--- andie nachgeborenen <> I thought a lot of a
liberal arts education was
> about
> the cultivation of good taste. Some of it is
> development of reasoning powers, some of it (a very
> small amount) conveying information. A lot more is
> socialization and Foucauldian normalization and
> ranking.
We might as well forget the notion that any of us
pursue such endeavors out of "pure" intellectual
curiosity (thought that might be a good part of the
reason). Of course being at the top of the pecking
order plays a role in what we read and what
constitutes "good taste". Kandinsky paintings have
not changed, but who can take him seriously now that
he is vulgarly plastered on the walls of every
god-damn dentist office the world over? Why read
Dickens when you can be really cool and read Musil?!
:)
Despite being guilty of such snobbishness, even I cringe at the extreme middle-brow manifestations of this, such as when people eat Brie instead of Velveeta, just because the former demonstrates good taste. In protest, I am now putting Velveeta, instead of Brie, on my fried bologna sandwiches :)
Oh darn...I am not being authentic, just reacting...and that's the problem. Now where can I learn about being authentic??????????????? Is there a class I can take on that?
Thomas
===== The real world gives the subset of what is; the product space represents the uncertainty of the observer. The product space may therefore change if the observer changes; and two observers may legitimately use different product spaces within which to record the same subset of actual events in some actual thing. The "constraint" is thus a relation between observer and thing; the properties of any particular constraint will depend on both the real thing and on the observer. It follows that a substantial part of the theory of organization will be concerned with properties that are not intrinsice to the thing but are relational between observer and thing.
W. Ross Ashby
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