Resonance and dissonance

Jim Morrison says at the end of Waiting for the Sun that

we're reaching for something that's already found us

- a rather general sentiment that expresses that one doesn't understand what people hope to gain on the current path.

His frustration was with having to be useful instead of exploring life, mine is with the opposite, really, that is with our looming irrelevance: Sure, we can explore life all we want, but we won't ever be useful again. And if the history of evolution is any indicator: Inept species don't survive.

The question how to navigate between the necessary and the enjoyable is an old one. Plato argued that you should simply let those rule who like to do what is necessary for ruling, that is fighting. And Christianity argues that you should try to see the enjoyable in that which is useful. And that about covers it: Either you select according to inclination or you adapt according to necessity.

Morrison found the adaptation stifling and I find it pointless. And as for selection according to inclination: No man is more inclined than an algorithm.

But this post is about something else. I see nothing wrong with wanting to escape a stifling adaptation. But the fact that the pattern of adaptation continues to be upheld means that it is not regarded to be stifling or, analogously, pointless by most.

Part of the problem of the fan culture of the last century, and a significant part, was that there was uniform reception* of sometimes very specific sentiments. And while there is a certain didactic potential in that, there is also the potential of mindless resonance or, worse, dissonance.

I guess, from the perspective of the Catholic Church this started when people began to read the Bible in their own tongues. But I don't know about that. At least I can't say that I felt comfortable as a theologian, if my noblest effort was to find verses in the Bible that would make it appear plausible that the dogma of the Catholic Church is actually correct and not wrong. In any case, whatever those previous dissonances might have been, I didn't witness them, but I did, although at a very early age, mostly when I was 5 and 6 years old, still witness the ripples of the Beatles-like fan culture.

And it is like in Tobe Hooper's Eggshells: There was an enormous pressure to find one's own interpretation of the slogans floating around and the outcomes were naturally quite different. And in many cases they were bent: People, who didn't feel stifled at all, would make some absurd concessions.

This is to be expected, whenever someone says:

We're reaching for something that's already found us.

So, I very much caution against the popularisation of such musings before the judgments that led to them have become commonplace, for I have no love of grotesque chimeras.

* if a girl would be a fan, she would take her friends with her to the concert, no matter whether they were fans or not.

Postscript from the following day. One can capture the ethical essence of the post in the following advice.

One should seek resonance with people the judgments of whom one agrees with, or else the understanding that underlies their pursuit and that is duplicated in one through resonance runs foul of what one believes and does harm to what one believes in.