Poptimist THORT For The Day

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"quality, though it exists, is not a poptimist concern"

So sez jauntyalan - what say you?

(The Poptimist TFTDs will be drawn from that text poll I did last week about "Poptimist Tenets")

Comments

[koganbot]

Er, what is this conversation about? (Not a rhetorical question, but not one I'm going to try to answer right now.)

Judging stuff - songs, ideas, people - good and bad is obviously a huge poptimist concern, since that's what the people at the Poptimists livejournal community spend a lot of time doing.

It is not our only concern. And it's not as big a concern for Alan as it is for most other poptimists.

Finding a universal measure for EVERYTHING (songs, ideas, people) does not seem to be a goal of anyone here, which is good because such a measure would be inflexible and dysfunctional (even a single-celled organism has to respond differently to things depending on its internal state and its needs of the moment).

It does not follow that all measures - local and contingent though they are - are equally good.

If people here would stop using the words "objective" and "subjective" (I mean, stop using them ever, for the rest of their lives), they would not be doing themselves any harm, or making themselves stupider.

Alex wrote this above: "But a world without quality would be a world without uses, and things without quality would be things without any differentiation, ergo impossible to conceive of. For me, poptimism means flirting with the impossible possibility of this disappearance of quality." I have no idea what his second sentence ("flirting with the impossible possibility...") means much less why he or anyone would find "disappearance" of quality" desirable. "Disappaearance of quality" = disappearance of anything's having an impact on anything else or being distinguishable from anything else = end of universe. This does not actually seem to be a poptimist goal, or Alex's.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

see i think I had a different 'quality' in mind, because

"Disappaearance of quality" = disappearance of anything's having an impact on anything else

just doesn't follow in my head. Music can have a variety of impacts, pleasurable/desirable or otherwise, on me totally REGARDLESS of 'quality'. perhaps this is down to mark's attempt to disentangle the possible meanings above.

i. = characteristic (someone is totally undiscerning = can't tell one song fron another)
ii. = value as linked in to a particular discussion-sphere

When people talk about "quality songs" or "poor quality songs" that's not poptimism at work. It's not a bad thing in itself, but stuff already exists to deal with those dimensions, and poptimism should concern itself elsewhere where work isn't being done.