Intuitive understanding - Zander gives music to all on TED

All my life, in a way, I have been wondering about the understanding of great truths and great values. How can we acquire understanding of, for example, the ethical, or the arts, or proper logic, rationality and reasoning? Is that an elite quality? Does it take great intellect, arduous study and plenty experience in order to reach that understanding? If so, we are in a way lost. Great qualities are basically hidden from us and only once reach the proper level, these will be revealed to us. Until then, we either do not know, do not care or worse even, are under the impression there is nothing worthy to aspire. Understanding in this case is not true understanding but rather mystic, revealed, initiated; an object of grace not of virtue.

If on the other hand, it doesn't take elite qualities, what makes great qualities great as opposed to whatever else we are impressed by if we do not put in effort? Applied to for example classical music, this means that either classical music is for an exceptional elite to discern and the rest of us just do not care or even listen in derision. Either that, or we basically have no way of deciding Johann Sebastian Bach is a great composer and Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus (of ABBA) are not so, since both their music is appreciated by millions. Understanding in this case is rather plain, non-discriminatory, pragmatic; an object of establishment and not of virtue either.

My way around this problem is to introduce levels of understanding, or a gradual continuum of understanding. In that approach there is complete understanding, which is elitist, but there is a lower level of understanding, which I call intuitive, which is something we all have and is fine tuned and activated by learning, but when not developed, still passively is there. Intuitive understanding allows us to recognize quality when we see it. It allows us to feel Bach is more than ABBA, even if we can't actively explain why. It allows us to identify the ethical, even if we can not actively explain why it is better than plain selfishness. It also allows us to seek, to persevere in study towards the qualities, because we recognized something and carry with us an unfulfilled promise. This makes understanding a virtue.

In the following TED video, conductor Benjamin Zander undertakes an elegant and effective test with the audience, the discerning of classical music and the various sorts of unacquired alike and shows how they are all touched by great classical music. Here we see understanding as a virtue, both at the acquired as well as on the lower levels.



More TED
Jill Bolte Taylor,
Karen Armstrong,
Ben Dunlap. (highly recommended)

The interpretation of anomaly - Missing Link podcast review

The missing link podcast has a new episode with the compelling title Curiouser and curiouser. The issue greatly lives up to the title even if it must go with a disclaimer of explicit language. The explicit language comes from quoting late Renaissance material written by Ambroise Paré. The subject is our fascination with freaks of nature or any other exceptional occurrence or anomaly. Not only in current times, throughout the ages, people were interested.

The point of the show is that the way this interest is worked out and how oddities are explained is fundamentally different. Since the Enlightenment, nature is taken to be stable, uniform and its laws unchanging and everything must be explained within that framework. In earlier times, explanations were sought in the supernatural and hence, on the surface, people from there and then seem hopelessly infatuated with 'monsters'. Host Elizabeth Green Musselman points out, that in all times, people wanted to explain and in all times, the true challenge lies in explaining the exceptional.

There is an additional point that I think I picked up, but is kept slightly implicit. In the days before the Renaissance, or before the Late Middle Ages, the obsession with monsters and such was less, because of a more spiritual image of the world. I felt as if this means Platonic image of the world. Matter is chaotic and what is truly interesting is theory, the mind's construction. It is with the uncovering of Aristotle and possibly also with world shaking events such as the discovery of the New World, may be also the fall of Constantinople, may be also the disruption caused by the plague, that observing the world was necessary and all the puzzling excesses became relevant.

One could even make connections with the disruption of the Reformation and Witch Hunts (I am letting my mind loose here) to see this almost violent obsession with excess. Only after this disruption and the philosophical inclination towards order (such as with Hobbes), the stricter style of interpreting anomalies can evolve.

More about The Missing Link on this blog:
Domestic Science,
Missing Link with monotheists,
Missing Link with Popper,
An evolved controversy,
Time's Arrow.

The Post American World - LSE events

The United States began to dominate the world since the nineteenth century and by the end of the twentieth century this domination seemed complete: economically, militarily, culturally and whatever other dimension you could mention. This domination is fading however, nobody seems to deny that. Fareed Zakaria wrote a book about the Post American World - the world in which America no longer is the only center of power.

