolescence. Whether or not that cult is a good thing is open to debate (I tend to think some growing up would be a good idea), but it's certainly a fundamental paradigm in the modern world, and it couldn't have happened without the economic and cultural power with which teenagers were invested in the sixties, and which they expressed through the Les Paul and the Stratocaster.

To answer your question I can honestly say that I seldom subject myself to the sound of an electric guitar.The difference between culture and 'pop culture' is that one evolves naturally and the other is manufactured by business men, propagated by the media and encouraged by politicians, all of whom have either material or political reasons for doing so.
The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen. I think it goes without saying that I am not of their number. Apart from the wider social implications, I find the whole concept infantile and embarrassing.
A colleague once said in relation to pop music: "You can't get away from it nowadays." To which I replied: "That's the general idea, but you can and it's well worth making the effort."
Coming back to the electric guitar, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we went from Les Paul and Mary Ford to this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnm9jTtw7Hg

It's called pop culture, or should that be 'kulcher'?

[JuniperWoolf]

Brian my friend, you are so missing out on some really great music. I'm not even going to argue with you, I'm just going to express my condolences.

[Emil Miller]

Brian my friend, you are so missing out on some really great music. I'm not even going to argue with you, I'm just going to express my condolences.

[BienvenuJDC]

To answer your question I can honestly say that I seldom subject myself to the sound of an electric guitar.The difference between culture and 'pop culture' is that one evolves naturally and the other is manufactured by business men, propagated by the media and encouraged by politicians, all of whom have either material or political reasons for doing so.
The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen. I think it goes without saying that I am not of their number. Apart from the wider social implications, I find the whole concept infantile and embarrassing.
A colleague once said in relation to pop music: "You can't get away from it nowadays." To which I replied: "That's the general idea, but you can and it's well worth making the effort."
Coming back to the electric guitar, I suppose it was only a matter of time before we went from Les Paul and Mary Ford to this:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnm9jTtw7Hg

It's called pop culture, or should that be 'kulcher'?

Brian...I'll just have to comment...that was VERY well said!!

[MarkBastable]

The introduction of the electric guitar has given rise to myriad pop groups warbling in mid-Atlantic accents and often spouting pseudo philosophical nonsense or simply making a noise for anyone who cares to listen

Well, yeah. I'm not saying it's any good. I'm not saying it's any bad. I'm just saying it's absolutely central. It's an invention that occupies a more fundamental position in Western culture than antibiotics or space exploration or religious observance or political fealty. I'm not asking you to like it. On the contrary, I'm saying that the very fact that someone like you is moved to dislike it rather suggests that it's sufficiently important to be disliked. Me - I'm a proponent of it, and even I think it's over-emphasised in our culture.

My argument is not that it's good. It's that it's everywhere.

[Virgil]

If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.

[Haunted]

look no further:

LITNET!!!

[JBI]

If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.

Must suck to be the one holding the camera.

[Scheherazade]

If that isn't pioneering, nothing is.

Pfffftt!

Everybody knows that it was all staged and no man has been to the moon!!!!


Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

[BienvenuJDC]

Pfffftt!

Everybody knows that it was all staged and no man has been to the moon!!!!


Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet!!!

[Emil Miller]

Everyone knows that Al Gore invented the internet!!!

I thought he invented global warming.

[MarkBastable]

Tim Berners-Lee. He went to my school in South London.

[Haunted]

Haunted> But the "world wide web" was invented by a British prof.

yeah but someone has to know what to put on the world wide web or else it's just going to become a giant cobweb.

amazon.com is also a great invention. It turned the Internet into a marketplace. The world wide web has been around for decades but it was just a few dorky researchers/scientists sharing dorky data. Boring.

By the way, who invented html? That's what made websites possible.

[MarkBastable]

0
By the way, who invented html? That's what made websites possible.

I was too glib before. Berners-Lee is generally accepted as having 'invented the web'. But essentially what he did was make the web possible by inventing html. The internet was the domain of geeks and tekkies in academia. Berners-Lee realised a protocol was required that would allow non-technical people to use this method of communication - and that's what html was for.

"I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the Transmission Control Protocol and domain name system ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web."

His real achievement, though, was to see that it would only work if it were universal, and to be universal, it had to be non-commercial. So he didn't copyright it - he just let it out into the world.