Remember when this used to be a running blog? I don't, either...
Actually, it's been a little over a month since I discussed exercise in general, and shortly before that I had expressed hope that I would be able to begin training for a marathon.
Well, despite all the silence, I have been running regularly for the past three months. No, not just regularly; rather, I have been steadily increasing my mileage since August. I put in 42 miles of running in August, which is remarkably low by my standards. I followed that by running 50 miles in September. Now, here it is halfway through October and I have already run 50 miles. I've been building my endurance base slowly and comfortably. At this point, I am putting in about seven miles on a daily basis. (Actually a bit more than seven, but a quarter mile here, a quarter mile there...)
So the endurance base is coming along. Yesterday, I even felt like my old marathon-running self again. To adhere to my own 18-week training regimen, I should have a strong endurance base built by this coming Sunday, October 21st.
Having said that, seven miles daily is not quite the endurance base I would prefer for a marathon training regimen. So I am not certain that starting the 18-week plan is right for me at this point. I don't want to risk another injury.
What I would like to do is get up to nine or ten miles daily, and then see where to go from there.
That's the plan, as of today. We shall see how it goes. Fear not, however, I will diligently pull you along for the ride.
2012-10-16
2012-10-15
Movie Review: Seven Psychopaths
Seven Psychopaths tells the story of a Hollywood film writer and possible alcoholic, Marty (Colin Farrell) who is unsuccessfully trying to write a film script entitled "Seven Psychopaths." Along the way, he is "helped" by his best friend, Billy (Sam Rockwell), whose possibly-well-intentioned endeavors to help Marty sober up and finish his script lead to various hijinx.
We, the audience, don't know very much about Billy. He may have a girlfriend. He may be an actor. What we do know is that he lives alone and spends his time stealing dogs from Hollywood denizens with his partner Hans (Christopher Walken), and then returning the dogs to their owners and claiming the reward money offered. The three men wind up in a world of trouble when Billy steals the dog of brutal gangster Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson).
It is difficult to say much more about the plot of the film without giving away important spoilers, so I will try to avoid it.
What I will say is that, while movies like this were once seen as cutting edge - one could fit them in the same genre as the average Guy Ritchie or Quentin Tarantino film - there is something very by-the-numbers about these pictures now. The graphic violence is no longer a shocking counterpoint to the irreverent humor. The irreverent humor is, thanks to movies like Ted, no longer particularly irreverent. What we are left with is a film that wants desperately to be Reservoir Dogs or Kingpin, but instead feels like an episode of Miami Vice.
It's not all bad, of course. There is some strong writing during the first half of the film, and all-star cast delivers many excellent performances. Of particular note is Sam Rockwell, a remarkable actor whose compelling performance provides the backbone for the entire movie. This is really saying something, because it is rare to see someone out-shine Christopher Walken, particularly in a movie like this. Walken, for his part, delivers another strong performance, but his character feels better-suited to a man like Jack Palance. (Then again, who but Walken could be cast in such a role, now that Palance has long since left us?)
The strange thing about all of this is that Colin Farrell plays the lead role. His performance isn't weak, by any means, but this is the second major film release of the year for Farrell, and he has yet to knock one out of the park. His character certainly has a kind of softness not typically seen of a Farrell character, but the audience can't help but feel they're looking at Quaid from Total Recall all over again: A man with a strong jawline, squinting into the situation, unable to understand the events surrounding him. The character feels a little clunky sitting beside the others.
As I mentioned, however, the movie's major shortcoming is its anachronism. Gone are the days of Trainspotting and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Pulp Fiction is nearly twenty years old. The blood-spattered and irreverent comedy genre has out-grown the likes of Seven Psychopaths and has frankly expired. The world of film has moved on. Watching this movie felt like I was staying up past 1:00 A.M. with HBO on in the background. Come to think of it, even HBO airs different material after 1:00 A.M. these days.
Don't get me wrong - I loved the late-90s. But they're over. This was a good movie, but the time for such films has come and gone.
2012-10-13
Rhesus Pieces
Rhesus or Rhêsos (Greek: Ῥῆσος) was a Thracian king who fought on the side of Trojans in Iliad, Book X, where Diomedes and Odysseus stole his team of fine horses during a night raid on the Trojan camp. Homer gives his father as Eioneus— a name otherwise given to the father of Dia, whom Ixion threw into the firepit rather than pay him her bride price. The name may be connected to the historic Eion in western Thrace, at the mouth of the Strymon, and the port of the later Amphipolis. The event portrayed in the Iliad also provides the action of the play Rhesus, transmitted among the plays of Euripides. Scholia to the Iliad episode and the Rhesus agree against Homer's version in giving Rhesus a more heroic stature, incompatible with Homer's version.[1]-- Wikipedia
Rhesus died without engaging in battle.[2]
2012-10-12
Take That, Fatso!
This Nerve piece is akin to arguing that christians are bad lovers because
Jesus told people to "love thy neighbor as thyself." In other words, you
have to basically take some isolated quotes out of context and then
bastardize them in order for the argument to make sense. Rand called
this the fallacy of "context-dropping," but the funny thing about
appreciating what Rand had to say is that it doesn't matter how right
you are. Like the word "fatso," the word "Objectivist" has really just become a literary tool by which we evoke large groups of people to point and laugh at individualists.
That's okay, provided the writer understands it to be what it is: the slapstick equivalent of prose.
Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.
That's okay, provided the writer understands it to be what it is: the slapstick equivalent of prose.
Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.
Politicians, Taxes, And The Fantasy Of Government
I had wanted to eschew political discussion on the blog for a while, and only write on policy issues from an economic perspective. But election day is looming, and all the economics blogs and newspapers are discussing the relative merits/demerits of the so-called "Romney Tax Plan." The always-excellent David Henderson has a typically excellent summary of the relevant economic discussions being had out there. (Let's forget about the direct partisan messaging for now, since it doesn't actually address the relevant issues.)
First, let me use Henderson's most recent piece as a means by which to bring my readers up to speed, if you have not been following economic debate out there. He writes:
What I want to say about it is this...
Quibbling over the details of the Romney tax plan is a lot of nonsense. The issue here is that the government simply spends too much money. No tax reform would be necessary if spending were reduced. Economists who argue for "tax reform" are really throwing in the towel here. The relevant issue is not tax reform, but rather fiscal solvency.
Every economist on Earth (at least every economist I have ever met or read) seems to agree with the proposition that high tax rates in general - and high marginal tax rates in particular - are an impediment to economic growth.
We don't need to argue over anyone's "tax plan" to move the only relevant discussion down the road a few steps. Given that everyone agrees on the fact that there is only so much tax reform can do to establish fiscal solvency, the only issue worth talking about is the matter of reducing the total amount of government monetary expenditures. But that can't happen because US politicians (and probably every other politician out there) has this mental disease where they think they can just get away with creating "policy incentives" to "grow our way out of debt." This is becoming more and more of a fantasy with each passing day.
And by "fantasy," I mean to say that these folks are drunk on the opium of government and don't realize how short their cognitive time-horizon has become. The time for tax reform is gone. The window of opportunity for small, incentive-inducing changes at the margin passed in the late 90s.
