It is the vogue of this doctrine (exclusive national sovereignty) or dogma that presents the strongest barrier to the effective formation of an international mind which alone agrees with the moving forces of present-day labor, commerce, science, art, and religion.

Third - it is in the democracy of ideas bounded by an experimental attitude which subjects specific inquiries to detailed analysis, that the collective cultural progress is best assured.  It is not to theological and metaphysical systems, based on logical conclusions drawn from unprovable assumptions, that man is to resort.  Rather, it is to the community of educated and inquiring minds, who cling to no absolute dogmas but rather accept any proposition as only  "provisionally" true, and that only so long as its immediate, practical and physical benefits can be observed, that man's hope should cling.

The democracy of ideas is best served when it is universal.  Hence, the fellowship of thinkers, commerce, science, politics and art must be transnational and of ultimate authority.  It is a collective subordination based upon mutual respect and common doubt.  Here is man's future, his confidence and his destiny.

It's taken a hundred years or so, but apparently Dewey's thought is triumphing in virtually every sphere.  That it is a pleasing building built on the shoddiest of foundations is so apparent as to appear to be self-evident.  At no stage of human endeavor has any of these three assumptions proved of more than transitory worth.  What Dewey hopes to achieve in the trans-national arena has never worked in the least hamlet or province.  Whenever it has been attempted, invariably there has arisen the need to keep the cats herded together in their explorations.  Some things, as Karl Polyani pointed out, are not acceptable for consideration in the halls where objective science is supposedly the rule.  Governments have a habit of dictating the agenda of allowable options.  Regardless of the attempt and the prettiness of the picture, man is after all, not so much a product of his culture as he is, in last resort, a being who will promote his own good over the welfare of his fellows  and whose highest aspirations are not noble, but selfish.  His culture will reflect these values, whether in the town square or in the halls of the United Nations.  The best good will attain to an individual community when it has maximum freedom to pursue its own agendas as long as it is not artificially protected from the consequences of its own decisions.

Given that premise, the idea of ever larger communities is actually the means by which control by a few is most promoted.  If we have "too much government" now... how much more is Dewey's "international Mind" to be feared.

100 reasons why we shouldn't panic:

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/146138

View:  Overlook at Covenant Village, Pa. 01/09/09

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from a Christian student group that had been denied recognition by a public law school in California for excluding homosexuals and nonbelievers. The case pits anti-discrimination principles against religious freedom.

via www.nytimes.com

Freedom of Religion in a "progressive society"!

Every group has the "right" to determine the rules of membership for its own body. What this kind of situation demonstrates is that the danger of ideological totalitarianism is more of a threat from the so-called liberal side of the culture than it is from the so-called "fundamentalist" right-wingers.

It's not just Christians who should oppose this kind of stuff. Freedom of Religion is intimately related with Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Assembly. They all stand or fall together. It is not all that long a step from assuming the power to discriminate against Christians based on their beliefs and rounding up all dissenters under the guise of "national security" or "eugenic purity."

Psalm 131:1-3 LORD, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me.  2 Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, Like a weaned child with his mother; Like a weaned child is my soul within me.  3 O Israel, hope in the LORD From this time forth and forever. 

A quiet soul is a gift of God. 

The glow of sunset added shimmering sparkles to the wind-whipped waters of Lake Ontario but it did nothing to soften the chill factor.  Occasional showers were more soft mist than torrents.  The clouds were low and dark. 

Some might have considered it gloomy... and maybe it was... but gloom can have its own charm.

There was a great tension in the moment.  The golden hue'd sunset seemed at odds with the foreboding clouds and showers and that had its effect on the emotions.  The human soul cries out for such tensions to be relieved.  Like the open musical cadence which tugs at our ears until harmonically resolved, so the inconsistent glory of the sunset called for balance from the surrounding sky.... but none was forthcoming.

