Monday, 3 May 2004

Adobe Light Shadow 2 2:29:52 PM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   PDA Drawing 2:23:20 PM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   Geeky music stuff... Google introduced me to this article on the web at UNM. Claude Levi-Strauss (1970, p. 18), for example, took a position typical of cultural anthropology in writing “Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.”  Music is the only language at once intelligible and untranslatable. Oh, yes...which is why most of the time to talk about music is like dancing to architecture. Where such commentators have recognized any need for consistency with evolutionary principles, they usually explain music as side-effect of having a big brain, being conscious, or learning culture.  Is there any research that turns this statement on its head, i.e. our brains got bigger because we discovered and developed music? From the International Society for Music Education: The human brain’s limbic system becomes highly activated during music participation. Because the limbic portion of the brain developed early in the evolutionary process, it is likely that musical behaviors developed early also, perhaps even before speech, which is controlled by the cerebral cortex, the last major part of the brain to evolve. The striking fact that music became a part of all known cultures, past and present, adds credence to the hypothesis about music’s early evolution. Since the limbic portion of the brain developed before the cerebral cortex, it follows that music might have developed before speech, and therefore, possibly, that music delivered the human. Our relationship to music is much, much deeper than most people realize. 2:11:40 PM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   Wall Street cool on Google plans Finance experts question whether Google is right to pick an unconventional method for selling its shares. [BBC | TECH] Of course they do. The establishment hates when somebody walks to a different drummer. Good for Google to do this...I especially enjoyed last weeks letter from the founders. 12:53:13 PM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   Crabapple Blossoms 10:54:35 AM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   World Music Doesn't it seem like different parts of the world, in their isolation, worked on separate pieces of the puzzle? No culture developed as fine a sense of harmony as Europe did, but their sense of rhythm was rather stiff and limited. India developed the most exquisite sense of complex rhythms and melodies. Africa added the almighty groove, a masterful sense of rhythm. And look at what happened when some of this musical knowledge first clashed: Jazz was born and took music to new heights. Brazilian musicians found wonderful new ways to combine Rhythm and Harmony. As more and more culture-specific ideas become familiar elements of our communal vocabulary, we are expanding our palette tremendously. This is not only true for music, but also very obvious in the Fine Arts and cooking. And once you like the "new" food and music, it'll be hard to resist other "world-centric" ideas as well. In the long run these ideas are irresistible, for as surely as water flows downhill, spirit desires to expand.... 10:52:25 AM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry   Simple Example To show what is involved with levels or stages, let’s use a very simple model possessing only 3 of them. If we look at moral development, for example, we find that an infant at birth has not yet been socialized into the culture’s ethics and conventions; this is called the preconventional stage. It is also called egocentric, in that the infant’s awareness is largely self-absorbed. But as the young child begins to learn its culture’s rules and norms, it grows into the conventional stage of morals. This stage is also called ethnocentric, in that it centers on the child’s particular group, tribe, clan, or nation, and it therefore tends to exclude care for those not of one’s group. But at the next major stage of moral development, the postconventional stage, the individual’s identity expands once again, this time to include a care and concern for all peoples, regardless of race, color, sex, or creed, which is why this stage is also called worldcentric. Thus, moral development tends to move from “me” (egocentric) to “us” (ethnocentric) to “all of us” (worldcentric)—a good example of the unfolding stages of consciousness. The above quote is from an "Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice", posted on the Integral Naked site. As surely as water flows downhill, Spirit expands from egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric and beyond. And as surely as Spirit expands we can say that Fear and Hate and Anger contract. Our language has examples of this as well. We say "s/he is open to the idea" or we say "s/he is closed-minded". Upwards and onwards! 10:52:15 AM  Permanent Link 2 this Entry

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