My belief here is that the so-called "Great Moderation" was not a period of normalcy, but rather a period of over-employment. In the Austrian sense, I believe we as an economy were consuming capital at an increasing rate without investing it in wealth improving technologies. American companies captured productivity gains from outsourcing low-skill jobs, but we have now reached a point where everything is outsourced except upper management positions. We've captured about all the gains from outsourcing that we possibly can, short of selling off everything for a huge golden parachute and retiring.
Now, obviously, that is precisely what the Baby Boomers intend to do with the American economy. When they retire, then the Hydra will no longer have any heads. Reinvestment will be impossible because all the competitive technology and economic infrastructure will be in the BRICM countries. People my age and younger will either have to build an empire from the ground up, or move to BRICM. I readily admit that the latter option is extremely enticing, and anyone who chooses to do this is acting in their own rational self-interest. By all means, do it while you still can!
But for those who choose to stay in America, the relevant issue is government spending; namely, shrinking it. Forget tax reform. We need to end the wars, shrink the bureaucracy, and scale-back social welfare spending.
The choice is simply this: Either we reduce government spending, or we move to BRICM. The politicians can whine about social "fairness" all they want, but they cannot change basic arithmetic. The current trajectory cannot continue. So, take your pick: Move to China, or learn how to stop asking government to solve your every problem.
First, let me use Henderson's most recent piece as a means by which to bring my readers up to speed, if you have not been following economic debate out there. He writes:
I've discussed this here and here and Garett Jones highlighted Josh Barro's piece on it yesterday. Critics, including Barro, have concluded that the only way Romney can get his 20% across-the-board cut in tax rates, even with limits on deductions and exemptions, is to substantially raise taxes on the middle class. I highlighted Harvey Rosen's contribution to the debate here. The bottom line is that increasing taxes on the middle class is not the only way to achieve Romney's tax cuts.Quoting a recent John Cochrane blog post, Henderson continues:
Finally, Henderson excerpts some additional points made by Alan Reynolds. I encourage readers to check that out, but for my purposes here, it's not necessary.What possible sense does it make, then, to evaluate such a plan by assuming off the bat that it has no effect at all on output, employment, investment and so forth? Yet that is precisely what the standard "static" scoring does! We build a rocket ship to go to the moon, and we evaluate its cost effectiveness by assuming that it never leaves the launch pad?Of course, if you can show that the rocket ship can never leave the launch pad, that's a legitimate criticism of the rocket ship. But you can't just assume it. By the way, check out the comments, including Cochrane's responses to the commenters. Cochrane has some very good content there.
What I want to say about it is this...
Quibbling over the details of the Romney tax plan is a lot of nonsense. The issue here is that the government simply spends too much money. No tax reform would be necessary if spending were reduced. Economists who argue for "tax reform" are really throwing in the towel here. The relevant issue is not tax reform, but rather fiscal solvency.
Every economist on Earth (at least every economist I have ever met or read) seems to agree with the proposition that high tax rates in general - and high marginal tax rates in particular - are an impediment to economic growth.
We don't need to argue over anyone's "tax plan" to move the only relevant discussion down the road a few steps. Given that everyone agrees on the fact that there is only so much tax reform can do to establish fiscal solvency, the only issue worth talking about is the matter of reducing the total amount of government monetary expenditures. But that can't happen because US politicians (and probably every other politician out there) has this mental disease where they think they can just get away with creating "policy incentives" to "grow our way out of debt." This is becoming more and more of a fantasy with each passing day.
And by "fantasy," I mean to say that these folks are drunk on the opium of government and don't realize how short their cognitive time-horizon has become. The time for tax reform is gone. The window of opportunity for small, incentive-inducing changes at the margin passed in the late 90s.
My belief here is that the so-called "Great Moderation" was not a period of normalcy, but rather a period of over-employment. In the Austrian sense, I believe we as an economy were consuming capital at an increasing rate without investing it in wealth improving technologies. American companies captured productivity gains from outsourcing low-skill jobs, but we have now reached a point where everything is outsourced except upper management positions. We've captured about all the gains from outsourcing that we possibly can, short of selling off everything for a huge golden parachute and retiring.
Now, obviously, that is precisely what the Baby Boomers intend to do with the American economy. When they retire, then the Hydra will no longer have any heads. Reinvestment will be impossible because all the competitive technology and economic infrastructure will be in the BRICM countries. People my age and younger will either have to build an empire from the ground up, or move to BRICM. I readily admit that the latter option is extremely enticing, and anyone who chooses to do this is acting in their own rational self-interest. By all means, do it while you still can!
But for those who choose to stay in America, the relevant issue is government spending; namely, shrinking it. Forget tax reform. We need to end the wars, shrink the bureaucracy, and scale-back social welfare spending.
The choice is simply this: Either we reduce government spending, or we move to BRICM. The politicians can whine about social "fairness" all they want, but they cannot change basic arithmetic. The current trajectory cannot continue. So, take your pick: Move to China, or learn how to stop asking government to solve your every problem.
2012-10-11
RRR Retired
The Ryan Ruins Requests feature never did take off like I had hoped. The videos themselves were terrible, and the music itself was not that great. It was a fun experiment, but ultimately of inferior quality. Therefore, I have decided to retire this feature. I have removed the videos from my YouTube channel, so they are unavailable, unless you specifically contact me and request that I send them to you. (Trust me, they are not worth it.)
My pursuit, as always, is to maintain quality content for my readers. Considering that, it hardly seems fair to remove a feature without replacing it. I do intend to replace it, and replace it something that I hope will be of much greater interest. Who knows, with any luck, I may stumble upon something that actually expands my readership. (Perish the thought!)
In fact, I hope to be delivering a new feature soon. Stay tuned.
My pursuit, as always, is to maintain quality content for my readers. Considering that, it hardly seems fair to remove a feature without replacing it. I do intend to replace it, and replace it something that I hope will be of much greater interest. Who knows, with any luck, I may stumble upon something that actually expands my readership. (Perish the thought!)
In fact, I hope to be delivering a new feature soon. Stay tuned.
2012-10-10
Actually, Freedom IS Free
Freedom Isn't Free
We see the bumper stickers everywhere. They ominously remind us that freedom isn't free. They imply that freedom is "paid for" by the "sacrifice" of armed servicemen in foreign countries. For example, we "paid for some freedom" when we went into Vietnam and chose sides in a bloody civil war. We "paid for some freedom" when we went into Nicaragua and did the same. We "paid for some freedom" when we defended Kuwait in the first Iraq War. We "paid some more" when we kept going back and bombing and subsequently re-invading Iraq. We are paying for some freedom in Afghanistan. We paid for some in the former Yugoslavia. We bought some freedom in Rwanda, albeit a bit too late to get too much freedom there. We're paying for freedom in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. We're threatening to pay for some more freedom in Iran.
Despots of the world, take heed! We have the means to pay for freedom, and we're not afraid to use them!
Yep, we have to pay for freedom, alright, or so says our government and our population's nationalists. Over the course of three decades of life, I have seen exactly how it is we pay for freedom, and the answer is, we go in and invade little countries.
Lucky for us, there is the valiant libertarian movement. They also offer us ways to pay for our freedom. For example, the Ludwig von Mises Institute offers us swag. The LvMI offshoot, Laissez-Faire Books, offers us... books, as well as some subscription services. Peter Schiff offers us financial services. Freedomain Radio offers us a lot of free stuff as a means by which to sell additional speaking engagements and the like. The Cato Institute sells all kinds of stuff, but if you're not in the market for any of it, they are more than happy to accept your generous donation.