I don't think it too much of a stretch to trace this same yearning for resolution to other, more transcendent topics also.  I don't think humans can truly be "at home" in this fallen world because of this trait.  We want resolution to the tensions of our lives.  We want to know that the discordant notes of evil resolve into the harmonies of justice.  We wonder how beauty can coexist with so much sordidness, and seemingly only be understood and valued in the contrast.  We wonder about the infinite but we fear what it implies about our own insignificance.

At no point, in this life do these tensions truly ease.  From our youngest inquiry to our oldest musing, the questions really don't change... they just present themselves in greater complexity. 

In the face of such unanswerable questions, how can the soul find rest?  Is it possible to ever be at peace when we are immersed in paradox? Well, .... yes.

The psalmist has discovered the great secret of life... he has discovered that hidden island of peace in the midst of life's ocean of peril.  He has contented himself with what he CAN know and has learned not to occupy himself with questions too profound for his understanding.  "My ways are not your ways" the Lord GOD said.  It is enough to know that all seeming paradoxes find their yea and amen in Him.  It is comforting to know that evil has an answer, that beauty is eternal and that the colors of the sunset are the promise of tomorrow in the face of today's darkness.  When Jesus said that we must have the faith of a child, he was pointing at this simple assurance... that God is God, that we are not, and that there are things that we must accept without fully comprehending.  The finite never attains the infinite. 

To be at peace requires only that we cease striving and know... that... He is God.

One of the great benefits of being a grandparent is that one can do the things one always wanted to do as a kid and excuse it as "showing the kids a good time."  Sometimes the kids even enjoy it too.

Trains were made for little boys.  Ranking right up there alongside watching a campfire, the mesmerizing effect of watching a train pass is genetically ingrained in the masculine DNA.  Most of the grand old steam engines were gone when I was a kid.  The really big ones worked all through World War II but were fazed out starting shortly after that war ended.  By the time I was five or six, just the age for fascination, diesels reigned supreme.  Many times, late at night, though it was about 3 miles away,  I could hear the midnight run pulling on down to the station, running from Meridian through Hattiesburg to points well south.  It was all freight, coal, timber and Masonite products from the plant in Laurel, but that only made for a more full bodied melody.  The passenger run, the Crescent flying down to New Orleans from Washington, D. C. pulled through Hattiesburg at 4:30 pm and the sound was inaudible above the daytime noise.  Passenger trains sing high tenor anyway.  Freight trains, with a 100 cars in tow, are all bass with a nice, steady clackity-clack rhythm keeping every thing honest.

But, as is common with greying memories, I digress.  Being a grand-parent ("paw-paw" in steadfast consistency with my Southern roots), I considered it absolutely essential to a well rounded education that my three grand-girls, two grandsons and their respective fathers, be presented at court at the Baltimore & Ohio Rail Road Museum in Baltimore.  I am not entirely sure if they loved it as much as I did... but that is entirely irrelevant.  It was necessary.... 

Anytime I am sandwiched between three big rigs on highway 83 heading North out of Knoxville, my nostalgia for the old days of railroad pre-eminence reaches full blast.  It is a shame that these kids will never really have the opportunity to sit on the river bank, next to a trestle, and simply dream along with the lumbering cars.  Their life is more attuned to the highway: frenetic, chaotic and pulse pounding.  A train is melancholy, wistful and dreamy.  It's the stuff of summer afternoons, warm and lazy, with "nothing to do" as the highest ambition and crowning glory of childhood.  That life seems as far away and alien as Jupiter now.

But at the museum, looking at those marvelous exhibits, touching the grand old beasts, picturing them in their glory, belching smoke and steam, it was almost like being on the old Leaf River again...  I commend the experience and the museum to all of those whose soul is not quite dead yet... for whom romance is forever linked to works of art posing as locomotives, who can hear a song in a whistle.

Listen to Pierrot Lunaire here! (The occasion for this post)

Entering into the dark domains of musical criticism is a surefire means of arousing contempt no matter what position one takes nor the degree of actual expertise that one possesses in advancing it.  As to the latter, actual expertise, I offer no defense or apology.  In formal academic, specialized knowledge, I have little to none.  My only qualifications consist in a lifetime of varied musical exposure, appreciation and some degree of personal probing.  I am a bit beyond the "I know what I like..." attitude when it comes to art but no one would ever mistake me for an expert... on much of anything.

