narrow spectra
Here's a joke I find funnier if you don't complete the punchline:
During orientation week of my freshman year in college, I heard someone down the hall screaming, "Oh my god, you have every kind of music here!"
Finally. College. Maybe some diversity for a change. (I had unusually high expectations from college. Looking back on it, I see the irony of a guy from Manhattan anticipating greater diversity from the suburbs of Philadelphia.)
I went to investigate. It turns out that "every kind of music" meant everything from the B-52s to Talking Heads to The Police. Not even college radio music. Not even "alternative". Just the same thing the nerdiest mainstreamers listened to in high school. I'm not complaining about any of those bands I just mentioned. I have enjoyed all of them. I just don't consider them to establish a profoundly broad range of styles and tastes.
The tapes I had brought with me (during that part of history when vinyl was on its way out but CDs were not yet common) included jazz, classical, and Indian sitar, as well as a few albums the down-the-hall screamer would have recognized. My roommate was introducing me to California punk. Within a few months, I'd come to know a good range of music and musicians I'd never heard before. But even in college -- even, in other words, during that one time in my life I was encountering people who saw it as part of their duty to expand their awareness and pursue the unfamiliar -- even then and there, most of the people around me would have known exactly what the "everything" screamer had meant, and wouldn't have sympathized remotely with my bemusement.
I signed up to do a college radio show. First-timers had to pair up. I couldn't just have a show of my own. On the application form, I'd put down "blues" as one of the categories I was interested in playing. I got paired with the only other guy who'd written "blues" on his application. All of the musicians I had in mind were black Americans. All of the musicians he had in mind were British white guys.
Am I making a racialist point? A nationalist point? No, my point is that what he meant by "blues" was "blues rock". The "rock" part was just assumed. It had never occurred to him that anyone might mean by "blues" the traditional acoustic music that came out of the old-time Negro South.
In my 20s, I had a girlfriend with a baby boy. Not mine. Somehow or other, the topic of religion came up. Her ex-husband had wanted the boy baptized Catholic. She didn't want him baptized at all. When I asked her why not, she said she wanted to introduce him to all religions and let him decide for himself. ALL religions? Seriously?
No, of course it turned out she meant Catholicism, Protestantism sort of generally, Judaism maybe, Islam maybe. I don't think she'd considered Buddhism or Hinduism. I listed the dozen other religions I could think of, assuring her I was probably forgetting some and ignorant of even more. I suspect what she really meant by "all religions" was (1) papists, (2) non-papists, and (3) atheists.
Most people reading this blog have certainly encountered the political equivalent of these stories. Someone will say they want to hear from "both sides" as if the Left Establishment and the Right Establishment exhaust the possibilities. Even those who talk about the need to hear from "all sides" rarely mean more than 3 or 4.
When F.A. Hayek first visited the United States, he wrote of his great pleasure and relief to be able to discuss advanced economics with his American peers, rather than constantly debating the foundations as he had gotten used to in the Mises Circle. I can sympathize with Hayek's feelings, but of course the advanced economics he was discussing was with people with a narrow sense of the range of options. For the Americans, there was a neoclassical consensus on the intersubjective quantification of value, the proper role of mathematics, and the proper philosophy of science. That's all fine, but did Hayek realize that the advanced theory could all be wrong if the foundational assumptions were wrong?
OK, here's what instigated this ramble on the narrow spectra of assumed options. Before going on vacation, Wally Conger recommended a great science fiction podcast magazine called Escape Pod. I started listening to it over the weekend and I've already clicked the PayPal button to give my support. But this snippet of commentary at the end of one of the podcasts just irritated the hell out of me:
First of all, the very claim that a soldier is acting in the service of his or her country already is a political opinion! Some of us don't see participation in the military as "service" in any way that you're implying. Some of us don't automatically equate the nation with the state. Feel free to do so, but don't pretend you're not taking a position.
In fact, I'm guessing that this guy's stated conditions of respect won't stand up to scrutiny even if we accept all assumptions about nation, state, and service. Does he respect the Chinese soldiers who invaded Tibet? Does he respect the Soviet soldiers who invaded Afghanistan? How about the soldiers under Saddam when he invaded Kuwait? (I'm not mentioning the Germans and Poland for fear I'll be accused of succumbing to Godwin's Law.)
If so -- if our Escape Pod host really does have the highest respect for all these rank-and-file invaders -- then his announcement is a bit chilling ... certainly not the sort of thing I expect to hear tossed in casually at the end of a podcast.
And if not, then he is requiring all of us to start with the position that the invasion of Iraq was less morally reprehensible. Again, that's not putting "all politics and war opinions aside".
Q: What kinda music you got here?I find it funny, but I'd find it funnier if the punchline were just "Both kinds." Period. End of joke.
A: Both kinds: Country AND Western.
During orientation week of my freshman year in college, I heard someone down the hall screaming, "Oh my god, you have every kind of music here!"Finally. College. Maybe some diversity for a change. (I had unusually high expectations from college. Looking back on it, I see the irony of a guy from Manhattan anticipating greater diversity from the suburbs of Philadelphia.)