Actually, the same goes for the LvMI, Freedomain Radio, The Molinari Institute, The Ayn Rand Institute, and pretty much every other libertarian organization out there.
Two Competing Views Of Unfree Freedom
And so it goes. We find ourselves confronted with "two alternatives" in the epic battle for our own personal freedom.
On the one hand, we have "the state," who promises us freedom in exchange for our blood, spilled over and over again on foreign soil, "protecting American families" from such threats as communism and terrorism. No one ever stops to consider that the number of American civilian lives ended by communism and terrorism combined is a pale and minute fraction of the number of lives our government has personally ended through military force on foreign lands. The philosophical question might be this one: How many foreign lives are worth one American life? How many people in other countries must we kill in order to save one American life? If the number is very large, how can we morally justify this? As the storm troopers set up shop in our airports, high schools, malls, and grocery stores, are we ever moved to ask whether the "cost" of freedom is giving us any return on our investment? As our freedom disappears to pay for our sense of freedom, who among us is prepared to question the "price" of whatever "freedom" we have left?
But that's just on the one hand.
On the other hand, we have the libertarian movement, be they avowed advocates of a "stateless" society, or mere minarchists vowing to work "within the system." They assure us they are doing important work, "spreading the word of liberty," which for the most part consists of selling books and tickets to public speaking engagements. They write compelling essays with which we all, naturally, agree completely. Gosh, how eloquent they are. And the t-shirts are to die for (well, not literally). Did I mention they are on sale? Not enough money for a t-shirt? Then how about a button? A bookmark? A hat? A hoodie? Support liberty! Buy our stuff!
Making Sense Of It All
Don't get me wrong. Of the two "options," I would much rather "pay for liberty" using my hard-earned cash on useless swag that proclaims my allegiance to the "liberty movement." That is certainly a preferable option to dying or getting maimed in a faraway land, or being groped at the airport, or being roughed-up on my way to Trig class, or being pulled over on the highway because my physical features look vaguely exotic. Or whatever.
So, yes, the option of just wasting a lot of money on cheap crap certainly appeals to me more than physical harm.
Still, there's something very cheap about this libertarian movement. It seems to be big business. Books, podcasts, YouTube videos, books, speaking engagements, books, books, articles, books, donations, t-shirts, books... All to "spread the word." All to "educate."
But if you believe in the case for liberty, do you really need all this stuff? If, for you, markets and human rights and being left alone are where it's at, what do you get out of wearing a button? Of what benefit is a t-shirt with Murray Rothbard's head on it? More importantly, what to gain from reading, listening, or watching your favorite members of the libertarian movement repeat arguments and tropes with which you already fully agree?
In short, what exactly are you spending your money on?
Actually, Freedom IS Free
Consider this: In the information age, with access to the internet, you can learn anything about freedom you want to... for free. There are numerous websites dedicated to the topic - yes, even many of those I listed above. You can take free college economics courses; you can audit some of the finest university courses in the world, also free of charge. You can study and learn and immerse yourself in the information of liberty to your heart`s content.
So, if you want it, for heaven's sake, don't feel you have to pay for it.
But that's really just a sideshow. There is something more important going on here. Listen carefully: No one needs to be an interlocutor between you and your freedom. You simply don't need a laundry list of libertarian celebrities defining your freedom for you.
Why not?
Because freedom simply is. What is a human right? A human right is something that belongs to you, simply because you are alive. You don't need a state to "give it to you." You don't need an intellectual to describe it for you. All you need is you.
You have the right to think and speak and live however you please. It's true, over time, we have had a massive overrun of government rules that have impeded our ability to live as we please. It's also true that we should take it upon ourselves to scale back the rules and keep our political system as liberal as possible - that is, having as few rules as possible. All of these things are true.
But you don't need to keep hearing that over and over again. You don't need to buy t-shirts and books that describe all this for you (especially since you can get all that stuff for free, anyway). Your personal sense of freedom is something that belongs to you - and nobody can take it away. Moreover, no one is better equipped to understand the freedom that you have than you.
You don't ever have to pay for freedom, not ever. Freedom is something you already have. You can choose to exercise that freedom or not, in light of the various obstacles our governments and activists groups choose to throw in your way. But you don't ever have to pay for it. You already have it.
We see the bumper stickers everywhere. They ominously remind us that freedom isn't free. They imply that freedom is "paid for" by the "sacrifice" of armed servicemen in foreign countries. For example, we "paid for some freedom" when we went into Vietnam and chose sides in a bloody civil war. We "paid for some freedom" when we went into Nicaragua and did the same. We "paid for some freedom" when we defended Kuwait in the first Iraq War. We "paid some more" when we kept going back and bombing and subsequently re-invading Iraq. We are paying for some freedom in Afghanistan. We paid for some in the former Yugoslavia. We bought some freedom in Rwanda, albeit a bit too late to get too much freedom there. We're paying for freedom in Libya, Syria, and Yemen. We're threatening to pay for some more freedom in Iran.
Despots of the world, take heed! We have the means to pay for freedom, and we're not afraid to use them!
Yep, we have to pay for freedom, alright, or so says our government and our population's nationalists. Over the course of three decades of life, I have seen exactly how it is we pay for freedom, and the answer is, we go in and invade little countries.
Lucky for us, there is the valiant libertarian movement. They also offer us ways to pay for our freedom. For example, the Ludwig von Mises Institute offers us swag. The LvMI offshoot, Laissez-Faire Books, offers us... books, as well as some subscription services. Peter Schiff offers us financial services. Freedomain Radio offers us a lot of free stuff as a means by which to sell additional speaking engagements and the like. The Cato Institute sells all kinds of stuff, but if you're not in the market for any of it, they are more than happy to accept your generous donation.
Actually, the same goes for the LvMI, Freedomain Radio, The Molinari Institute, The Ayn Rand Institute, and pretty much every other libertarian organization out there.
Two Competing Views Of Unfree Freedom
And so it goes. We find ourselves confronted with "two alternatives" in the epic battle for our own personal freedom.
On the one hand, we have "the state," who promises us freedom in exchange for our blood, spilled over and over again on foreign soil, "protecting American families" from such threats as communism and terrorism. No one ever stops to consider that the number of American civilian lives ended by communism and terrorism combined is a pale and minute fraction of the number of lives our government has personally ended through military force on foreign lands. The philosophical question might be this one: How many foreign lives are worth one American life? How many people in other countries must we kill in order to save one American life? If the number is very large, how can we morally justify this? As the storm troopers set up shop in our airports, high schools, malls, and grocery stores, are we ever moved to ask whether the "cost" of freedom is giving us any return on our investment? As our freedom disappears to pay for our sense of freedom, who among us is prepared to question the "price" of whatever "freedom" we have left?
But that's just on the one hand.
On the other hand, we have the libertarian movement, be they avowed advocates of a "stateless" society, or mere minarchists vowing to work "within the system." They assure us they are doing important work, "spreading the word of liberty," which for the most part consists of selling books and tickets to public speaking engagements. They write compelling essays with which we all, naturally, agree completely. Gosh, how eloquent they are. And the t-shirts are to die for (well, not literally). Did I mention they are on sale? Not enough money for a t-shirt? Then how about a button? A bookmark? A hat? A hoodie? Support liberty! Buy our stuff!
