[pianozach]

One person accidentally created a fake war supposedly being waged by "the Left" against Beethoven's 5th symphony because it's supposedly a symbol of white superiority.

Fake crisis. No one seriously trying to "cancel" Duh duh duh dunnnnnnnn.

 

[pianozach]

Apparently there was already a Fox headline: "Is math racist?"*

*as always nowadays, this could have been faked, I know.

This absolutely would not surprise me at all, seeing as how it seems to be a Fox News. When there's REAL news to be ignored (Stuff that doesn't fit their far right narrative), they'll go with "bait" like this.

That said, it could be fake. You can do this yourself, just photoshop any dumbass phrase (with a question mark) in the chiron there, like

"Was Marilyn Monroe a Secret Socialist?"

"Biden Health Crisis?"

"Antifa putting hormones in the water supply?"

It's easy. Your turn.

 

[pianozach]

There may be microbial life on Venus.

We will try to bring Jeezus to them. Save their little micro-souls.

 

[pianozach]

Finding life on Venus would be very scary for our future. I never realized, but the logic is interesting. Maybe I can find the video, but maybe you already know the logic?

No, I actually don't see where you're going with this . . .

If life exists elsewhere in the universe, it's creates religious and philosophical issues; the concept of God would have to become a little more elastic, as the Bible is quite Earthcentric. Philosophically, it's may not be much of an issue at all. I'll let the philosophers deal with that.

If we discover "life" in the form of microbes, we don't need to fear them. Their evolution is behind our own.

If we discover an advanced civilization we likely don't have to worry either, as they've been in close proximity and not cremated us with some heat ray or something. Oh, wait, heat rays are from Mars. All right a Cool Ray.

 

[pianozach]

Humanity has been on the brink of causing our own extinction for the entirety of recorded history if you believe some doomsayer or another. Oddly enough, such apocalyptic predications have never quite panned out.

But if it had, we wouldn't know about it, would we?

 

[pianozach]

. . . The thing that puzzles me is that we have never found any convincing evidence of life on other stars by detecting electro-magnetic radiation with signs of intelligent use. We spew out loads of the stuff, but we don't see any coming back. The universe has so many stars in it that I can't imagine we are unique, but why is there no evidence? Strange.

It's possible that as civilizations advance, the technologies evolve through stages of stuff. Perhaps, in the grand scheme of things, civilizations emit "electro-magnetic radiation with signs of intelligent use", then move on.

I'd say that it's very likely that there are no civilizations that are at the exact point at which we've arrived technology-wise. And even if they did, the closest star is - what - several light years away, so when we see their LIGHT, we are seeing light that originated four to eight years ago.

But The Milky Way galaxy is 105,700 light years across . . . If we were to detect "electro-magnetic radiation with signs of intelligent use" from a star on the other side of the Milky Way, it means that THAT civilization is where we are NOW, 26,000 years ago, which means their technology is 26,000 years ahead of ours NOW.

And that's just THIS galaxy. Scientists think that there are probably between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies out there.

The closest known galaxy to us is the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, at 236,000,000,000,000,000 km (25,000 light years) from the Sun. The Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy is the next closest , at 662,000,000,000,000,000 km (70,000 light years) from the Sun.

The Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy is 1.44 million light years away, an unfathomably large distance . . .

 

[pianozach]

And in terms of intelligent life, even we don't necessarily qualify.

If a civilization 26,000 years more advanced than us were to visit us, would they even recognize that we are a sentient species with a civilization? Or would they view us (if they noticed us at all) as we view ants or salmon or pigeons or fungi?

 

[pianozach]

I just scanned the first of the articles from ClassicFM.

Even though I had the unpleasant and unfortunate prognostication by various and sundry individuals (maybe they consider themselves 'journalists' but more like social engineers?) that classical music is 'racist' - I was wasn't ready for the tripe from ClassicFM. From the close of https://www.classicfm.com/composers/beethoven/composer-cancelled-fifth-symphony-elitist-vox-debate/

"The podcast ends with the line "Maybe it's time we break up with Beethoven once and for all…".
Breaking up with LVB, the Romantic so beloved for writing the unofficial anthem to the fall of the Berlin Wall and whose Ninth Symphony dreamed that 'all mankind will become brothers', seems a bit extreme.

But as such a giant of the music world, there's absolutely no reason we can't have a debate about his impact on it."

Time to stop listening to their station. I wonder what other music lovers think about this and would do about it.

Don't be silly. It's an opinion piece and doesn't affect hundreds of years of music at all.

In fact, it's more of a self-promotion gimmick, trying to simply stir up a renewed interest in Classical Music. THAT is ONE article, and certainly NOT representative of CLASSICFM on the whole. Browse their site for OTHER "learned" articles, and you'll find that no one is "cancelling" Beethoven, or any of the other European classical composers.

In this case, it actually IS what it is. We know that Europe dominates in terms of Classical music, and that Europe is full of Europeans, who, on the whole, are caucasian.

No one is blasting Asian art music for being Anglo-exclusionary, or indigenous African music for being anti-Asian. No one is complaining that there aren't more ragas written by white guys.

As for "Maybe it's time we break up with Beethoven once and for all…", only some sort of extremist would seriously suggest blacklisting Beethoven. No one is suggesting we tear down the Parthenon or the Pyramids or Stonehenge for being a product of where they were created.

Much ado about nothing, IMO.

 

[pianozach]

While this is just one article and one person's opinion, what worries me is that these kinds of articles seem to be becoming more common, which is why I started this thread. And while it doesn't mean that these articles can really represent a cross section of society, I doubt they will be of any help for keeping classical music alive and well among the younger audiences and posterity. Plus, they are just so stupid that it's irritating to know that some people actually write this stuff.

Nah, it's just a call for diversity, not a flip to non-European music. No one is seriously suggesting replacing Beethoven with Francis Johnson, just a call to include him.