Intolerant minorities drive change

The above quote comes from Nasim Teleb and something that he noticed in America regarding food and labelling. His observation was that although the Jewish population was only a small percentage it was actually more cost efficient to make something accessible to a small minority than not.

He went on to state that this might be a recurring theme historically, this would explain the rise religions such as Christianity even within something as powerful as the Roman Empire. He postulates that the intolerant minority make it difficult for people to ignore them and therefore it would be easier to include these people than not. Obviously he goes into great detail historically to back this claim.

This could explain several interesting revolutions that occur in history including Bolshevism in Russian and Maoist China which was accomplished by very few people against vast odds. When we look at various structures within society we can see these minorities affect the way we do things take for instance flying. Because of a very small number of potential terrorists we all have to subject ourselves to the rigours of the suspects in order for us to catch a flight.

Education works in very similar way often regarding the to the ideas of a few people who  have influenced and directed education  for the last hundred to 200 years and possibly even earlier. In America the core idea of education emanates from one man.

As artists, teachers and performers we need to look at this as a possible way of influencing the direction of music and anything else that you try using music as a tool. Just being bloody-minded about what you’re doing can actually reap rewards well above the norm.

You might like to try some ideas if you work within an education establishment, try doing things your way in such a way that it would be easier for you to be left alone to get on with it than you to conform to the patterns laid down by others.

Think what this could mean in your musical life, be different ……………

Worth a try

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The West has immersed itself in technique and the mechanics of things in nearly every area of art and learning and lost something very precious in the process.  Our lives are now surrounded by that mechanicalism. Our houses, our clothes, our art and our science all reflect it, more so every year and the need for Prozac increases right along with it. People just don’t feel well anymore.  – Stephen Harrod Buhner

Music is in the feeling of things and in the abstractness of the unconscious. We have confused the theory and the technique for the art itself.

Did you know that the number of mental illnesses that are listed have increased massively in the last 50 years along with treatments for them?  Weird eh?  Someone is making money straight away from the new diagnosis and listing, we rarely have a mental illness with no treatment. The linking of money with illness is one of the worse ideas that we have created in a capitalist society, great for business, bad for cure. The problem is the catch 22 syndrome that happens, take this pill and then you need this to stop the nausea and this one to protect the liver and so on.

The something that is precious is that art is flawed it goes wrong but in that something is created that has a life of its own. You did not create it, it created itself and therefore the work is art it has life and it came through you, you as a channel and conduit for the manifestation of the work.

With this in mind can we claim royalties for this? Or maybe we can do something different and make the creation of the song free but let the song do something for us in return for its birth. I am very serious about this because in the book by Charles Eisenstein. Sacred Economics the idea of protecting copyright and the charging for interest on loans are some of the reasons why we are in such a mess. I suggest you read the book as it is a very compelling argument and I think that free music could make amazing things happen but more of that another time.

For now create something and let it be its own boss, it maybe your baby but it is its own life but make it work for you and let something develop using that piece of music maybe let others contribute to it, use it and pass the word around about it.

This could be massively powerful form of publicity worth more than you would make from it by conventional means.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Rock Summer school … check it out for next year