Labels, by definition, are sticky
We ought to proceed carefully when we affix any of them to ourselves
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The assertion that serves as the title of this post is obviously true in the most concrete sense. You have to soak a jar in warm water to get the adhesive backing on a label to give up the ghost.
But it’s also true of the ways in which we identify ourselves and others.
Let’s take a moment to examine the ways in which we limit our understanding of the role of aesthetics.
Music’s been of overwhelming importance to me since my dad sat me down in front of the living room hi-fi to explain what was going on in Stravinsky’s Firebird and my sister’s Girl Scout troop would gather around her portable player after their meetings to listen to doo-wop 45s, every note of which I absorbed in my nearby playpen.
Given its predominant role in my life, I’ve devoted much thought to how its role in human existence, both individually and collectively, has changed throughout history.
The dizzyingly rapid pace of technological change that began in the second half of the nineteenth century had much to do with ushering in the changing of that role. Sheet music sales of popular songs boomed as people brought home charts to play on the parlor piano for family and neighbors. When one could bring home a wax cylinder recording of someone performing a piece of music, the thrill level multiplied exponentially. Then came the ability to hear a performance broadcast live on a radio.
In the early stages of this evolution, the novelty factor was still so great that people consumed a variety of musical forms. The early record labels - Columbia, Decca, Victor - offered everything from arias to show tunes to marching-band numbers without a lot of marketing distinction.
When the record companies discovered two demographics with somewhat insular tastes - Appalachian folk with their string bands, and black Americans with their ragtime and Delta blues - socioeconomic considerations entered into the dissemination of music.
You may recall from the Ken Burns series on country music that the city fathers in Nashville, Tennessee were none too keen on the growing popularity of the WSM Barn Dance, which became the Grand Ole Opry. They saw it as a tainting of the city’s image as a Southern outpost of cultural advancement.
Likewise, it’s pretty obvious from the titles of 1920s blues records - “Rope Stretchin’ Blues", “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean” - that record companies’ marketing departments were seeking to confirm the validity of the roughest aspects of black Americans’ experience.
But radio, and then television, had a unifying effect. Since there was only a handful of networks, listeners all had a common array of musical experiences defining their understanding of music’s role. Ed Sullivan understood this. He realized that his Sunday night CBS program was something that whole families tuned into after they’d cleared off the supper dishes and settled into the den. There was something for everybody. From 1956 onward, rock was part of the mix, but by no means the main point.
Even within the rock ethos that inescapably defined the musical life of Western youth, there was an ecumenical embrace of what was coming down the pike - rockabilly, Brill Building fare, folk and folk rock, the British Invasion, southern soul, Motown. The fragmentation came with the dawn of the 1970s, as The Beatles disbanded, FM progressive stations came on the scene to serve as a foil to the Top 40 format, and sub-genres proliferated. The audience for the Marshall Tucker Band was not that for the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which was not that for Joni Mitchell, which was not that for Black Sabbath. Every audience could retreat to its own auditory corner.
That phenomenon has only accelerated in the ensuing decades.
Consider the sense of ownership girls and women in the 13-to-23-year-old age range feel about Taylor Swift’s body of work.
As I wrote in a piece titled “Taylor Swift and the Purpose of Music” for The Freemen Newsletter,
Much is made of how her core fan demographic resonates with her expression of feelings. I personally have had a bellyful of singer-songwriters giving us ringside seats to their feelings—think the above-mentioned James Taylor—but at least it used to be done with some desire to avoid gimmicks. Swift has made gimmicks one of the principal tools in her box.
Her business acumen comes in for a lot of discussion, and it’s undeniably impressive. But for all the courage involved in standing up to record companies and taking control of her body of work, we are still left with the essential vapidity of that body of work.
We haven’t required any depth from providers of our popular music for many decades. We have simultaneously asked too much and too little of one of our most sublime gifts. Music ought to reflect our imago dei status. What a privilege it is to be able to fashion something so potentially eternity-tapping. That we squander it as we do is reflective of how badly we misunderstand the value of the creation into which we’ve been set down.
We do this on so many levels of our lives.
The proliferation of the political and ideological labels with which we identify ourselves and put others in boxes may make for convenient shorthand, but it circumscribes any possible conversation we could have about the two matters that have preoccupied philosophy since ancient times: what makes a human life worth living, and how to organize an optimal society.
In my most recent piece here at Precipice, I wrote of an encouraging development I’m seeing among some young self-identifying conservatives on a couple of social media platforms I frequent. These folks are decidedly in opposition to Donald Trump, his entire MAGA movement, and the wack-job politicians with which it’s been inundating American legislatures. What is interesting is watching them sort out the standards they wish to establish for forming alliances. In their back-and-forths, they’re inclined to make sure their personal ratios of “social conservatism,” embrace of free-market economics, and take on the world stage are understood by all with whom they interact.
A worthwhile exercise as far as it goes, but I’d like to see, speaking of ratios, maybe a little less about how some candidate in a particular Senate race has shown encouraging numbers in recent polls, and a bit more about the two basic matters alluded to above.
The current moment begs for a discussion that unwinds all the considerations that are ultimately distractions, that insists on starting from a premise more like zero.
For instance, the label “social conservatism” makes it easy to gloss over questions that no one seems to have time for. Are a definition of marriage that is only a couple of decades old at the most, or insistence that someone’s delusional set of gender-related pronouns be indulged, only a matter of Supreme Court decisions or school policies? What have thinkers throughout the millennia during which humans have reflected on their humanity had to say about such matters? What are the consequences of certain choices we make when we conclude that we own ourselves? What happens to such humanizing qualities as trust, loyalty and group decisions about the use of resources when we’re all free to be as autonomous as we please?
And do we not need a lodestar, some commonly agreed-upon understanding of the relationship between liberty and agreement, to make sure that clarity is sustained in any discussion of the latest governmental outrage concerning taxes, subsidization or debt?
Maybe my point in all this is something along these lines: We’re going to need a society with well-developed philosophical chops if we’re to provide an alternative to MAGA on the one hand, and militant identity politics, climate alarmism and wealth redistribution on the other.
A tall order, to be sure, in an age of ever-proliferating distractions, mistrust, disillusionment, and shorthand ways of identifying worldviews.
I also see occasional encouraging signs along these lines. Some good people are doing good work regarding a return to foundational thinking. One finds a lot of them on Substack. One finds a few in my recommendations of other Substacks.
They deserve our attention. A lot more than the carnival barkers who are the most visible participants in what’s left of our public discourse.