see, the thing is you'd *expect* an irrational creature to build a social system centered around that creature's inherent rationality - as a consequence of that inherent irrationality, which would blind it to it's own nature. if such a creature were to have the capacity to come to terms with it's inherent irrationality, it wouldn't truly be irrational. that is to say, it would be an impossibility, rather than that it would state anything about the creature's nature. a rational creature may understand it's rationality, but an irrational creature could only confuse it's irrationality for rationality. and, i may have just proven what i have suspected all these years - that i am not a member of the species i ought to be a member of.

as i've stated previously, i'm content with sharing a genus with homo sapiens (sapiens) but i need a new species categorization for myself. sorry.

actually, they say that the person that discovers the species gets to name it, so i guess that's my responsibility.

this should surprise nobody that knows me: i am hereby homo j.

i'm half-considering putting the application in to the academy, just to see what happens.

if a god actually did exist, could it even begin to understand our inherent irrationality?

or might we just perplex it to such an extreme point of confusion that it would just give up on us?

i'm kind of leaning towards the latter, really. i couldn't imagine any supremely rational being being able to get it's head around us. it would just be too much for it.

"they're pointing nuclear weapons at...don't they know what...da fuck...?"

then, we wonder why the bastard seems like such a vengeful asshole. well, shit, what other response is there?

you can only frustrate a supremely rational being so long before it gets to a breaking point and is just like "fuck it.".

deathtokoalas
this is not a new (relative to 2005) line of thinking for biafra. he was calling people out on this shit all through the 80s - anarchy for sale is a good example, but it's not the only one. and, it wasn't just jello pointing it out, either. early crass is incredibly critical of the british punk movement. and, try reading the kind of popular historical accounts of punk rock they teach to kids in music history classes nowadays. they're really surreal. it seems like history is going to record punk rock as something that vivienne westwood created to sell bracelets to teenagers.

i can't comment on the case in much depth, but i know that even east bay acknowledged that the royalty thing was an "accounting error". i don't know what "accounting error" actually means. but it seems clear that the crux of the case wasn't about royalties but about control over the discography. honestly? jello may have run the label, but these kinds of decisions should have been democratic - up to veto power by any single member, including whatever drummer was on whatever recording. i'm not sure jello held up to that ideal the way you'd expect him to. that doesn't excuse the decisions that were made by the other band members, but it does present a lesson about the value of democratic decision making, namely that when shit devolves into clashes of egos it rarely works out well for anybody involved.

there's a kind of pseudo-marxist theory driving the idea of youth culture music as propaganda, but i think there's more than enough evidence to draw on since the beatniks to deduce that marx was completely wrong. if you go back a few thousand year to plato (socrates), he said something rather interesting. i'm paraphrasing because i don't want to look it up, but it was roughly this:

when you see musicians begin to gather, you know that some change is occurring.

what i remember about the statement (i don't even remember what text it's in) is it's ambiguity in terms of cause and effect. even back in ancient greece, it was clear that social change and music are correlated together. but, which one is the cause of the other? or are they interrelated?

what i think the empirical evidence since the beatniks demonstrates is that music cannot produce change because it gets co-opted as soon as it tries. it seems like there's a pattern. a message is paired to an art form, and it begins by attracting people that get the message. but, as the message grows, it becomes converted into a product. what that means is that by the time it reaches the status quo it's just a package for sale. the masses consequently interact with it the same way they'd interact with any other product for sale. the next step is that it becomes emulated through the filters of the status quo, and that's when it becomes co-opted. there's not even a place for "selling out" or for corporations to come in and buy everything out. it's the market that co-opts it on it's own. that's the reason music is always so much more powerful at the core of it's development, regardless of whether you're speaking of raw punk power or elaborate progressive rock. blink 182 is to the dead kennedys as journey is to king crimson.

but, i think the market could only be capable of co-option in the first place if the art represents something that the status quo can connect to. that is, the change must have already occurred. i think socrates' observation is consequently better read as that when you see musicians gather, you know they are reacting to a social change that has already happened.

i'd suggest re-evaluating 20th century musical movements in this socratic context, rather than the usual marxist one. could the hippies have been a result of the kind of social change brought out by the beatniks and also by the civil rights movements? and could punk have been more than a reaction to the hippies, but a consequence of the kind of change they brought out? i think we already mostly understand alternative rock as a result of punk rock, and most movements that have existed since then (excluding the reactionary movements) as results of alternative culture and/or punk.

but, taking that perspective changes the rules of the game. it takes the wind out of the sails, but the approach has clearly failed, so we need to try and understand why. all of a sudden, political music becomes about preaching to the choir - which is not something that nobody else has put together, but is maybe something that hasn't been separated out into it's own kind of thought quite yet.

so, what do we do then? well, maybe we stop pretending that music can create social change and start understanding that music reflects social change that has already occurred. that doesn't mean we should abandon music. it has recreational and enjoyment value, of course. but, if we can realize this we can start focusing our political energy in other places...

but, to get back to the point, i imagine that once jello developed into a role of some power over his label he adopted some of the characteristics he spent so much time satirizing. i don't want to psychoanalyze the guy on youtube, but all that shit didn't come from nowhere. alternative tentacles, uber alles, indeed.

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deathtokoalas
that's very competitive, hierarchical thinking...

Alex Murray
it is true, though. DK without Jello is a joke.

deathtokoalas
i think there are plenty of people that could have filled in for jello, should the band have decided to move on without him. i don't like how things turned out. but it doesn't mean jello has some kind of heightened importance, or was irreplaceable.

yeah. you know, here's the thing: lions eat people, too. quite a few of them. not when their "natural diet" is low; humans are a component of a lion's "natural diet". some theories even suggest it's part of the reason why we humans got so s-m-r-t. they'll come right into the village, grab a human and start munching, alright? estimates are around a thousand human deaths a year due to lion predation. they're above us on the food chain in the regions they inhabit.

now, if you saw a lion munching on a human, would you say "ah, whatever, it's nature. lion's gotta eat."? well, you might if you're some twisted hobbesian psychopath. but, you're probably not. you'll probably react with a healthy amount of empathy and say "noooo! not the human!".

so, why is it different with an elephant?

i'm not denying the premise. it's true: a lion's gotta eat, and it's gonna eat what it can, including you, if you're around. but, there's no rule that says we need to have lions.

now, stop and mentally define the word monster. would you not agree that a lion perfectly fits the definition of a monster? they're horrific creatures, really.

elephants are very smart creatures that demonstrate a range of emotions and cognitive abilities that in some ways exceeds our own. as far as we know, an elephant can't find the root of a polynomial equation (or prove it can't be found using any brilliant methods developed or not developed by french revolutionaries dabbling in group theory), but most humans can't do that, either. we do know that elephants have far superior memory skills to our own. the reality is that the depth of their cognitive abilities is still being studied, and may yield some rather shocking (to some people) surprises.

in short, an elephant deserves your empathy just as much as a human does. at various phases in our existence, we've banded together to chase off predators that pose a threat to us. we've driven some of them to extinction - and that's natural. if it's them or us, and it generally is when we're talking about predators that eat us, i'd rather it be them.

so, i think it's worth asking whether or not it's worthwhile to stand in solidarity with the elephants to drive the lions to extinction. i'm not saying we should, exactly, i'm wondering if we should. do we have a moral case for it, considering elephant intelligence? and do we really need a world with monsters in it?