A key assumption of the current dominant metaphysics
is that new is better.
This is easy to believe as long as we remained isolated
from the negative side-effects of, say, the digital
technology revolution. Given all the happy talk on
the diversity of the long tail of digital commerce, it
is hard not to be swept up in one big glorious wave
of excitement and energy. Without wanting to pull
the plug on the party lights, I would only say that
it is important to regularly pause and consider things
from a wider perspective. Consider the beautifully
illuminated manuscript (from the Latin manus,
‘that which can be held in the hand,’ or ‘is made by
hand.’). It’s about 500 years old. So in Bach’s time,
it would have already been ancient.
I think we need to remember that this was a time
when Aristotle’s idea from the POLITICS, that
interest on loaned money was unethical. “Money
parenting money,” as he put it. (A comparison to our
own way of seeing things might better be made with
incest, or literally, non-chaste relations.) As I’ve
written elsewhere, I agree. [see my essays, WHEN
GROWTH IF ‘FALSE COMPARE.’and OUT OF CONTROL—
the runaway economies of systemic imbalance ]
The Chigi Codex era of 500 years ago is also a time
when Music, literally, ‘that which is given to us by
the Muses,’ still stood at the very center of culture.
Hamonia mundi. Harmony of the spheres. (For me,
this is still the case, or how I experience the world.)
So, if conservation is about dealing rightly with Nature
and Culture’s fundamental asymmetry—that creation
is slow, and destruction fast—then we might do well
to be mindful of what is being lost of what is best of
creative traditions around the world. Like languages.
Like the the traditional knowledge of the healing plants.
Or like a sense of real, living, acoustic sound, and not
the noise and merely 2nd-hand synthetic artifacts with
which we have surrounded ourselves.
Music, like peace, is its own end, its own reward.
Don’t take my word for it. Find out yourself. Learn to play
an instrument. Like learning to simply walk again in
the wilds of the beautiful land, there’s no better
way to protect what is best, and what is sacred,
of cultures that are, when you really think about it,
not merely a means to some other end, but rather
true gifts of the gods.
Like I like to say:
“Music?
The one thing we humans do
that makes the rest of Nature jealous.”
View a page of the Chigi Codex at:
http://picture-poems.com/photoweek/chigi-codex_1500_detail.html