Making Sense Of It All
Don't get me wrong. Of the two "options," I would much rather "pay for liberty" using my hard-earned cash on useless swag that proclaims my allegiance to the "liberty movement." That is certainly a preferable option to dying or getting maimed in a faraway land, or being groped at the airport, or being roughed-up on my way to Trig class, or being pulled over on the highway because my physical features look vaguely exotic. Or whatever.
So, yes, the option of just wasting a lot of money on cheap crap certainly appeals to me more than physical harm.
Still, there's something very cheap about this libertarian movement. It seems to be big business. Books, podcasts, YouTube videos, books, speaking engagements, books, books, articles, books, donations, t-shirts, books... All to "spread the word." All to "educate."
But if you believe in the case for liberty, do you really need all this stuff? If, for you, markets and human rights and being left alone are where it's at, what do you get out of wearing a button? Of what benefit is a t-shirt with Murray Rothbard's head on it? More importantly, what to gain from reading, listening, or watching your favorite members of the libertarian movement repeat arguments and tropes with which you already fully agree?
In short, what exactly are you spending your money on?
Actually, Freedom IS Free
Consider this: In the information age, with access to the internet, you can learn anything about freedom you want to... for free. There are numerous websites dedicated to the topic - yes, even many of those I listed above. You can take free college economics courses; you can audit some of the finest university courses in the world, also free of charge. You can study and learn and immerse yourself in the information of liberty to your heart`s content.
So, if you want it, for heaven's sake, don't feel you have to pay for it.
But that's really just a sideshow. There is something more important going on here. Listen carefully: No one needs to be an interlocutor between you and your freedom. You simply don't need a laundry list of libertarian celebrities defining your freedom for you.
Why not?
Because freedom simply is. What is a human right? A human right is something that belongs to you, simply because you are alive. You don't need a state to "give it to you." You don't need an intellectual to describe it for you. All you need is you.
You have the right to think and speak and live however you please. It's true, over time, we have had a massive overrun of government rules that have impeded our ability to live as we please. It's also true that we should take it upon ourselves to scale back the rules and keep our political system as liberal as possible - that is, having as few rules as possible. All of these things are true.
But you don't need to keep hearing that over and over again. You don't need to buy t-shirts and books that describe all this for you (especially since you can get all that stuff for free, anyway). Your personal sense of freedom is something that belongs to you - and nobody can take it away. Moreover, no one is better equipped to understand the freedom that you have than you.
You don't ever have to pay for freedom, not ever. Freedom is something you already have. You can choose to exercise that freedom or not, in light of the various obstacles our governments and activists groups choose to throw in your way. But you don't ever have to pay for it. You already have it.
2012-10-09
Music As Art
A few years ago, I discovered the YouTube videos of an amateur musician who goes by the nickname "SongeLeReveur." His general modus operandi is arranging songs from classic video games for various instruments, playing them, and uploading them on YouTube. It's quaint.
Or, at least it was quaint. Watching his musical and artistic development unfold over the years has been a real inspiration to me. To be sure, I have more "guitar technique" than he does, but there is something about the way he plays his music that is nothing short of brilliant. But it didn't start out that way. It started out as a simple discovery of music, from the hands of a novice to the hands of a developing expert.
His first video shows him as a young man playing some arpeggios on a nylon-string guitar, from a Final Fantasy video game (about which I know nothing). At a certain point, he began multi-tracking his videos, recording one track of a particular piece and then embellishing on it. This early 2008 video, for example, shows SongeLeReveur playing some incredibly simplistic 12-bar blues, ostensibly from another Final Fantasy video game segment of some sort. The technique here is not anything beyond what the novice guitar player can do, and yet even there, the delivery involves a quiet sense of artistry that is well beyond what novices typically deliver.
Slowly, more instruments began appearing in the videos. He started with a bass guitar duet, then came bass-and-electric-guitar. It was becoming evident that SongeLeReveur's musical background either contained some jazz theory, or he was a dedicated student of the video game composers to which his YouTube channel was dedicated. And his love for music and musical experimentation really started getting evident in October 2008, when he recorded his first piece featuring an ocarina.
Then came this: His initial recording as a one-man quartet...
This was a game-changer. All of the elements were there, from the quiet confidence to the patient delivery. This was an artist discovering his medium. He was delivering something that was simultaneously fond and fun to listen to. This was something that even people who know nothing about video games could enjoy. This was music for an audience. And at nearly 60,000 views, it's clear that he found it. All he needed now was...
...a hat.
How he happened upon the idea is not quite clear, but there it was: a fuzzy woolen toque covering his eyes as he played. Later, he would say "The hat found me."
The defining feature of an artist is not the mere ability to create, but rather the ability to create within a certain sense of "conceptual continuity." Anyone can write or play a number of musical pieces, but it is only an artist who does so with a consistent sense of what he or she is bringing to the table. Over a year after starting his YouTube journey, SongeLeReveur had found something that many musicians struggle their whole lives to find. He had the medium, he had musicianship, and finally, he found his sense of artistry.
As things developed, he started delivering progressively more ambitious material. Here he is playing a clarinet in a Final Fantasy song arranged for seven-piece ensemble. Here he is playing a rocked-out version of a Sonic the Hedgehog tune. Live acoustic duets with friends. Electric sitars.
No, wait a minute. That one's good enough to embed. Check it out. Listen to that percussion.
Live drums (and sitar again) appeared next. French horn (via collaboration). Banjo.
What more is there to say? SongeLeReveur is a true artist. I've spent hours listening to his music and watching his videos - far too much time for an adult to dedicate to video game songs, and yet what he has managed to produce is a body of work that is genuinely fun to listen to.
Why is that important? Think about how many amateur musicians you know. Think about all the people you have known over the years who have put together albums, held "CD release parties," printed posters and stickers, and have pretended that they are going to be rock stars. Think about all those friends you know with garage bands and all the music they've been making since their early teens. Considering all that forgotten music, you couldn't be bothered to listen to it for more than a few minutes at a time, because the only interesting thing about that stuff is the fact that the person playing it is someone you know.
To create music that people want to hear, even though it's being played by a total stranger, is the aspiration of anyone who ever thinks to pick up a musical instrument. This intangible quality that represents a real love for music and the joy that comes with sharing it with other people, this quality is something that SongeLeReveur has in spades. (He also has a couple of super-cool Suhr guitars, a Parker guitar, a Music Man bass... the guy has some really cool gear.)
Follow his blog here. Become a fan on his Facebook page here. Explore his YouTube channel here. What a great musician. My hat is off to him (pun intended)!
Or, at least it was quaint. Watching his musical and artistic development unfold over the years has been a real inspiration to me. To be sure, I have more "guitar technique" than he does, but there is something about the way he plays his music that is nothing short of brilliant. But it didn't start out that way. It started out as a simple discovery of music, from the hands of a novice to the hands of a developing expert.
His first video shows him as a young man playing some arpeggios on a nylon-string guitar, from a Final Fantasy video game (about which I know nothing). At a certain point, he began multi-tracking his videos, recording one track of a particular piece and then embellishing on it. This early 2008 video, for example, shows SongeLeReveur playing some incredibly simplistic 12-bar blues, ostensibly from another Final Fantasy video game segment of some sort. The technique here is not anything beyond what the novice guitar player can do, and yet even there, the delivery involves a quiet sense of artistry that is well beyond what novices typically deliver.
