First, the hypothesis: Self-proclaimed intellectual aristocrats are often little different from those they label and deride as unintellectual mental bourgeoisie and proletariat.
Second, a not-too-detailed, but true anecdote from an afternoon some decades ago: I was sitting in the stands of a college baseball stadium on a southern NCAA Division I team’s campus. Teams were vying for the conference championship on that beautiful late spring day. The home town’s team drew many fans and onlookers, among them MLB scouts, long-time university supporters, parents of players, college students knocking off classes, players’ girlfriends, and some professors escaping office hours.
Sitting with a parent of a visiting-team player, the two of us were enjoying the game, ignoring the crowd’s frequent loud razzing of the visiting players we were there to support. No big deal, all fans are used to loud comments aimed at visiting teams by home town fans. Razzing is ubiquitous in the sports world. The practice probably transcends time: Roman fans in the Coliseum and Aztec fans in every tiachtll yelled similarly, from booing to epitheting. As I said, no big deal. Games are temporary events by any standard of serious human interaction, events readily forgotten except in the minds of coaches, players, and the truly-committed die-hard fans.
Before the game, my friend and I found seats in what we later realized was a section favored by home team fans. As we watched in the midst of antagonistic noise, we engaged in conversation about the players and the plays. But after one of the visiting players for whom we were rooting hit a monster homerun, monster because it cleared not only the outfield fence, but also a netting strung between tall utility poles on the side of the adjacent field, my friend said in laughter and exclamation, “Holy cow, he put that onto the next field!” That’s all, nothing else. It was the first statement made by either of us that might have been audible to anyone around us. However, two college professors, a man and woman, were sitting in front of us. They looked at each other as one said, “Oh! Looks like we’re sitting with a bunch of hecklers.” And they got up and moved to another section of the stadium. Talk about needing safe spaces! A professor myself at the time, I was rather amazed at how thin-skinned the two were. My friend, also observing the couple’s actions, looked over to me in puzzlement, saying simply, “Hecklers? He had to have hit that ball 450 feet.”
Wait! Don’t draw any conclusions yet. This might get a bit complicated.
Third, something of a personal nature: Sometimes I think I’m sitting in the audience of a daily concert. The music? Why it’s by Camille Saint-Saëns. Specifically, his La Danse Macabre. The concert? It’s the 24/7 news and punditry. There’s no letup in actual nastiness and judgment from those who, upon hearing what doesn’t please them, run to some safe space, a stage on which they can pound on tympani when speaking about those they don’t favor and lightly pluck strings in a pizzicato when speaking about those they do favor. In the stands of life in these times of 24/7 news and pundit shows, the concert’s melody is backed by contrasting pizzicatos on violins and reverberating thunder from tympani. So much of the music is a repetitive phrasing. And then there are crescendos too numerous for such a short piece. Pianissimo building to fortississimo in a moment and back again, all depending on points of view. When the subject is the perceived “enemy,” anchors and pundits do the Dance of Death. That’s typical of a work by Saint-Saëns. (Think Symphony No. 3, the Organ Symphony) And it appears to be typical of the 24/7 news cycle.
Frenzied news reports, always suggesting that we’re on the edge or that political adversaries are more than just political; they are life-threatening at the very least. They can’t be tolerated, especially when they voice anything, even something that is obviously true. And the tolerance for the favored group runs through the news cycle like those quiet measures in Saint-Saëns’ music played on piccolos and plucked violin strings. Pounding tympani while discussing the opposition, few are willing to admit that the other side has accomplished something worth praising, even lightly praising—sometimes not even mentioning. And few are willing to pound the tympani on the obvious failures or miscreants in their favored group. And in the audience are those whose inabilities to tolerate have been over the past century emerging like those crescendos.
That homerun was by most standards a monster hit. The statement by my friend was a statement of fact. Outsiders, as in the case of the two of us, saw and noted that we were macabre to the hometown folks who ironically performed their own La Danse Macabre in their moving to find some refugium, some safe space, where nothing threatening might be heard and where everyone is of one agreeing voice. And so what one sees these many decades later is the macabre manifesting itself in name-calling (i.e., “heckler), in ad hominem attacks, in failing to recognize a truth, all while tolerating the heckling in the opposite direction. We live in a world of defensive ad hominin responses and people fleeing to safe spaces where only the likeminded occupy the seats. And strangely, as we all perform a real La Danse Macabre on our way to personal extinction, we can’t tell that what we do and say is often a mirror image of those we find macabre.
