Zappa: Was he For or Far from the People?

ExittheLemming wrote: HackettFan wrote: There is nothing necessarily or even predominantly volitional about culture. It is imposed on us by the culture, oftentimes as rather unwilling children. Also, shared indigenous beliefs do not happen of their own accord through some amazing coincidence of converging thought. We get common indigenous beliefs from culture. Common indigenous beliefs are manipulated by culture not the other way around. Now you're on the cusp of 'say what?'. How can a choice to share/disavow a belief or endorse/reject a practice not be voluntary? When you say culture is imposed on us by erm...culture what is it exactly that you think this second culture might conceivably be? Once again, I suspect you mean that when culture is manipulated and distorted for expedient ends by powerful industrial and economic players to control and stifle dissent amongst the populace, that is NOT culture. It's a control mechanism, pure and simple and we might at least both agree on that. It is not even an example of that modern misnomer: 'a culture of manipulation, distortion and expediency' (culture cannot be defined in terms of attributes that are injurious to its adherents e.g. 'a culture of genocide/suicide' would be reductio ad absurdum). The Germans likened culture/bildung as being something like 'the shared fruits of independent thinking' I'm starting to think that the very notion of shared beliefs and practices being healthy is maybe anathema to libertarians? Me?, I'll just stick to being a right of centre hard-nosed Feminazi

No, there's (at minimum) one culture in any given cultural context and it is inherently controlling. That's what culture is: social dominance over individuals. It may be innocuous. It may be occasionally volitional (I was careful not to declare that participation was never volitional), but those opportunities for "choice" are seldom real because of interference from shared indigenous beliefs. Shared indigenous beliefs arise from the culture, not from individuals. If you transplant someone from birth to another geographic region and raise them there, they will exhibit the shared indigenous beliefs of their culture that occupies that geographic region. As I said as well oftentimes, especially during childhood, participation in culture is not volitional at all.

Edited by tamijo - February 23 2015 at 07:21

tamijo wrote: Satire of not supposed to be belived. Its ment to expose certian (often problematic) aspects about something.

I don't think you understand. If a hardcore satirist chooses to be sincere, no-one will ever believe him or her, ergo they can never claim an armistice from ridicule. If they would have us believe 'everything sucks' then the onus is on the artist to offer something in its place that they might deem worthy of respect. (otherwise you're just decorating the dung heap with your own scatological and prurient s.h.i.t ) Perhaps Zappas's more formal 'orchestral' instrumental music is as close to a sincere artistic expression he ever approached in his entire life?

tamijo wrote: If you make hardcore satire, you will attack and offend everyone. Basicly because everyone is redicilous if you expose there "belives" to the extreme. Conservatives will think you are "left", Lefties would call you Conservative, and that is actualy the idear. You will attack systems and belives of any kind, Coverment, Religion, Military ect. ect     Just like "Charli Hebdo"

Hardcore satire, by your definition, makes sincerity impossible so why should we believe them?

HackettFan wrote: There is nothing necessarily or even predominantly volitional about culture. It is imposed on us by the culture, oftentimes as rather unwilling children. Also, shared indigenous beliefs do not happen of their own accord through some amazing coincidence of converging thought. We get common indigenous beliefs from culture. Common indigenous beliefs are manipulated by culture not the other way around.

Now you're on the cusp of 'say what?'. How can a choice to share/disavow a belief or endorse/reject a practice not be voluntary? When you say culture is imposed on us by erm...culture what is it exactly that you think this second culture might conceivably be? Once again, I suspect you mean that when culture is manipulated and distorted for expedient ends by powerful industrial and economic players to control and stifle dissent amongst the populace, that is NOT culture. It's a control mechanism, pure and simple and we might at least both agree on that. It is not even an example of that modern misnomer: 'a culture of manipulation, distortion and expediency' (culture cannot be defined in terms of attributes that are injurious to its adherents e.g. 'a culture of genocide/suicide' would be reductio ad absurdum). The Germans likened culture/bildung as being something like 'the shared fruits of independent thinking' I'm starting to think that the very notion of shared beliefs and practices being healthy is maybe anathema to libertarians? Me?, I'll just stick to being a right of centre hard-nosed Feminazi

Edited by ExittheLemming - February 23 2015 at 00:36

Zappa described himself many times as a 'conservative' yet you would contradict this flatly:

HackettFan wrote: Zappa was not a conservative. Not even remotely conservative.

Does this mean that Zappa completely misunderstood the terms 'liberal' and 'conservative' and required a relatively anonymous music fan on a discussion forum to correct him? I admit that in a country that has never had any credible left wing cultural lineage, the terms are maybe closer in the popular consciousness than Europeans are accustomed to.

HackettFan wrote: I'm not precisely aligned with Zappa politically.

You're not even remotely aligned with Zappa semantically. see above

HackettFan wrote: Cultures ALWAYS blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep. There is no other definition for culture that can make it otherwise.