Slowly, more instruments began appearing in the videos. He started with a bass guitar duet, then came bass-and-electric-guitar. It was becoming evident that SongeLeReveur's musical background either contained some jazz theory, or he was a dedicated student of the video game composers to which his YouTube channel was dedicated. And his love for music and musical experimentation really started getting evident in October 2008, when he recorded his first piece featuring an ocarina.
Then came this: His initial recording as a one-man quartet...
...a hat.
The defining feature of an artist is not the mere ability to create, but rather the ability to create within a certain sense of "conceptual continuity." Anyone can write or play a number of musical pieces, but it is only an artist who does so with a consistent sense of what he or she is bringing to the table. Over a year after starting his YouTube journey, SongeLeReveur had found something that many musicians struggle their whole lives to find. He had the medium, he had musicianship, and finally, he found his sense of artistry.
As things developed, he started delivering progressively more ambitious material. Here he is playing a clarinet in a Final Fantasy song arranged for seven-piece ensemble. Here he is playing a rocked-out version of a Sonic the Hedgehog tune. Live acoustic duets with friends. Electric sitars.
No, wait a minute. That one's good enough to embed. Check it out. Listen to that percussion.
What more is there to say? SongeLeReveur is a true artist. I've spent hours listening to his music and watching his videos - far too much time for an adult to dedicate to video game songs, and yet what he has managed to produce is a body of work that is genuinely fun to listen to.
Why is that important? Think about how many amateur musicians you know. Think about all the people you have known over the years who have put together albums, held "CD release parties," printed posters and stickers, and have pretended that they are going to be rock stars. Think about all those friends you know with garage bands and all the music they've been making since their early teens. Considering all that forgotten music, you couldn't be bothered to listen to it for more than a few minutes at a time, because the only interesting thing about that stuff is the fact that the person playing it is someone you know.
To create music that people want to hear, even though it's being played by a total stranger, is the aspiration of anyone who ever thinks to pick up a musical instrument. This intangible quality that represents a real love for music and the joy that comes with sharing it with other people, this quality is something that SongeLeReveur has in spades. (He also has a couple of super-cool Suhr guitars, a Parker guitar, a Music Man bass... the guy has some really cool gear.)
Follow his blog here. Become a fan on his Facebook page here. Explore his YouTube channel here. What a great musician. My hat is off to him (pun intended)!
2012-10-05
The Cult Of Sumner
As Robert Murphy has pointed out recently, NGDP itself is more of an economic indicator than it is a direct cause of business cycles. Believing that a patient's heart rate is the sole measurement of physical health would lead to insane (Murphy's word, follow the link) medical treatments.
A useful way to think about this is to consider your own household. Let's say you find yourself in a situation where you are unemployed, have very little spending money, and are trying to get back on your feet. Let's also say that you have total amnesia and can't remember how you found yourself in this position. You decide to look at your own household economic data to try to figure out what happened and what you should do about it:
- You could say that your problem is low employment, so other people need to spend money on you (hire you) so that your economy can recover. This is Keynesianism.
- You could say that your previous market expectations failed to correctly account for the fact that you would be low on employment and spending money in a prior time period, so someone really just needs to fly over your neighborhood with a helicopter and drop bags of money all over everywhere. This would get people spending more money, including yourself, and hopefully a business would hire you. This is classic Monetarism.
- You could say that the government, having already engaged in the previous two explanations/policy applications, duped you into believing that your previous job was profitable, but it really wasn't, so you lost it. To recover, you have to tighten your belt and start producing something valuable. Until you do, your situation will never improve. This is Austrianism.
Therefore, the solution to your problem, according to Market Monetarism, is for policy-makers to do everything in their power to make you believe that you are about to get a job. This will cause you to spend more money, and spending more money is the one and only goal. According to Market Monetarism, you shouldn't really even care whether or not you have a job: As long as you continue to spend the same amount of money you were spending when you were employed, you will not experience any kind of personal recession. You will feel equally as rich and employed as you used to.
The worse your situation gets, the more you should continue to spend according to your prior spending growth trajectory. No matter how bad it gets, you will never feel that things are so bad as long as you believe things are just about to pick up again. Don't change your spending pattern, and you don't have to experience a recession. Why even look at employment? Why consider inflation or changes to costs of living or living standards or purchasing power?
So long as you buy as much stuff as you were buying in the past, the recession doesn't exist. It's all in your head.
Problem solved.
This sounds like some horrible combination of The Power of Positive Thinking and The Ant and the Grasshopper. Only, the way Scott Sumner tells it, the only flaw in the Grasshopper's reasoning was that he eventually stopped partying. According to Market Monetarism, Winter never would have come, had the Grasshopper merely believed that it wasn't coming.
So, in reality, Market Monetarism is more like The Power of Positive Thinking meets Zen Buddhism. It's a religion, a cult. As in my previous examples of faith (see here and here), Market Monetarism rests on a person's willingness to surrender all logic and reason, to replace what one knows absolutely to be true with what one merely wishes to be true. In this case, the economist who buys into Market Monetarism surrenders the knowledge that economic recovery requires increased production (as in real and actual new production of new things) and replaces it with mere faith that everything is going to be okay (a faith controlled by The Fed's willingness to drench the economy in liquidity).
This is perfectly evident because Scott Sumner has pre-emptively accused his opponents of religious dogma:
I’m often taunted by RBC-types: “Where’s your model.” ”That’s not scientific.” We now have hard science showing money illusion exists. In contrast, the RBC belief in the non-existence of money illusion is akin to religious faith. ”Our models say it shouldn’t exist, so it can’t.”But only a religious zealot can think this way. Notice that even in Sumner's example, his critics are the ones saying that it is Sumner who lacks a scientific model. Sumner is the one saying, "It just exists, okay guys? I don't have a model, I just know that it happens, okay?"
Sumner is the one insisting on the existence of a thing that has yet to be satisfactorily demonstrated in the context of a model. He's the irrationally religious one here. Everyone else is using science, reason, and models to attempt to explain the economy.
As is always the case in scientific inquiry, the models fall short of a perfect explanation and continue to be improved. As always, the religious dogmatists insist that they have a perfect explanation for the as-yet unexplained, which we must take on faith, without evidence, simply because the dogmatists say it's a perfect explanation.
Members of a cult always demand that you take their word for it. They muddle the questions up and use rhetorical tricks to deflect a direct, rational inquiry. Scott Sumner and the Market Monetarists aren't any different in this regard. It could be that, at some point, scientific analysis validates their beliefs. But until that day, their beliefs should be treated as the unmodeled, unsubstantiated wishful thinking and religious faith that they are.
2012-10-04
It's Like Normalcy, Only More Neurotic
Via James Taranto, I came across this Salon.com article, entitled "What Does It Feel Like To Be A Smart Person?" In it, an anonymous writer and self-proclaimed smart person describes the double-edged sword of genius. He or she opens his or her recount of what it's like being a smart person with the following:
Gosh, that is "pretty freakin' awesome."