Like a musical piece by Saint-Saëns, say the Organ Symphony, each news cycle ends in a whimper that suggests, “Why did we make all the fuss?” “Nothing was resolved to our liking.” and that says, “I guess what we were concerned about wasn’t quite as serious as we suggested or as worth remembering as we thought.” Life goes on; the orchestra plays another night; a new audience listens to new—yet similar—crescendos and pounding tympani. And when the home team loses because it committed an error? Well, there’s no “we were wrong,” but rather a move onto the next dance macabre. “We stand by our reporting. To retract would make the state of affairs not quite as macabre as we suggested. This is serious, folks. We need you to feel the horror. Onward to the next story, onto the next bit of macabre reporting to prove our point.”
And those who make a truth-containing exclamation, such as the comment on the homerun, are dubbed as mindless hecklers, or in the vernacular of today, “conspiracy theorists.” There’s no rational debate with point and counterpoint, no attempt to measure objectively. The thin-skinned run from two postulates: 1) There can be homeruns that are definable as “monster hits” through objective measurements; and 2) there can be reasonable or logical responses to facts that do not entail ad hominem attacks or fleeing to some safe space where no one contradicts anyone because everyone in that section of the stands is of one mind.
Fourth, a discussion: Just a few minutes of watching any news channel can depress even the most lighthearted and rational among us. Certainly, watching the news isn’t a day’s happy outing at the field, at least not happy for the thin-skinned who do not hold the tenets of the hometown editors.
And if we do not hold the tenets of the dominant culture, the culture whose members fill the stands of the home team, we find ourselves in the section of fans that consider us, however muted and reasonable our arguments and however verifiable our facts, to be hecklers to be shunned and avoided if not derided. In that daily concert of news, every pianissimo gives immediate cause for fortississimo led by a conductor whose sweeping gestures signal performers to increase the volume, to pound on the tympani. Volume and repetitiveness substitute for reason.
Weren’t there less macabre times? Could we go back to them? But even if we could take that time machine on a trip to pre-modern information technology, we might find ourselves in the midst of negative information and hecklers, albeit usually more localized. Just a couple of hundred years ago, bad news took weeks to months to traverse distances that today are crossed in a split second. More recently but still years ago, there were just a few “town criers” telling us the news on a few networks. Yes, bad things have always happened, and yes, we were informed as those in control decided to inform, but today, almost everyone is in the orchestra, almost everyone has practiced what the conductor of common thought directs.
Paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages show us the repeated themes that frighten in the Dance of Death. Back then, time and distance protected the mind and emotions from the onslaught of negative and distant affairs. Today, we can know of a tiff or an assault by people we would never encounter personally. Today, we can hear or read incendiary comments by celebrities, politicians, and people with an agenda supporting contrary values and beliefs. Today, we can watch the dance of Death half a world away and watch it 24/7. In the Middle Ages, one had to walk by a tapestry or painting to see the dance. Now, we see the dance everywhere and all the time.
Where does one go for relief? Is relief even the right word here? It might be if we consider the word’s origin and historical meanings. Apparently, the word entered English in the 14th century, derived from the Old French word for “assistance,” and from the Anglo-French relif. Its literal meaning was “a raising,” or “something lifted.” Eventually, the word came to mean “alleviation of distress, or hunger, or sickness” and by extension, some mitigation or removal of pain, grief, and even evil. From the late Middle Ages on, it was used as a term during war and famine. Towns under siege looked for “relief,” and starving people looked for the same. We can think of our twenty-first century analog in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the entire world population looks for “relief.” That the word is associated with lifting is evident in the art term “bas-relief which takes the etymology back to the Latin infinitive relevare, meaning “to raise” or “to lighten.”
Depressed by the news? You need relief. Again, where does one go for relief? And what kind of relief should we seek. If we rely on others to provide relief, we ask them to sculpt our lives, to raise them slightly from the background. Bas-relief has no undercut surface that separates the image from the matrix surface. It’s part of the background.
One could, of course, leave the theater to find some place where the orchestra, however loud, can’t be heard. That is a viable option. But seeking such a “safe space,” is temporary. There are similar orchestras playing similar music everywhere. Why should orchestras playing music one doesn’t want to hear determine how one thinks or feels?
So, if finding a safe space isn’t a permanent solution, what should one do? What should you do? Here’s a list:
Second, a not-too-detailed, but true anecdote from an afternoon some decades ago: I was sitting in the stands of a college baseball stadium on a southern NCAA Division I team’s campus. Teams were vying for the conference championship on that beautiful late spring day. The home town’s team drew many fans and onlookers, among them MLB scouts, long-time university supporters, parents of players, college students knocking off classes, players’ girlfriends, and some professors escaping office hours.
