social melody
Dec. 23rd, 2018 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oligopsonyThe following is a quick attempt to crystallize a concept (which may or may not prove useful.)
Social harmony you are already familiar with. A prospective harmonious society might be deeply hierarchical or flatly egalitarian; it might be communal (as perhaps a certain stereotype suggests) or politically and culturally individualistic (as liberals have often argued that markets create a harmony of interests.) Either way, a harmonious society is marked by the absence of conflict, or at least by the absence of working at cross-purposes.
Some people may value social harmony in itself; others find the idea stultifying, or at least worry (not without reason) that pursuing the appearance of social harmony can harm other values. So social harmony isn't intrinsically good or bad, but its good aspects are easy to see (who wants to see effort wasted on pointless conflicts?), and it probably wouldn't be especially useful too definite it perfectly rigorously, but it has a clear enough meaning that we can communicate with the concept most of the time.
As the name implies, "social melody" is the diachronic equivalent of social harmony. A socially melodious world's history is characterized by generations' efforts being in concert with one another and building upon one another. Within social melody, you try to look at the heroes of the past by treating your own time with the same urge to improve that they took to theirs, and also you try to preserve what they valued (when not based upon error) in the same way that you hope that future generations do to you value yourself (when not based upon error.)
Social melody is easiest to see from what it is not. Year Zero, where you try to begin everything from scratch, is not socially melodious. Blindly following the (object-level) ways of the past, rather than following the spirit of those who instituted new ways when appropriate for their circumstances and current knowledge, is not socially melodious. Remaining within discursive traditions and being part of the continuing conversation is socially melodious: an "atheist Jew" is more socially melodious than an atheist who happens to be ethnically Jewish, a Marxist is more socially melodious than someone who simply happens to accept some materialist premises and egalitarian politics, Catholicism is probably more socially melodious overall than Protestantism, and so on.
Conservatives and left-liberals and radical leftists all have, I think, an appreciation of social melody at the heart of their aesthetic conception of what good politics is and does, but may not appreciate or see it in each others' visions.
Like social harmony, social melody would be difficult to justify as an overriding goal in itself, and there are probably things lost when we pursue it too aggressively. However, it is also easy to see the appeal, and why the appeal is so wide, and I myself would certainly not want to abandon it as one value among many others.
Social harmony you are already familiar with. A prospective harmonious society might be deeply hierarchical or flatly egalitarian; it might be communal (as perhaps a certain stereotype suggests) or politically and culturally individualistic (as liberals have often argued that markets create a harmony of interests.) Either way, a harmonious society is marked by the absence of conflict, or at least by the absence of working at cross-purposes.
Some people may value social harmony in itself; others find the idea stultifying, or at least worry (not without reason) that pursuing the appearance of social harmony can harm other values. So social harmony isn't intrinsically good or bad, but its good aspects are easy to see (who wants to see effort wasted on pointless conflicts?), and it probably wouldn't be especially useful too definite it perfectly rigorously, but it has a clear enough meaning that we can communicate with the concept most of the time.
As the name implies, "social melody" is the diachronic equivalent of social harmony. A socially melodious world's history is characterized by generations' efforts being in concert with one another and building upon one another. Within social melody, you try to look at the heroes of the past by treating your own time with the same urge to improve that they took to theirs, and also you try to preserve what they valued (when not based upon error) in the same way that you hope that future generations do to you value yourself (when not based upon error.)
Social melody is easiest to see from what it is not. Year Zero, where you try to begin everything from scratch, is not socially melodious. Blindly following the (object-level) ways of the past, rather than following the spirit of those who instituted new ways when appropriate for their circumstances and current knowledge, is not socially melodious. Remaining within discursive traditions and being part of the continuing conversation is socially melodious: an "atheist Jew" is more socially melodious than an atheist who happens to be ethnically Jewish, a Marxist is more socially melodious than someone who simply happens to accept some materialist premises and egalitarian politics, Catholicism is probably more socially melodious overall than Protestantism, and so on.
Conservatives and left-liberals and radical leftists all have, I think, an appreciation of social melody at the heart of their aesthetic conception of what good politics is and does, but may not appreciate or see it in each others' visions.
Like social harmony, social melody would be difficult to justify as an overriding goal in itself, and there are probably things lost when we pursue it too aggressively. However, it is also easy to see the appeal, and why the appeal is so wide, and I myself would certainly not want to abandon it as one value among many others.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 09:50 pm (UTC)A half-formed thought I've been nursing for a while is that the natural function of "history" in human society is as malleable, ephemeral propaganda that's all about the way it makes living people feel and not at all about accuracy, and that this function has been perverted and threatened by the rise of accurate, documented history as a field of study. That in turn makes historians among the most dangerous people in society unless they can be coaxed into prioritizing an ideological project over descriptive study.