The author then sums up where all that test-taking leads a person:
Next, the author switches writing styles, opting for a list format to recount the negative aspects of being a smart person. Those negatives are:
I think it's safe to say that most people have believed points 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 regardless of their own personal level of intelligence. Discounting people who we feel aren't smart is fairly natural; believing that "intelligence and academics were all that mattered" is basically the party platform of both Democrats and Republicans; the belief that social skills are a kind of intelligence analogous to the ability to solve equations is a well-documented and generally held bias among the general population; we all feel pressure to perform well; and who among us has not had difficulty connecting with people on the dating scene?At the peak of my high school math competition "career," I was ranked about 25th in the United States among all high-school students. Given that there were about 15 million high school students in the U.S., this put my math skills somewhere in the 1-in-a-100,000 to 1-in-1-million range. This felt—and still feels—pretty freakin' awesome.The author then goes on to describe the attendent benefits of having systemic recognition of one's proclivity for mathemathics: "a ton of confidence," first prize in sundry "Science bowls" and "marketing competitions," and the taking of more Advanced Placement (AP) tests than his or her peers.
Gosh, that is "pretty freakin' awesome."
The author then sums up where all that test-taking leads a person:
Anyway, the confidence was great, and doing well in various math competitions helped me get into some of the top universities, which resulted in me getting great jobs after college, and subsequently led to a very happy and successful career (so far).Next, the author dives into the downsides of being smart. Before we take a look at that, though, let's quickly tabulate what the benefits are of being a smart person:
- Being nationally recognized as smart.
- Winning science bowls and marketing competitions.
- Taking tests.
- Getting into top universities.
- Getting great job offers and having a very happy and successful career.
Next, the author switches writing styles, opting for a list format to recount the negative aspects of being a smart person. Those negatives are:
- The author "assumed intelligence and academics were all that mattered, and things like friendships, sports, etc., were nice, but not as important."
- "For a long time," the author "used to discount people who were less smart."
- The author assumed that being "in the top 0.001 percent in math" meant that the author was "in the top 0.001 in general intelligence;" but later came to believe that his or her lack of "social skills" and "work ethic" prove that he or she was not of exceptional intelligence at all.
- The author felt under pressure to over-perform.
- The author finds it difficult to make a personal connection with potential mates.
- The author believes that most of his or her success was the result of his or her "innate intelligence," which paradoxically translated into quitting a lot of endeavors that felt challenging.
- Perhaps most bizarrely, the author writes, "I sometimes feel guilty about how much easier some things are for me than others."
The only items on that list that are definitely not universal are the author's belief that he or she is "innately" intelligent, and that he or she feels guilty about how much "easier" math is for him or her.
Reading this article, it becomes clear that what the author is actually describing is his/her psychological hangups acquired at youth from being told by recognized authorities that he or she is a "smart person." The author doesn't even have enough perspective to understand that most of what he/she recounts about being a smart person is universal to the human experience.
This person isn't smart, this person is self-absorbed, neurotic, and obsessed with being "smart."
It's difficult to find any lessons in an article like that, but hidden in the midst of all those unstated therapy sessions, we find the following:
Recent studies have shown that people who believe intelligence is innate tend to give up much faster than people who believe it can be developed, and that was definitely true for me throughout most of my 20s. I'd try things once or twice, then stop if I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, which was often. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance when you're not good at something you expected to be great at, and the easiest way to resolve that dissonance is by quitting.The Moral Of This Story Is...
This poor soul, after having been told from an early age that he/she possesses the kind of special intelligence that only a fraction-of-a-percent of other people have, was unsettled. He or she didn't feel particularly special:
Thinking back to those days is pretty amusing because I wasn't that great at most of the things I was being recognized for, but it turns out that being good plus being a good test-taker plus being confident can take you pretty far in the academic world.So what is such a person to conclude, other than that he or she was born with an "innate" sense of intelligence that put him/her asunder? Defined as gifted and special, but without any real feeling of having earned anything unique or exceptional, the author learned to feel over-confident in whatever brought him/her social recognition while eschewing (quitting) anything that proved to be a real challenge.
Other than being a bit of a jackass, what was the author's main fault? I'd argue that it was the belief that intelligence is an innate gift you're born with, rather than understanding that anyone can solve a math problem if they learn to think logically; anyone can achieve career success if they work hard and apply themselves correctly; and anyone can feel special if an ivory tower authority gives them the label of being in the 99th percentile.
2012-10-03
The Strange Psychology Of Environmentalism
While considering my options for a new car, I have been noticing the variety of electric and hybrid vehicles offered by most major vehicle manufacturers these days.
If people want to spend their money on such cars, I have nothing against that, nor do I fault car manufacturers for selling these vehicles to the customers who want them. The government subsidies and various government-sponsored buying/selling incentives are another story. Those I do oppose.
But why on Earth do people suppose that electric automobiles are better for the environment?
The argument goes (I guess) that, because these automobiles do not emit CO and CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, they must have a lower carbon footprint than other comparable vehicles. And yet, even assuming that the electric and hybrid vehicles are equally as energy efficient as their gasoline-powered counterparts, this cannot possibly be true. Why not?
First, remember the Law of Conservation of Energy? The Law of Conservation of Energy demands that a car of weight w travelling speed s requires energy e to power it. Period. Since the same amount of energy is required to perform the same amount of work, it must be true that electric vehicles use as much energy as their gasoline-powered counterparts. It really only matters how that energy is being generated.
Now, the vast majority of electricity is generated through the burning of fossil fuels, which means that even electric cars are powered by the burning of fossil fuels. Because the energy required is the same, it must also be true that the amount of fossil fuels burned is equivalent, meaning the so-called "carbon footprint" is equal in both cases.
So who do electric car drivers think they're fooling?
For more on the strange psychology of environmentalism, see this Freakonomics post, with a hat tip to David Henderson.
If people want to spend their money on such cars, I have nothing against that, nor do I fault car manufacturers for selling these vehicles to the customers who want them. The government subsidies and various government-sponsored buying/selling incentives are another story. Those I do oppose.
But why on Earth do people suppose that electric automobiles are better for the environment?
The argument goes (I guess) that, because these automobiles do not emit CO and CO2 from fossil fuel combustion, they must have a lower carbon footprint than other comparable vehicles. And yet, even assuming that the electric and hybrid vehicles are equally as energy efficient as their gasoline-powered counterparts, this cannot possibly be true. Why not?
First, remember the Law of Conservation of Energy? The Law of Conservation of Energy demands that a car of weight w travelling speed s requires energy e to power it. Period. Since the same amount of energy is required to perform the same amount of work, it must be true that electric vehicles use as much energy as their gasoline-powered counterparts. It really only matters how that energy is being generated.
Now, the vast majority of electricity is generated through the burning of fossil fuels, which means that even electric cars are powered by the burning of fossil fuels. Because the energy required is the same, it must also be true that the amount of fossil fuels burned is equivalent, meaning the so-called "carbon footprint" is equal in both cases.
So who do electric car drivers think they're fooling?
For more on the strange psychology of environmentalism, see this Freakonomics post, with a hat tip to David Henderson.
2012-10-02
Movie Review: Dredd 3D
There is a certain appeal in watching both Looper and Dredd together. Far from being companion pieces, they nevertheless invite comparison and contrast given their many similarities.
