HOW I VIEW THE WORLD Basically, I view the world as a place in which various forces, personalized and unpersonalized, act upon/with each other and create various phenomena/forces of their own spawning. I suppose it would be possible to typify these forces as either being "positive" or "negative"; this is not very useful, however. If I want to drop an egg so that it will break, then I could say that the force of gravity is "positive" in the sense that it was the agent for the egg's destruction, an outcome I desired. However, for some force opposed to the sundering of said ovum, the force of gravity could be viewed as "negative". However, this assumes only that: 1. "Positive" = contributes to a desired outcome and "Negative" = contributes to an undesired outcome and 2. That assumption 1 can be agreed upon by those desiring of the two different outcomes. As you can see, this makes an idea of absolutes a little bit difficult. Even if these two assumptions could be satisfied logically, who is to say that the outcome would even be met absolutely? If one desires the egg to cease to be, then how is that to be defined? I hope that this illustrates my point: it is almost impossible (but not absolutely) to have complete correlation of absolutes. I suggest the alternative: the goal of discussion and argument should be to explore the vistas of thought the two practices open to an individual. Conclusions are often less interesting than the thoughts/actions/occurrences that led to them. A good example: if the books in the Biography section of a bookstore merely were lists of names, that would not be too interesting, now would it? Instead, a whole genre of books describing and commenting upon the events in a person's life has flowered. We have an innate desire to know why and how things happened. It follows then that perhaps seeing why and how different ideas can be combined might also be interesting. It would therefore follow that analysis is empty without synthesis, and vice versa. Similarly, a bit of inconsistency in thinking is natural. For instance, though I do not seem to be portraying a very rosy picture for those who believe in absolutes, it does not mean that I do not view the use for absolutes as logical roadsigns as unreasonable. There are even some examples in the physical world of this dichotomy. NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that my lack of knowledge in music theory may have led to an incorrect assumption about the definition of scales and keys. I am attempting to find out more about this, so for now assume the next few lines (marked by *****) are perhaps false. Also, for all you fans of Bertrand Russell, I have a little remark for you immediately following. BEGIN: This is not a sentence. :END ************************************** If someone were to listen to a performer in the Western musical tradition, any accidentals inappropriate to the key would be noticed by a listener brought up in the same tradition, whether that person could describe it as "out of key" or not. However, the existence in other musical traditions of such constructs as pentatonic scale rule out the idea of a universal absolute in music. One could even argue that noise could, in a sense, be considered musical. The distinction lies in the boundaries of the absolutes. If one were to say, "In a musical tradition employing pentatonic scales, seven tonal values within the piece is absolutely inconsistent," then this statement would be logically satisfactory. However, to say "Seven tonal values within a piece is always inconsistent," would not be. ************************************************** We now return to your regularly scheduled diatribe. I hope this demonstrates a valuable lesson I have learned: Be careful with your boundaries. Second Diatribe Return to main page |