Sitting with a parent of a visiting-team player, the two of us were enjoying the game, ignoring the crowd’s frequent loud razzing of the visiting players we were there to support. No big deal, all fans are used to loud comments aimed at visiting teams by home town fans. Razzing is ubiquitous in the sports world. The practice probably transcends time: Roman fans in the Coliseum and Aztec fans in every tiachtll yelled similarly, from booing to epitheting. As I said, no big deal. Games are temporary events by any standard of serious human interaction, events readily forgotten except in the minds of coaches, players, and the truly-committed die-hard fans.
Before the game, my friend and I found seats in what we later realized was a section favored by home team fans. As we watched in the midst of antagonistic noise, we engaged in conversation about the players and the plays. But after one of the visiting players for whom we were rooting hit a monster homerun, monster because it cleared not only the outfield fence, but also a netting strung between tall utility poles on the side of the adjacent field, my friend said in laughter and exclamation, “Holy cow, he put that onto the next field!” That’s all, nothing else. It was the first statement made by either of us that might have been audible to anyone around us. However, two college professors, a man and woman, were sitting in front of us. They looked at each other as one said, “Oh! Looks like we’re sitting with a bunch of hecklers.” And they got up and moved to another section of the stadium. Talk about needing safe spaces! A professor myself at the time, I was rather amazed at how thin-skinned the two were. My friend, also observing the couple’s actions, looked over to me in puzzlement, saying simply, “Hecklers? He had to have hit that ball 450 feet.”
Wait! Don’t draw any conclusions yet. This might get a bit complicated.
Third, something of a personal nature: Sometimes I think I’m sitting in the audience of a daily concert. The music? Why it’s by Camille Saint-Saëns. Specifically, his La Danse Macabre. The concert? It’s the 24/7 news and punditry. There’s no letup in actual nastiness and judgment from those who, upon hearing what doesn’t please them, run to some safe space, a stage on which they can pound on tympani when speaking about those they don’t favor and lightly pluck strings in a pizzicato when speaking about those they do favor. In the stands of life in these times of 24/7 news and pundit shows, the concert’s melody is backed by contrasting pizzicatos on violins and reverberating thunder from tympani. So much of the music is a repetitive phrasing. And then there are crescendos too numerous for such a short piece. Pianissimo building to fortississimo in a moment and back again, all depending on points of view. When the subject is the perceived “enemy,” anchors and pundits do the Dance of Death. That’s typical of a work by Saint-Saëns. (Think Symphony No. 3, the Organ Symphony) And it appears to be typical of the 24/7 news cycle.
Frenzied news reports, always suggesting that we’re on the edge or that political adversaries are more than just political; they are life-threatening at the very least. They can’t be tolerated, especially when they voice anything, even something that is obviously true. And the tolerance for the favored group runs through the news cycle like those quiet measures in Saint-Saëns’ music played on piccolos and plucked violin strings. Pounding tympani while discussing the opposition, few are willing to admit that the other side has accomplished something worth praising, even lightly praising—sometimes not even mentioning. And few are willing to pound the tympani on the obvious failures or miscreants in their favored group. And in the audience are those whose inabilities to tolerate have been over the past century emerging like those crescendos.
That homerun was by most standards a monster hit. The statement by my friend was a statement of fact. Outsiders, as in the case of the two of us, saw and noted that we were macabre to the hometown folks who ironically performed their own La Danse Macabre in their moving to find some refugium, some safe space, where nothing threatening might be heard and where everyone is of one agreeing voice. And so what one sees these many decades later is the macabre manifesting itself in name-calling (i.e., “heckler), in ad hominem attacks, in failing to recognize a truth, all while tolerating the heckling in the opposite direction. We live in a world of defensive ad hominin responses and people fleeing to safe spaces where only the likeminded occupy the seats. And strangely, as we all perform a real La Danse Macabre on our way to personal extinction, we can’t tell that what we do and say is often a mirror image of those we find macabre.
Like a musical piece by Saint-Saëns, say the Organ Symphony, each news cycle ends in a whimper that suggests, “Why did we make all the fuss?” “Nothing was resolved to our liking.” and that says, “I guess what we were concerned about wasn’t quite as serious as we suggested or as worth remembering as we thought.” Life goes on; the orchestra plays another night; a new audience listens to new—yet similar—crescendos and pounding tympani. And when the home team loses because it committed an error? Well, there’s no “we were wrong,” but rather a move onto the next dance macabre. “We stand by our reporting. To retract would make the state of affairs not quite as macabre as we suggested. This is serious, folks. We need you to feel the horror. Onward to the next story, onto the next bit of macabre reporting to prove our point.”