First, and most obviously, they are both distopian science fiction films that take place in, if not the "near future," at least the foreseeable future. Both movies depict America as a ruinous metropolis. In this regard, Dredd takes things well beyond Looper. In Dredd, the entire population of the United States resides in a sprawling, metropolitan wasteland stretching "from Boston to Washington D.C.," surrounded by a giant wall, beyond which lies the radioactive aftermath of a future nuclear war.
Immediately, we can see that the setting of the movie draws from the comic book oeuvre from which the Judge Dredd character originates. This setting enables the film to fully leverage the character traits of its uncompromising hero.
And yet, astoundingly, Dredd showcases something far more complicated than another futuristic cop movie. Early on, we are told that there is something more to Judge Dredd (played by Karl Urban) than his super-cop persona. Judging from the alarmed facial expression of heroine Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thurlby), Judge Dredd is probably not a particularly good guy, deep down. So, in the ruins of what America has become - a chaotic, violent, drug-addled third world nation overrun by gangs and violence - the audience is presented with a dichotomous reality unfortunately faced by many people living in today's world.
That dichotomy is: On the one hand, society's only source of order in the chaos are people like Dredd, who serve as judge, jury, and executioner, doling out punishment liberally and violently. On the other hand, everyone is fully aware of how incredibly unsatisfying this arrangement is. The punishment for vagrancy, for example, is five years in prison. The judges enforce the law - everyone else lives in fear of not only the judges and the law, but also the chaotic alternative lives of crime they see around them. It's chaos at the hands of society or death at the hands of the judges. Anyone who has been to some of the less-stable locations of the world will feel something very familiar in this.
Enter Cassandra Anderson, a rookie judge who sets out with Dredd for her "assessment," which will determine whether she gets to permanently join the force. Cassandra, we are told, is a powerful psychic (themes of genetic mutation are present in both Dredd and Looper), but otherwise has been deemed not fit for duty. Judge Dredd is skeptical and assesses her harshly, which is a predictable but effective plot element. Cassandra is a kinder sort of person than the other judges, which initially plays as a weakness.
Together, they find their way to a giant "superstructure" called Peach Trees, a sort of skyscraper-slum-city consisting of poverty-addled bystanders and a gang boss called Mama, who aims to corner the market on a new street drug she manufactures within Peach Trees. The judges initially arrive to investigate a homicide, but soon find themselves battling it out with Mama and her gang of thugs, out-numbered, inferiorly armed, and with the odds otherwise stacked against them.
By the end of the movie, the audience is confronted with a choice between those two dichotomous elements. Are the judges and their cruel methods the path out of the violent chaos Dredd is fighting against, or are they part of the problem?
What I liked best about this movie is that, reflective of the many and increasing incidents of police brutality we see today, the film does not shy away from calling into question the validity and efficacy of police work. We see a clear delineation between good cops and bad ones; and the bad ones are very bad. Nor does the movie paint a rosy picture of the ravages of drugs. Every step of the way, we are asked, Which is the greater evil? And every step of the way, we see that there probably isn't a right answer.
Dredd 3D was a visually stunning - albeit incredibly violent - thrill ride that kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. While it is significantly less intellectual than Looper, it nonetheless satisfies the audience on many levels and is much more than a mere action film. It is far better than I believed it would be, and I highly recommend it.
2012-10-01
Some Musical Yin and Yang
In the composer's mind, there are two competing forces in writing music, and perhaps also in other branches of art. The first is the tendency to intellectualize, and the second is the tendency to popularize.
Since the times of the ancient Greeks, composers of Western music have been deliberately organizing their thoughts around music compositional theory in an endeavor to make music as much a mental achievement as an emotive tool.
Here, let me inject a brief disclaimer: I am not one of those to whom the intellect is some separate object from the pathos. To me, mind and heart are all one thing. So in other words, it takes some mental power to be able to translate one's feelings into a statement (verbal, musical, or whatever), just as it requires emotional investment to deliver a remarkable intellectual achievement.
So when the old composers developed and honed the intellectual side of music, they were not working at odds with their hearts or their emotions, they were using every tool at their disposal to make the music as beautiful and emotive as possible. The same holds true of every composer of Western music.
Zoom way out, and it becomes obvious that music composition in the Western world has been a steady march toward greater and greater intellectual achievement. First, modes were developed culturally, then they were applied to convey specific meanings within a composition. From there, harmonic development became more complex, and orchestral music steadily developed toward ever-more complex harmonic arrangements. When the deliberate compositional framework started offering more boundaries than avenues, artists began exploring the 20th Century sounds: harsh, unconventional harmonies, atonality, and so forth. When even that became exhausted, those sounds started being incorporated back into more traditional compositional approaches: a hybrid methodology.
More recently, jazz music experienced the same evolution, albeit at lightning speed. Originally introduced as a simple form of folk music, it was steadily injected with more traditional theory and ever-increasing improvisational complexity, right up to today's most avant-garde jazz.
It is our human nature to discover new forms of artistic exploration, and exhaust them in our tendency to intellectualize.
Working against that intellectualization, however, is the desire to popularize. What I mean is that the most intellectual music out there is never the most intellectual. What's popular is what appeals to the broadest base and, quite obviously, the less intellectual something is, the greater number of people who will be able to appreciate its artistic merits.
This occurs for a variety of reasons. At the simplest level, some people haven't studied music to sufficient extent to comprehend certain things. But it's not just that. Some people are only just discovering a particular musical style and need additional exposure to understand. Some people have only a casual interest in listening to music, so for them, there is no added listening benefit beyond a certain level of complexity. Some people only have an ear for rhythm or for simple melody. Some people believe strongly that simpler music is better. Some people listen to music so that they can dance - and who can dance in an 11/16 time signature? And so on...
Whatever the reason, more intellectual music can safely be said to have narrower appeal. Thus, intellectualization and popularization work in opposite directions. This presents an obstacle to any composer seeking to earn an audience.
Some composers have been able to overcome this obstacle. For example, Danny Elfman began his career writing pop songs, before ultimately transitioning into film scoring and orchestral work. His compositions are complex, but his use of recurring and repeating riffs and themes grounds the broader audience as he takes the composition through more exploratory territory. Frank Zappa was able to earn his audience by tapping into 1960s "freak" culture, appealing to the audience's sense of humor, providing extended jazz-fusion jams in live performance situations, and by developing a strong business model that worked. Modern artists like Derek Sherinian or Tony MacAlpine have been able to leverage their position as side-musicians to draw an audience toward their more intellectually weighty solo projects.
But every step of the way, writers of music are torn between greater intellectualization of their art, and greater popularization of it.
One of the great contributions modern information technology has made to the artistic world is to enable more intellectual artists to reach a greater number of people more easily, while retaining ample access to music that is simply popular.
Since the times of the ancient Greeks, composers of Western music have been deliberately organizing their thoughts around music compositional theory in an endeavor to make music as much a mental achievement as an emotive tool.
Here, let me inject a brief disclaimer: I am not one of those to whom the intellect is some separate object from the pathos. To me, mind and heart are all one thing. So in other words, it takes some mental power to be able to translate one's feelings into a statement (verbal, musical, or whatever), just as it requires emotional investment to deliver a remarkable intellectual achievement.
So when the old composers developed and honed the intellectual side of music, they were not working at odds with their hearts or their emotions, they were using every tool at their disposal to make the music as beautiful and emotive as possible. The same holds true of every composer of Western music.