The London School of Economics invited Zakaria to lecture about the subject. The lecture was podcast by LSE and my also be so by UChannel Podcast, as happens with several of the LSE podcasts. He is not proposing the US are necessarily losing its power, or being replaced by others, but rather that others, most notably China and India, are rising and settling in besides the US as power centers. The simplest way he finds to justify this rise is by the size of those two countries and the rule of thumb:" Any number multiplied by two and a half billion results in a huge amount."

All of this happened because India and China, and not just them, accepted the US dominance and adapted to globalized capitalism. The paradoxical thing is that the US had always demanded this of the world, but lost its ground when the world applied. As Zakaria puts it: The US forgot to live by the rules it wanted others to obey. It promoted globalization but lost because it didn't globalize itself. In Fareed Zakaria's mind the change is already happening and inevitably going to continue, yet, by no means, the Americans are lost. It has still a great dynamic and has already begun to truly open up.

More LSE:
Reparing Failed States,
Europe and the Middle East,
Nuts and bolts of empire,
Islam and Europe - LSE podcast review,
Beyond the genome.

Poetry with In Our Time

The latest broadcast of In Our Time takes on the metaphysical poets. Why they are called metaphysical is explained in the program, but since it involves a use of the word that is no longer common and implies more of a critique on the group rather than something easily identifiable or a name they had chosen themselves, that label sort of fades - at least that is what it does for me.

Moreover, one can hardly speak of a group. Certainly Melvyn Bragg and his guests hardly address a group. Mainly they speak of John Donne. The other poets that are discussed, are said to either not fit at all, or not fit with all of their work within the metaphysical poets. And so, in many ways, this is a program about Donne and how he fits, both with contemporaries and overall in English literature. With critics such as Samuel Johnson and contemporaries such as Shakespeare, one would almost pity Donne. And not expect too much of his work.

I was pleasantly surprised however, with the readings of Donne's poems on the program and found this work to be witty, accessible, gentle and sounding very modern. I would not have guessed for a moment, Donne was a contemporary of Shakespeare. It makes the poets very sympathetic and the discussion very engaging. Thus, In Our Time, was once again a top top shelve show.

More In Our Time:
The Arab Conquests,
BBC's In Our Time (podcast review),
General review of In Our Time,
Library of Nineveh,
The Brain: A History.

Iran Podcast - podcast review

Here is a short review and can't resist to give. It is about a podcast that has podfaded, so it seems, since the last episodes date from over a year ago. I am talking about the Iran Podcast.

I ran into this podcast (pun not intended), because of my unfortunate attempt to listen to The antique history of Iran. In iTunes I overlooked the fact this was in Persian, because name, description and episode titles were in English. When I looked this up, I noticed the list iTunes also always gives: people who subscribed to this podcast also subscribed to... Here the Iran Podcast was listed. Now that I had my mind set to obtaining information about Iran, I had to have at least something.

What makes the Iran Podcast so charming is that it is a paradigmatic example of an amateur podcast, a kind of podcast with which podcasting started in past years, but a kind that seems to be going out of style. A young American with a PC and a personal field of interest, sits down and records short monologues on the subject and achieves a kind of unique and rare content which would never reach regular media. In this case, podcaster Cameron Uslander, has his roots in Iran and in a fresh, light, short and more intelligent than pretentious way tells about his culture. Especially the feast of Norooz receives ample attention.

Comfort with Obama - Democracy in America

After a rather long pause, during which Barack Obama defeated Hilary Clinton in the primaries, I have abandoned the podcast following the elections Democracy in America (blog), which is part of the entire podcast offering of The Economist.

The earlier instances of Democracy in America had Clinton winning, or were still full of caution regarding a possible victory of Obama, but now that he has won the nomination (if not formally than practically), the podcast of course moves ahead to fully shed its light on the person of Obama.And now I can embed the podcasts, so I give you first Charlie Cook, political analyst, whose conclusion will be that the crucial point for the upcoming elections is whether Americans can start feeling comfortable about Obama:



The last podcast, gives the mic to David Mendell, biographer of Obama, telling of his weaknesses and his drives:


More from Democracy in America:
Democracy in America - podcast review,
Issues of Race,
The primary system,
The Economist in New Hampshire,
A biography for Barack Obama and one for Hillary Clinton.