Just because passive conditioning is the relative norm in the 1st world doesn't impinge on the positive aspects of culture. Any widely acknowledged definition will suffice - Culture: shared indigenous beliefs and voluntary practices. We create our culture, so yep, without resistance, volition and choice everyone gets the one they ultimately deserve. (Yes, Post globalisation we are very limited in what we can do to prevent this by non violent means apart from boycotting products, services and media etc)

HackettFan wrote: It seems to me that what he's critical of is people who simply fall into something, whatever it is, a movement maybe, for purely cultural reasons

You've confused conditioning/brainwashing with culture again I think. I mean, adopting a view or practice purely for cultural reasons is worse than doing something purely for financial or personal gain? Get real matey

HackettFan wrote: I might also add that the hippie movement was not only not a successful political movement. It wasn't a political movement virtually at all. It was always a cultural movement. The advocates for liberal political change were the Politicos. There may have been occasional cross-membership (I use membership loosely), but these two groups should not be conflated.

You continually misunderstand culture by denying it's pivotal role in making any social and political change possible at all. I'm at a loss as to why you restrict it's significance to the realm of ideas and aesthetics only. Everything we think, say or do is ultimately accepted or rejected within our culture. (every revolution started in the head) It should be self-evident that politics would be a non sequiter unless there were shared indigenous beliefs and voluntary practices already in place i.e. people. Culture begets politics and not vice versa.





Edited by ExittheLemming - February 22 2015 at 21:42

HackettFan wrote: Zappa was not a conservative. Not even remotely conservative. He was a liberal libertarian. (A conservative libertarian pays lip service to individualism and such, but really only cares about economic issues). Zappa was always comfortable with the ACLU, for instance. If you call Zappa a conservative, you might as well call Noam Chomsky one too. Both are liberal libertarians. Now what Zappa was not was a collectivist liberal for sure.

"If you care about other people, that’s now a very dangerous idea. If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself. Maybe you can become rich, but you don’t care whether other people’s kids can go to school, or can afford food to eat, or things like that. In the United States, that’s called “libertarian” for some wild reason. I mean, it’s actually highly authoritarian, but that doctrine is extremely important for power systems as a way of atomizing and undermining the public." Noam Chomsky giving anecdotal evidence that if Americans can confuse a conservative with a liberal, they could just as easily confuse an anarcho-syndicalist with garden furniture

Zappa was not a conservative. Not even remotely conservative. He was a liberal libertarian. (A conservative libertarian pays lip service to individualism and such, but really only cares about economic issues). Zappa was always comfortable with the ACLU, for instance. If you call Zappa a conservative, you might as well call Noam Chomsky one too. Both are liberal libertarians. Now what Zappa was not was a collectivist liberal for sure.

SteveG wrote: For politically active people of my generation, Zappa's anti hippie "you are nothing but sheep" stance did not go down well. In the sixties, it would have been impossible for a single individual to protest against social atrocities such as racism and an immoral and illegal war.

Again, this is true. Zappa was not a collectivist liberal. He did, by the way, incorporate anti-war stances in his freak shows. In actuality, I think Zappa was mostly critical of the San Francisco version of the Hippies, kind of thought of them as something comparable to urban cowboys, if you'll allow that analogy.

SteveG wrote: The idea of the counter culture was to NOT blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep. Was it fool proof and always successful? Of course not as nothing of this type ever is.

I think Zappa would plainly disagree with you here. I have to concur with Zappa on this point. Culture or counter culture makes no difference. Cultures ALWAYS blindly follow people and ideologies like sheep. There is no other definition for culture that can make it otherwise.

I should add that I'm not precisely aligned with Zappa politically. I make an effort to strike a balance between collectivist and libertarian approaches to liberalism. I never agreed with Zappa's stance on labor unions, for instance.

Edited by HackettFan - February 22 2015 at 16:50

moshkito wrote: CPicard wrote: "Feminazism"... f**k, that's the most stupid word I ever read on this forum! And that's a lot to say!   Changing the word, since the folks replying here are too feminazi to stay on course with the discussion instead of going sillyputty on a term that was used lightly and not meant to sound anything but "militant", or similar words that are not on my every day vocabulary.   Take your anti-foreign attitudes somewhere else and regurgitate them plz!

My "anti-foreign attitudes"?... Poor moron, I'm French (with Arabian-speaking grand-grand-parents, qui plus est).
Sorry if I have some difficulties to think that "nazi" is a term that can be used "lightly". I guess having heard some jewish friends talking about grand-parents hiding in fear of being deportated in the death camps, having read Maus and that kind of stuff... make me lose my sense of humor.
So, maybe it's that hour of the day when you have to take your pills, the ones which help you to keep in touch in the reality.

Tsss, tsss.

CPicard wrote: "Feminazism"... f**k, that's the most stupid word I ever read on this forum! And that's a lot to say!