However I am convinced of one basic premise.  Music is communication beyond words though obviously words may be included.  Something basic goes on in the human animal when music is encountered.  The physical phenomenon of "resonance" seems metaphorically appropriate to describe it in my mind.  Something in our psyche "resonates" in conformity with or in response to sounds ordered in such a way as to be called music.  It is more than rhythm, motifs, melody, cadence, etc.  It is the aroused response, perhaps necessary and inevitable, evoked by those sounds that gains the appropriate emotional framework in the listener.  A hymn works to orient a person's emotional being to that which should correspond to the tone and intent of the lyrics.  One does not lull a baby to sleep with a Sousa march.... but one does sense the surge of patriotic feeling that perhaps inclines us to join the ranks and advance to the Cause.  Music does this far more efficiently than a ranting demagogue.

But from the days of Pythagoras to the present, the question "what is music?" has plagued and confounded virtually everyone who tries to nail the subject down.  Is there a difference between the sounds we call "music" and the sounds we encounter on a busy urban street?  Some would say "No" - I am of the opinion "Yes".

To me, as I previously stated, music is communication... it is emotional language conveyed in sound as painting is emotional language conveyed in the visible.  If so, there has to be some controls on the sound such that actual communication is achieved.  And here is where the arrows start flying.  To me, communication cannot happen if a mutual structure for intelligibility is not granted.  I and the speaker have to understand English before communication between us occurs in that language.  There is a fundamental parallel in music.

But music does not directly impinge on the intellect as spoken languages do.  Spoken languages employ symbols, called words, which correspond to intellectually granted concepts (Wittgenstein beware).  Music appeals to the emotional responses and seeks resonance with them.  Hence, one might say, that any sound which achieves such resonance may therefore be properly called "music."  I would reply "Sometimes, perhaps, but not necessarily."  It is here that another observation is warranted.

Immanuel Kant saw, and I agree, that a basic distinguishing element in the human condition, that which separates us from animals, is that we must see patterns, we must discover order, in the impinging sensations that come at us from the world.  Humans see things in terms of "cause/effect", "physical laws", "moral imperatives."  He observed that life consists of being impacted daily by all kinds of sensations and that automatically humans sort those sensations, categorize them, and discover some kind of order in them.  In short, human kind cannot tolerate chaos even as nature abhors a vacuum.

Here is where I think we begin to see the outlines of how "music" may be used to describe a particular set of impinging sounds.  "Music" requires that the sounds be "ordered" in some intelligible manner such that it will correspond to (hence "resonate" with) the essential human characteristic of requiring order so that we may "understand."  In the chaos of a street, the human mind will automatically reject the majority of sounds such that we "hear" the cry of our child.  We filter out "noise" and seek "meaning". If we are awaiting a trolley we "hear" the distinctive bell as it approaches... otherwise it is rejected. 

We hear "music" when some kind of "order" (which may or may not be to our "taste") is present.  By definition "chaos" is not "order" and hence it cannot function as "music."

Arnold Schoenberg: were his pivotal contributions to the 20th century world of art music?  For that which he is most famous... I would say "no" in the same manner that I would not say that ingesting sand in a sandstorm is the same as tasting a fine single malt scotch.  Just because it impinges the palette does not mean that it is good whiskey, or even whiskey at all.  Schoenberg's atonality is chaos.  Chaos is not music.  It is not an acquired taste... it is, after all, a failure to communicate.

I wonder how the modern phenomenon of “text messaging” is affecting us, especially our kids? 

Functional literacy in adults in the USA, according to a 2004 National Endowment for the Arts study, declined by more than 10% during the twenty years between 1982 & 2002.  An interesting corollary to this statistic is that associated with this decline is a general contempt for the correct spelling or grammar usage.  Those who have their ill use of language brought to their attention generally disparage the correction, usually pointing out that “you know what I meant”.

