Posted on 12/14/2004 8:40:19 AM PST by Apolitical
Part of the hard work of civilization is teaching young to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad in all aspects of life. If we teach our young children to obey the 10 Commandments and to obey the laws of the land, but don't teach them to realize that Johann Sebastian Bach is superior to Dimebag Abbott, we have failed as parents and mentors. If a person has gone through 12 or 13 years of education and has not developed an appreciation for the greatest artistic achievements of mankind, that education has been an utter failure.
While laissez-faire is the correct approach to economics it has no place in the realm of aesthetics or morality. A confidant civilization imposes its morality and aesthetics on it young people. Yes, you heard it right. We impose. The Rousseauian noble savage is a myth. Left unchecked and untutored the savage will never attain nobility......
(Excerpt) Read more at iconoclast.ca ...
Cool,
Just keep things in perspective. :^).
Many conservatives do themselves a serious disservice by judging others they assume are not like them.
I am a metal head and as conservative as anyone. Most metal heads I know are hugely pro-America anti-communist and islmofacsist.
I get a kick of some of the hypocritical weekly churchgoers who act all holy during church but S%^& on people the rest of the week.
I don't plan to read it, so I can't rate it. It's just not worth the effort for me.
Still, the author comes close to sanctioning the murder on aesthetic grounds - a pretty pinheaded thesis. There is no reason why a music fan can't enjoy both Baroque and heavy metal at different times and in different situations.
William Grim's
NEWS WATCH
AESTHETICS OF HATE: R.I.P. DIMEBAG ABBOTT, & GOOD RIDDANCE
-- Time For Conservative Imagination!
by William Grim, Iconoclast Contributing Editor
You've undoubtedly heard by now that a demented fan last week killed heavy metal guitarist Dimebag Abbott at the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio. While I am extremely happy to hear that the assassin was shot to death by a brave Columbus policeman and I in no way want to engage in a blaming the victim scenario, I cannot deny that there much in Mr. Abbott's demise of one being hoisted on one's petard. The squalor, inhumanity, filth (both in the metaphorical and hygienic senses), depravity, ugliness and ignorance of everything that heavy metal represents (Like rap, I cannot use the noble term music in a description of heavy metal) creates a mindset among its devotees in which Mr. Abbott's assassination was an event that was all but waiting to happen.
It was highly amusing, and also terribly sad, to watch on television fans conducting a "vigil" for the slain Mr. Abbott outside of the Alrosa Villa. It was an assemblage of ignorant, semi-human barbarians who were filthy in attire and manner, intellectually incoherent and above all else, hideously ugly to the point of physical deformity. Here is a definite case in which the outer appearance of these "fans" accurately represented the hideousness of their souls. That the physical deformity of their ugliness was self-inflicted makes the spiritual tragedy of their misspent lives all the more tragic.
But one can see why the heavy metal fans so closely identified with Mr. Abbott. He was an ignorant, barbaric, untalented possessor of a guitar and large amplifier system. Freakish in appearance, more simian than human, he was the performer of a type of "entertainment" that can be likened only to a gorilla on PCP. Lacking subtlety, wit, style, emotional range and anything approaching even the smallest iota of intellectual or musical interest, Mr. Abbott was part of a generation that has confused sputum with art and involuntary reflex actions with emotion.
De gustibus non disputandem est. Matters of taste are not subject to argument. That has been a general principle of aesthetics for some time, and when we are talking about the visceral preference for Mozart or Haydn or Beethoven among civilized human beings we are on pretty safe ground. I do not understand exactly why I prefer Haydn to my good friend who prefers Beethoven. But we both agree (as do all civilized human beings) that both Messrs. Haydn and Beethoven are numerous steps further along the evolutionary trail than Dimebag Abbott.
Here is one area in which conservatives have failed and failed miserably. Whether it is out of a lack of interest or despair, conservatives for too long have ceded the entire field of aesthetics to the trust fund red babies of the blue states. And look at what this has brought us. So-called heavy metal music, so-called rap music, operas and stage plays in which modern "stagings" reduce Verdi and Shakespeare to the condition of a schizophrenic's finger paintings. Leftist domination in the visual arts has made a mockery of the aesthetic greatness of modernism and replaced it with the turd encased in Lucite. And the grammatically-challenged racist rantings of Amiri Baraka now pass for poetry.
However, we conservatives should not confuse family values with aesthetics. In the realm of art, our evangelical brethren have many crimes to answer for. When a church replaces Bach with Bacharach it has engaged in the aesthetic rape of the liturgy. Just because one has good intentions and approaches the numinous with "sincerity" and "authenticity" (the latter term ironically being a buzzword among the Marxist aestheticians of the Frankfurt School), that does not absolve one from aesthetic responsibility.