Zoom way out, and it becomes obvious that music composition in the Western world has been a steady march toward greater and greater intellectual achievement. First, modes were developed culturally, then they were applied to convey specific meanings within a composition. From there, harmonic development became more complex, and orchestral music steadily developed toward ever-more complex harmonic arrangements. When the deliberate compositional framework started offering more boundaries than avenues, artists began exploring the 20th Century sounds: harsh, unconventional harmonies, atonality, and so forth. When even that became exhausted, those sounds started being incorporated back into more traditional compositional approaches: a hybrid methodology.
More recently, jazz music experienced the same evolution, albeit at lightning speed. Originally introduced as a simple form of folk music, it was steadily injected with more traditional theory and ever-increasing improvisational complexity, right up to today's most avant-garde jazz.
It is our human nature to discover new forms of artistic exploration, and exhaust them in our tendency to intellectualize.
Working against that intellectualization, however, is the desire to popularize. What I mean is that the most intellectual music out there is never the most intellectual. What's popular is what appeals to the broadest base and, quite obviously, the less intellectual something is, the greater number of people who will be able to appreciate its artistic merits.
This occurs for a variety of reasons. At the simplest level, some people haven't studied music to sufficient extent to comprehend certain things. But it's not just that. Some people are only just discovering a particular musical style and need additional exposure to understand. Some people have only a casual interest in listening to music, so for them, there is no added listening benefit beyond a certain level of complexity. Some people only have an ear for rhythm or for simple melody. Some people believe strongly that simpler music is better. Some people listen to music so that they can dance - and who can dance in an 11/16 time signature? And so on...
Whatever the reason, more intellectual music can safely be said to have narrower appeal. Thus, intellectualization and popularization work in opposite directions. This presents an obstacle to any composer seeking to earn an audience.
Some composers have been able to overcome this obstacle. For example, Danny Elfman began his career writing pop songs, before ultimately transitioning into film scoring and orchestral work. His compositions are complex, but his use of recurring and repeating riffs and themes grounds the broader audience as he takes the composition through more exploratory territory. Frank Zappa was able to earn his audience by tapping into 1960s "freak" culture, appealing to the audience's sense of humor, providing extended jazz-fusion jams in live performance situations, and by developing a strong business model that worked. Modern artists like Derek Sherinian or Tony MacAlpine have been able to leverage their position as side-musicians to draw an audience toward their more intellectually weighty solo projects.
But every step of the way, writers of music are torn between greater intellectualization of their art, and greater popularization of it.
One of the great contributions modern information technology has made to the artistic world is to enable more intellectual artists to reach a greater number of people more easily, while retaining ample access to music that is simply popular.
Movie Review: Looper
Over the weekend, I watched two different distopian science fiction films. The first I intend to review is the movie Looper, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis. First, though, I'd like to make some comments about recent trends. (If you just want to read the movie review, skip the following section.)
Distopian Futures
It has been a growing trend among story-tellers to view the future as a distopian place. During the Cold War, writers had every reason to see the world as a radioactive wasteland, the aftermath of a world-wide nuclear war. Such stories were inspired by the world in which the writers lived, a world in which the communist countries and the (comparatively) capitalist ones we at odds with each other, both vying for essential control over the world's political system. Both were heavily armed with nuclear arsenals that could condemn the world to millennia of radioactive waste, that could potentially eradicate all life on Earth other than bugs and bacteria.
But this was the 70s and 80s. It was not always thus. From the 30s to the 60s, the science fiction genre was replete with stories about beautiful futures, with flying cars, space travel, and the eradication of disease. Political conflict, when present, was interplanetary. In general, human life was the glorious culmination of science and knowledge. Superstition had been abolished, and only knowledge and human peace remained.
This is perhaps best illustrated by Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, a story about a group of scientists charged with exploring the far corners of outer space. Every episode was a new tale - not of irreconcilable human conflict, but of scientific exploration. People of different races, sexual orientations, and even species from far-away planets, coexisted in relative peace and harmony. What conflicts did exist, primarily existed among foreign species. The human audience of the stories was there as third-party observers, curiously studying the conflicts of far-removed characters.
Undoubtedly, this was a hopeful future.
Go back a little further in time, and we have the early days of science fiction: the late-19th Century to about the 1920s. During that time, people did tell stories of distopian futures, most notably H.G Wells. These distopia were often inspired by Marxist dogma and described tumultuous futures in which the "haves" had evolved into superlative species who behaved a bit like Greek gods, while the "have-nots" had evolved into a kind of monkey or cave man, oppressed to the point of savagery. Enter the sermonic lessons of Marxist philosophy, warning us of things to come!
Interestingly, the distopian stories of the Wells era were a prelude to a period of war and oppression on a scale never before seen in human history. The hopeful stories of the future, in contrast, came at the dawn of a comparatively much more peaceful period of expanding civil rights (at least, with respect to race and gender equality) and steady, moderate economic growth.
Taken in total, I cannot help but feel uneasy about the recent trend toward distopian futures. Even in the 19th Century, the stories provided mankind with a way out: accept the Marxist dogma, and we may still march toward the future in harmony and order. Nowadays, the future is basically all dismal. No one has much of anything in the future. It is a dark ages.
On With The Movie Review
Looper is a remarkably philosophical novel, aiming straight at the heart of the notorious philosophical question: If you have a time machine, would you go back and kill Hitler? Or, the same question on a less grandiose scale: Which of your mistakes would you correct if you could travel back in time?
It is a story about a young gangster who executes people for a living. The story takes place in the year 2044, and thirty years later, time travel will have been invented, and outlawed. The only ones who use it are members of a mob, who use their time machine as a garbage disposal, sending people back in time to be executed and disposed-of by "loopers." The loopers are handsomely rewarded with lots of money, in the form of bars of silver and gold. They live what an early-20s no-good-nik would believe to be the high life: they are rich, they have access to drugs and beautiful prostitutes, and they live without a care for tomorrow.
Of these gangsters, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, Joe, is fairly typical, except that he has an intelligent streak in him. He saves his money. He studies French. He has hopes and dreams. That said, he is also a cold-hearted killer and a drug addict.
When Joe's future self is sent back in time to be killed (by Joe, effectively terminating his contract with the mafia), the movie takes off. And there is much to be said about what happens next, but I unfortunately cannot go there without spoiling the movie. So I won't.
What I will say is that, throughout the movie, Joe and the audience are confronted with some intensely philosophical recurring themes:
- What would you change about the past, if you could?
- For what and who would you be willing to make those changes? How far would you go for the sake of the future?
- People are the product of their environment and their choices.
In part, this is out of necessity. A story cannot properly deal with time travel without also introducing the concept of changing the future. In that sense, choices always matter. But to a remarkable degree, Looper embraces the idea that people are not born good or bad, but that they become who they are as a result of the people they meet and the choices they make. This kicks the philosophy into high gear.
It is incredibly good to see a movie embrace nurture over nature and free will over determinism. This is the first such (Hollywood) movie I can remember seeing in a long time.
All in all, the movie is a positive contribution to the time-travel genre and, despite its distopian backdrop, offers a more positive view of the future than we have been seeing lately. The movie is action-packed and very well-written. If you can handle a bit of violence and gore, this is a great movie to see, and I highly recommend it.
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