Cancel culture

"Yes, thank you for your inquiry. We are always much interested in a wider public dissemination of thoughtful ideas, and our work at the university is exactly that: stimulate thinking, getting at the bottom of the problems of our civilisation, especially in our faculty. What is the task of a university? That is not merely transmitting knowledge, but forming minds, making young people aware of how to become a really critical and mature adult, capable of making wise assessments, not only in her or his subject but as a worthwhile member of society. It is a matter of responsibility, since the transferrence of knowledge and understanding from one generation to the next, is the basis of our civilisation. Therefore, understanding our society and its past, is essential, whether you will become a notary, a corporate chairman, a dentist or a scientist, a thorough education will offer a perspective otherwise elusive to the great problems of our time. Therefore simply focussing on discrimination of minorities and racism in the public space of society is by far not enough, we have to understand the underlying causes and reasons of such prejudices and shimmering hatred. And these causes are to be found in the basic tenets of our civilisation, which are most of the time implicit and internalised, and therefore the most difficult to grasp and to become aware of. Really very sharp minds and high IQ's and many years of experience are needed to grasp the depth of such tenets and how they infiltrate throughout the world, and it is here that the task of the university becomes clear. In our faculty of the humanities we have spent many discussions on the question, how to improve the curriculum, to get onto a deeper level of understanding, broadening our mind, thinking out of the box - which is the box of convention and routine. Pardon me? ....... Yes of course we're much concerned about the injustices in society but there's nothing we can do about that, our job is to enlighten the background of all those things, and it's there where our great civilizational strength lies. We stick out our neck and take on truly ambitious tasks, especially the hughe subject of our civilization which surely needs a thorough reset. On our last conference in August we have already treated Western literature and sculpture through the ages, the results of which were shocking in their revelations of crime at the sources of production, but yesterday we got to a more profound understanding. Language itself, especially English which has colonized the world in its imperialist attempt to be used everywhere, I say language is the product of a patriarchal, suppressing culture with its forced rules, leading to exclusion. We can see this clearly in the irregular grammar, which is hard to learn, so that many people are struggling unnecessarily, while their intelligence and energies could be spent in much more fruitful ways. Therefore we will, in the near future, embark upon one of our most ambitious projects: to develop an international, crime-free language which could replace English, a new language as a truly just international lingua franca. There have been suggestions of reviving Latin or the original Greek of Antiquity, which were quickly rejected because of their associations with ancient society, and we came to the conclusion that an international language created from elements from languages of suppressed peoples and communities would be best to represent a future in which the humanities would, for the first time, create a just platform for true thought. At this very moment, three of our experts on linguistics are working on a language with elements from different corners of the globe, which have been unjustly underrepresented. We were especially happy with the find of Dr Hofstadter who dug-up from the British Library the English-Yamana dictionary, drawn-up by an English missionary who lived among the Patagonian Yamana tribe in the 19th century and worked all his life to save this precious language, untouched by Western colonialisation, for posterity. Pardon? ..... Yes it really does exist. The circumstance that the dictionary entered the British Library, after many detours, only in 1923 when the tribe itself had died-out, is an asset to its quality: here we have an example of a pure way of communication without the burden of suprematist interfering because the Yamana were never colonized, any attempt by English colonists were thwarted, the British intruders were slaughtered, time and again, so they simply gave-up, and rightly so I would think. In this envisioned new language's purity, the overall structure is also comparable with the language of the Pirahas - a great tribe of the Amazones - as described by Dr Everett in his admirable book. The fact that both tribes had no words for abstract concepts and did not need to count beyond ten, had no awarenes of past and future and entirely lived in the present, show us how humanity could reach a way of being liberated from the encrusted layers of exclusion of people who would want to learn to read and write without the imperialist rules laid-down on them. - Yes? ..... well, maybe some things would be lost but we have to ask ourselves: to which end were these things devised? - No, I can't dwell too long on that, I'm sorry. What was I saying?... Material from the languages of both tribes will be incorporated into the newly devised universal language, probably mixed with Esperanto, the artificial and pure language which has been unjustly neglected but may now eventually find its right context to blossom again. There are signals that esperanto was actively suppressed, and this would only add to its attractiveness. But we did not stop there, no, we got science also in the spotlight. And what appears to be the case? All of our current scientific achievements are the result of a very long history reaching back to the mindset of the ancient Greeks. And the Greeks had concocted a society which had all the marks of patriarchy with a cruel suppression of women, and a so-called democracy which rested on slave labour. So it never was a real, fair democracy. Also their architecture, with the typical straight columns in a row, representing toxic masculinity in their military line-up, they were designed exactly like the phalanxes of shoulder-to-shoulder hoplites. And the entire trajectory of scientific thinking through the ages is burdened by suppressive thinking, excluding competative theories, ideas, approaches, just like religion which has poisoned the life of millions of innocent people and robbed them of any possibility of deserved happiness. We believe in pluralism and justice for all possible approaches of life, and how could we accept a modern science which is the culmination of ages of suppression and the arrogance of the West? Also, almost all of the important scientists, from Aristotle onwards, were white men. How could we accept the results of such a narrowly-defined group? The same goes for culture, painting, poetry, literature, art music, all white men functioning and working for suppressing elites. So we drew-up a plan with some proposals for the curriculum of the university for next academic year. All science subjects, and all cultural subjects, have to be cancelled, and we strongly recommend such cancelling for society as a whole: dentistry, surgeoncy, engineering, mathematics, in short: all subjects which have been practiced thoughtlessly for so long will have to disappear, to liberate everything and everybody who has felt suppressed by existing requirements of a society so much defined by science and technology in any field. Because under the guise of professionalism and knowledge, small groups of a certain kind of people simply wanted to exploit and suppress everybody else, and I have to admit that I have been member of these groups for a long time, and entirely unaware, an insight which has become a heavy burden of guilt from which I - together with my collegues - profoundly long to be redeemed. So, we look forward to the ceremonial closure of our venerated institution and hope that a much more fair and inclusive, alternative institution will soon come into sight, a longterm project for which we have set-up a comitee that is currently studying subjects which will provide a much more just perspective for society as a whole. Thank you very much."