As far as I am concerned, those who advocate a dumbed-down liturgy and schlocky pop music substitutes for Bach, Handel and the masses of the Renaissance, are as offensive as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and his perverse sexual politics.
Part of the hard work of civilization is teaching young to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad in all aspects of life. If we teach our young children to obey the 10 Commandments and to obey the laws of the land, but don't teach them to realize that Johann Sebastian Bach is superior to Dimebag Abbott, we have failed as parents and mentors. If a person has gone through 12 or 13 years of education and has not developed an appreciation for the greatest artistic achievements of mankind, that education has been an utter failure.
While laissez-faire is the correct approach to economics it has no place in the realm of aesthetics or morality. A confidant civilization imposes its morality and aesthetics on it young people. Yes, you heard it right. We impose. The Rousseauian noble savage is a myth. Left unchecked and untutored the savage will never attain nobility.
There are those who will accuse me of elitism. And I admit it. I am a conservative elitist. I want the very best. The very best form of government, the very best of civilizations, the very best educational system, the very best literature and art, the very best music, the very best way of life. If I need open heart surgery I want to go to an elite heart surgeon.
Mediocrity is the goal of socialism. Americans should aspire to greatness.
In the past forty years, conservatives have won great victories in the political, economic and moral realms, but we stand to throw all our gains away if we do not reclaim ascendancy in the aesthetic realm as well.
And while the murder of even a semi-human barbarian like Mr. Abbott is tragic and to be lamented, it would be wrong to ignore Mr. Abbott's complicity in contributing to the soul-deadening culture of death, ugliness, depravity and inhumanity that spawned his killer.
Hugo von Hofmannsthal once remarked that "all powerful imaginations are conservative." It is time for conservatives to utilize their imaginations and reclaim the field of aesthetics from the left-that is, while there is still something left in the aesthetic realm worth reclaiming.
Iconoclast contributing editor William E. Grim is a writer who lives in Germany and is a native of Columbus, Ohio. He may be reached at wgrim@myrealbox.com.
What a pile of crap. Grimm is an ignorant ass.
There was plenty of great music written 200 years ago.
My Tschaikovsky albums aren next to my Van Halen albums in my CD collection. (Don't really know much about Pantera, considering maybe downloading some now though...didn't realize Dimebag Darrell was considered to be that much of a God). Lots of rock and even metal musicians like and appreciate classical music, and even have had classical training.
However, the clown that wrote this article isn't exactly doing a good job of selling people on classical music.
I wonder what these certain individuals, who profess to have values and morality at the top of their character list, think if someone from a Christian metal band, like Tourniquet, died? Would they have the same reaction if Ted Kirkpatrick, a devout Christian, but a heavy metal drummer, died? What would they say if they found out that Dave Mustaine is a devout Christian, a strict father, and a faithful husband, but the band leader of Megadeth? Yes, Dave Mustaine's drug and alcohol abuse was so bad that Metallica kicked him out of their band, which is telling you something right there, but he's changed his ways. Repentence means more than being sorry, its doing something about it. Its turning around your lifestyle 180 degrees. Talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words.
I agree!
I think the fact this guy lives in Germany speaks volumes about where he is coming from.
Euroweenie!
The article is crap. The author not much better.
LOL!!! Thats been so very true every time I've gone to the performing arts center.
I enjoy classical and metal.
I also love Yngwie Malmsteen who combines both better than anyone!
Refering to someone as "semi-human" etc...
I hope the author of this piece gets shot by some whack-job just so I can sit back and talk about what a "semi-human, more simian in nature" that the guy is.
LOL at the irony in your reply.
Well, speaking only of my own taste, most Opera and later Heavy Metal are both akin to an icicle jammed in the ear, so it would be a wash with me.
Your observation might well be correct, though. LOL
What do I mean by 'later Heavy Metal?' Well, Led Zeppelin was probably the best rock and roll band ever, but I find Metallica unlistenable. That's just one man's opinion.
I'm sure many of Bach's detractors said the same thing about him.
My experience is that the one who quote the most scripture and who thump the bibles the hardest are the biggest hypocrites...
I call them "White Glove Conservatives". They think meeting the enemy head-on in the streets is beneath them. Lot's of them popping up these days.
I actually am a bigger fan of pre 1995 Metallica than anything in Zeppelin's catalog...which will probably earn me a couple flames.
Just pointing out what should have been obvious about the article, and my reply ;0)
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