And those who make a truth-containing exclamation, such as the comment on the homerun, are dubbed as mindless hecklers, or in the vernacular of today, “conspiracy theorists.” There’s no rational debate with point and counterpoint, no attempt to measure objectively. The thin-skinned run from two postulates: 1) There can be homeruns that are definable as “monster hits” through objective measurements; and 2) there can be reasonable or logical responses to facts that do not entail ad hominem attacks or fleeing to some safe space where no one contradicts anyone because everyone in that section of the stands is of one mind.
Fourth, a discussion: Just a few minutes of watching any news channel can depress even the most lighthearted and rational among us. Certainly, watching the news isn’t a day’s happy outing at the field, at least not happy for the thin-skinned who do not hold the tenets of the hometown editors.
And if we do not hold the tenets of the dominant culture, the culture whose members fill the stands of the home team, we find ourselves in the section of fans that consider us, however muted and reasonable our arguments and however verifiable our facts, to be hecklers to be shunned and avoided if not derided. In that daily concert of news, every pianissimo gives immediate cause for fortississimo led by a conductor whose sweeping gestures signal performers to increase the volume, to pound on the tympani. Volume and repetitiveness substitute for reason.
Weren’t there less macabre times? Could we go back to them? But even if we could take that time machine on a trip to pre-modern information technology, we might find ourselves in the midst of negative information and hecklers, albeit usually more localized. Just a couple of hundred years ago, bad news took weeks to months to traverse distances that today are crossed in a split second. More recently but still years ago, there were just a few “town criers” telling us the news on a few networks. Yes, bad things have always happened, and yes, we were informed as those in control decided to inform, but today, almost everyone is in the orchestra, almost everyone has practiced what the conductor of common thought directs.
Paintings and sculptures from the Middle Ages show us the repeated themes that frighten in the Dance of Death. Back then, time and distance protected the mind and emotions from the onslaught of negative and distant affairs. Today, we can know of a tiff or an assault by people we would never encounter personally. Today, we can hear or read incendiary comments by celebrities, politicians, and people with an agenda supporting contrary values and beliefs. Today, we can watch the dance of Death half a world away and watch it 24/7. In the Middle Ages, one had to walk by a tapestry or painting to see the dance. Now, we see the dance everywhere and all the time.
Where does one go for relief? Is relief even the right word here? It might be if we consider the word’s origin and historical meanings. Apparently, the word entered English in the 14th century, derived from the Old French word for “assistance,” and from the Anglo-French relif. Its literal meaning was “a raising,” or “something lifted.” Eventually, the word came to mean “alleviation of distress, or hunger, or sickness” and by extension, some mitigation or removal of pain, grief, and even evil. From the late Middle Ages on, it was used as a term during war and famine. Towns under siege looked for “relief,” and starving people looked for the same. We can think of our twenty-first century analog in the COVID-19 pandemic, as the entire world population looks for “relief.” That the word is associated with lifting is evident in the art term “bas-relief which takes the etymology back to the Latin infinitive relevare, meaning “to raise” or “to lighten.”
Depressed by the news? You need relief. Again, where does one go for relief? And what kind of relief should we seek. If we rely on others to provide relief, we ask them to sculpt our lives, to raise them slightly from the background. Bas-relief has no undercut surface that separates the image from the matrix surface. It’s part of the background.
One could, of course, leave the theater to find some place where the orchestra, however loud, can’t be heard. That is a viable option. But seeking such a “safe space,” is temporary. There are similar orchestras playing similar music everywhere. Why should orchestras playing music one doesn’t want to hear determine how one thinks or feels?
So, if finding a safe space isn’t a permanent solution, what should one do? What should you do? Here’s a list:
- Acknowledge that like those with whom you disagree, you also play pianississimo when you must address your own failures and misdeeds and play fortississimo when you address the failures and misdeeds of others.
- Recognize when you choose to emphasize the macabre in others and when you choose to ignore the macabre in yourself.
- Lest you become a hypocrite, add tympani and brass to the measures of self-criticism and pizzicato strings and light piccolos to the measures of criticism directed at others.
- Listen to the discordant music of those you oppose to find some measures of harmony and melody or some rhythm to which you can dance.
- Recognize that all humans eventually perform La Danse Macabre when they partner with Death, that every concert ends, and that every audience is replaced by a new audience at the next performance. (The following image is Dance of Death replica of 15th century fresco; National Gallery of Slovenia)
- Recognize when a homerun is a monster homerun regardless of who hits it
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