What seems to be lost on our modern culture is the way language shapes and informs our thinking processes.  The degree to which language enables thought as well as reflects it, is only dimly understood but the synergistic effect is well established.  What should be a concern to us is that poor language skills not only reflect poor thinking capacities but actually hinder or perpetuate them.  The specific thing that concerns me in this meditation is “What does it say about our ability to deal with the language of the Scriptures if the focus of our ordinary communication is through the language of text messaging?”  Quite frankly, it scares me.

Consider the following two examples of teen-age or slightly older,  writing.  The first is from a young soldier in the War Between The States (he just happens to have been a Confederate) and the second is a recent text message that has been slightly altered to protect the identity of the writer.

From the Soldier: 
 I have just read your letter sent by Mr. W.... It was truly encouraging and contains wholesome truth which I hope will prove of benefit to me. Our parting was painful and my heart now saddens at the remembrance of it. Never had the circumstances been the same. Our family circle had, by the hand of providence, been rendered happy and social, but the same hand by other causes has caused us to be separated perhaps forever. This is kept hidden in the future. I had just made up my mind to settle in Shelby to return to my once loved home to ....(illegible), and do every thing in my power to make my mother happy. For god knows her latter days on earth ought to be blessed with happiness, for she has seen trouble. But providence has ordered otherwise and we must submit with all humbleness. My motto has ever been to do the best I could under all circumstance. My purpose is to do the very best I can and do my duty.        I have been protected before by a higher power when danger was nigh and I have been thankful for it. Not as much as I should have been. I have at times been led astray and have wandered from the path of duty. I hope to be humbler, live a better life and love God more. I pray his protection in the hour of danger and his deliverance from disease death and the cursing influences of camp life. I pray to live to the good and be of service to my country. I pray to get back home to comfort my poor mother and make her happy. I pray to live the life of a Christian and after the war is over and my country free and my labors on earth completed, I pray to die the death of all humble followers of Christ.

Now the text message:   lol ....  SRY.... im goin hme and thats it. u have ur frnd at least...

Now, other than the obvious difference in length, notice the degree to which these two individuals, though in the same general age class, are able to express thought and the extent to which simple “fact” in the latter and “analysis” or “contemplation” in the former, is the focus.  Notice how the first reflects a “thinking” individual who is seriously contemplating the great question of how the “same hand” of Providence can at once bring the greatest happiness and then the greatest of sorrow.  Notice how, in the second, the emphasis is confined to the “now” of what is happening and how that might affect the way they “feel” at the moment.  It is purely experiential.  The two examples reflect two entirely different approaches to living and dealing with the world.  Which, do you think, is better equipped to receive the truths of Scripture?

If language is understood as being primarily the means of communicating “fact” or “information” then the structure of language and the manner in which it is communicated is subordinated to that end.  When this is the case there is little reason to care how it is used as long as it accomplishes its purpose.  When you read a phone book there is no demand placed on us to enter into the thoughts of the writer.  It is what it is.  But God didn’t write the Scriptures as one would write a phone book.  God wrote in such a way that people gain understanding by reading it.  A mind trained, by whatever social or cultural constraints, to think only in terms of fact will have great difficulty in rising to the truth of God’s Word and will be more than a little hampered in communicating it to others.

I think that it is our Christian duty to be aware of the cultural shifts that technology is bringing to our culture.  I am not advocating that we remove the cell phones & Iphones & FaceBook pages from our young folk, unless we are prepared to put a whole different life style in place for them - like removing our families to a commune somewhere.  But I am proposing that we, as parents, and as the Church, need to seriously undertake to help our young folks THINK by requiring them to EXPRESS themselves in a coherent and disciplined manner.  Perhaps we should even require them to write papers on why they should be allowed to keep their cell phones. 

Think of it as pre-evangelism - the equipping of minds with the tools they need to understand the Gospel.

I would be interested to hear your reaction.  (No text messaging please... LOL)