Blog

01/23/2020

B24 Undiminished topicality: WEF Davos 2020

"Dont ask, what the world can do for your country - ask what your country can do for the world." ... in continuation of a thought of John F. Kennedy

The theory of harmony does not have its own representatives in the game of forces of the different parties. If there is something like a lobby - i.e. a group of people drawing attention to the importance, it consists of those who suffered from and report about sheer violence - the survivors of Auschwitz, for example. Likewise, it is the empathy-enabled who recognize that strategy can only result in short-term local success while accepting tremendous misery. The history is full of examples. The situation is no different in dealing with nature. To draw attention to this, many people take on the streets.

The strategists' interest in the world ends at the limits of their own lifetime and their own living space.

While those affected continually demand: "Something like this must never happen again", new perpetrators are growing up in the circle of ignorance. Strategic action is unsuitable for maintaining the function of a closed system, because compared to synergy there are immense friction losses ... starting with the costs for election campaigns and arms trading up to the inevitability of armed conflicts.

From a strategic point of view, war is nothing more than a problem solution with huge collateral damage.

The only force with which sustainability can be achieved is the strength of mutual understanding and insight. To develop these and make them guidelines for his own actions would homo sapiens owe its self-chosen name. In the field of music, he has long proven his ability to do so. However, there it is not about power and wealth, nor is sheer survival. We are dealing with dissonances of a completely different order of magnitude "in real life"- also with cognitive dissonances and mental disorders that lead to outbreaks of violence..

The following blog posts show that the ethical relevance of musical harmony - especially its exemplary character - was recognized by the Greeks 2500 years ago - and integrated into a theological world view by early Christians - with the consonance of prim and octave as acoustic representatives of the A and the Ω. The immateriality of sound in connection with the ideal of harmonic agreement as a symbol for peace suggested the connection with the divine. The motto MUSICA DONUM DEI should be understood against this background.

In order to decipher the Christian symbolism of the Western sound system, it is necessary to look at the developmental steps from the educational perspective of the respective time of origin. A polydisciplinary approach is indispensable for this, because specialization in individual specialist areas, as we know them today, only started after time of enlightenment.

Methodologically, the polydisciplinary approach is also important, because after numbers and tones are abstract in nature, a lot can be interpreted into them. The text material of the written sources in connection with architecture and visual representations provides the necessary "tangible" evidence which could never be presented by purely acoustic means. This is the only way to explain why musicology has not become aware of the facts which enable networking with the cultural-historical and current-political context..

The wide-ranging opening of the perspective up to the present to assess the current situation is unusual in academic circles, but the humanities fulfill a mission of society, because those who want to consciously embark on the path to the future must know where they come from.

The expanded perspective arises automatically from the subject, because neither the musical nor the interpersonal harmony can be assigned to a particular epoch. These are timeless desiderata - not just ideals.

It is incumbent on society to draw the necessary conclusions and, if necessary, to set the political course, because the task of science ends when the facts are presented and the connections are shown.

© Aurelius Belz 2020