Schoenberg's dualism

 

For Arnold Schoenberg 12-tone composition became a way for the composer to master the chaotic noise of nature through the laws of the organized composition. In “Theory of Form” (1924) he writes:

[O]ne must . . . in all circumstances, use force on nature, on the material—sounds: that one must force them to keep to a direction and a succession laid down by us. One has to force nature—the material—by means of nature—our way of thinking—to work naturally according to our nature; otherwise, we can either not grasp it or else, if one lets the sounds run as they please, it remains a children’s game, like electrical experiments with elderberries or tobogganing or the like. Every more developed game comes about because the course of nature is modified by a force from the outside.

 

This is the result of the dualist thinking that 'the mind' and 'nature' are entirely distinct and separated entities, that there are no relations between the two, a thought going-back to René Descartes, the 17C French philosopher who influenced scientific thinking so strongly, who insisted upon a fundamental split between the two. However, it became a basic tenet of Western science and scientific thinking, with its ideas of progress, speculation and discovery, and was something that Schoenberg found very inspiring.

So, Schoenberg thought he could construct a system with its own logic unrelated to the physical reality of sound, which is defined by the harmonic series and to which the receptive system of our ears and brain is related because both are the result of evolution. However, humans are part of nature, and their mind is also part of nature.

AI has opinions

AI’s opinion about John Borstlap:

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Composer and author John Borstlap has received a polarizing critical reception, with his traditionalist approach to classical music drawing both deep praise for preserving artistic beauty and harsh criticism for perceived artistic conservatism.

Critical Reception to His Books

Borstlap’s writings, including his 2013 book The Classical Revolution and his 2023 work Regaining Classical Music's Relevance, sparked passionate, divided responses:

• Praise: Some scholars, philosophers, and musicians, such as composer Bright Sheng , have lauded Borstlap for offering a "tour de force" that rescues classical music from academic modernism. Proponents celebrate his arguments that traditional tonal art fulfills core human psychological and spiritual needs.
• Criticism: Conversely, the books have met with fierce pushback, particularly in his native Netherlands and Germany. He has faced devastating rebukes from modernist critics who view his rejection of contemporary, atonal, and progressive styles as an outdated or “heartless” reaction to cultural evolution. 

Reception to His Music

As a composer of chamber and orchestral music, Borstlap’s style combines early romantic influences with a contemporary tonal idiom . His compositions, such as his Violin Concerto, have won prestigious international prizes and have been performed by renowned ensembles like the Dallas Symphony and Hong Kong Philharmonic.

·  Praise: Supporters like German aesthetic philosopher Andreas Dorschel praise his music for its "highly sensual attractiveness", noting that Borstlap masterfully connects to the classical-romantic tradition without merely copy-pasting past styles. [

·  Criticism: Some reviewers have been less receptive, occasionally characterizing his chamber works (such as Hyperion's Dream) as too derivative of Brahms or Schumann. Critics in publications like Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine have sometimes described his stylistic choices as bordering on pastiche, citing a lack of originality when straying from traditional models.