I went to investigate. It turns out that "every kind of music" meant everything from the B-52s to Talking Heads to The Police. Not even college radio music. Not even "alternative". Just the same thing the nerdiest mainstreamers listened to in high school. I'm not complaining about any of those bands I just mentioned. I have enjoyed all of them. I just don't consider them to establish a profoundly broad range of styles and tastes.
The tapes I had brought with me (during that part of history when vinyl was on its way out but CDs were not yet common) included jazz, classical, and Indian sitar, as well as a few albums the down-the-hall screamer would have recognized. My roommate was introducing me to California punk. Within a few months, I'd come to know a good range of music and musicians I'd never heard before. But even in college -- even, in other words, during that one time in my life I was encountering people who saw it as part of their duty to expand their awareness and pursue the unfamiliar -- even then and there, most of the people around me would have known exactly what the "everything" screamer had meant, and wouldn't have sympathized remotely with my bemusement.
I signed up to do a college radio show. First-timers had to pair up. I couldn't just have a show of my own. On the application form, I'd put down "blues" as one of the categories I was interested in playing. I got paired with the only other guy who'd written "blues" on his application. All of the musicians I had in mind were black Americans. All of the musicians he had in mind were British white guys.
Am I making a racialist point? A nationalist point? No, my point is that what he meant by "blues" was "blues rock". The "rock" part was just assumed. It had never occurred to him that anyone might mean by "blues" the traditional acoustic music that came out of the old-time Negro South.
In my 20s, I had a girlfriend with a baby boy. Not mine. Somehow or other, the topic of religion came up. Her ex-husband had wanted the boy baptized Catholic. She didn't want him baptized at all. When I asked her why not, she said she wanted to introduce him to all religions and let him decide for himself. ALL religions? Seriously?No, of course it turned out she meant Catholicism, Protestantism sort of generally, Judaism maybe, Islam maybe. I don't think she'd considered Buddhism or Hinduism. I listed the dozen other religions I could think of, assuring her I was probably forgetting some and ignorant of even more. I suspect what she really meant by "all religions" was (1) papists, (2) non-papists, and (3) atheists.Most people reading this blog have certainly encountered the political equivalent of these stories. Someone will say they want to hear from "both sides" as if the Left Establishment and the Right Establishment exhaust the possibilities. Even those who talk about the need to hear from "all sides" rarely mean more than 3 or 4.
When F.A. Hayek first visited the United States, he wrote of his great pleasure and relief to be able to discuss advanced economics with his American peers, rather than constantly debating the foundations as he had gotten used to in the Mises Circle. I can sympathize with Hayek's feelings, but of course the advanced economics he was discussing was with people with a narrow sense of the range of options. For the Americans, there was a neoclassical consensus on the intersubjective quantification of value, the proper role of mathematics, and the proper philosophy of science. That's all fine, but did Hayek realize that the advanced theory could all be wrong if the foundational assumptions were wrong?
OK, here's what instigated this ramble on the narrow spectra of assumed options. Before going on vacation, Wally Conger recommended a great science fiction podcast magazine called Escape Pod. I started listening to it over the weekend and I've already clicked the PayPal button to give my support. But this snippet of commentary at the end of one of the podcasts just irritated the hell out of me:Our featured listener this week is Warrant Officer Al Marshal, a longbow Apache Gun Pilot assigned to the 1-101st Aviation Regiment from Fort Campbell Kentucky. Right now he and his comrades are stationed at an airfield a few miles outside Tikrit in Iraq. He's ordered one of our CDs, and of course the military address caught my eye. He tells me he's been listening to podcasts since last spring, and he tells me his favorites are Escape Pod, the books at PodioBooks.com, and Scott Sigler's books. He says there are several soldiers in his unit who listen to audio books and whom he'll be sharing our CD with. Now that I know that, Al, I'll be sending you a few more. All politics and war opinions aside, I have the highest respect for people -- of any nation -- who choose to devote their lives to the service of their country. And if what we're doing here can provide any degree of entertainment and make a hard job marginally easier, it is an honor and a privilege. So thank you, Al. Do good, and stay safe.No, no, no. I'm sorry. You can't combine the concepts of "all politics and war opinions aside" with "people -- of any nation -- who choose to devote their lives to the service of their country."
First of all, the very claim that a soldier is acting in the service of his or her country already is a political opinion! Some of us don't see participation in the military as "service" in any way that you're implying. Some of us don't automatically equate the nation with the state. Feel free to do so, but don't pretend you're not taking a position.In fact, I'm guessing that this guy's stated conditions of respect won't stand up to scrutiny even if we accept all assumptions about nation, state, and service. Does he respect the Chinese soldiers who invaded Tibet? Does he respect the Soviet soldiers who invaded Afghanistan? How about the soldiers under Saddam when he invaded Kuwait? (I'm not mentioning the Germans and Poland for fear I'll be accused of succumbing to Godwin's Law.)
If so -- if our Escape Pod host really does have the highest respect for all these rank-and-file invaders -- then his announcement is a bit chilling ... certainly not the sort of thing I expect to hear tossed in casually at the end of a podcast.
And if not, then he is requiring all of us to start with the position that the invasion of Iraq was less morally reprehensible. Again, that's not putting "all politics and war opinions aside".
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