Norman writes, very concerned about killing off the "ancient monster"
within:

>Maybe music is the redeeming entity.

Cultural biologists will tell you that we can be moral and good without God
or Music--it's in our genes after years of interdependent living with other
species.  (Carl Sagan, Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors)

>Brief: There have been many evil things before 1900.  If the population
>of the icecaps would have had the same cultural surrounding like in Europe,
>maybe we would have very many great composers from Greenland.

The far northern countries are well known for their wide-spread
Atheism--and yet they still manage to surpass their southerly neighbors
*socially.* I think it is safe to say that you are right--Western Europe
has surpassed them *culturally.* They have no Sistine Chapel, but they
don't have any Concentration camps either.  Is it our belief in gods and
monsters, beliefs which are increasingly being robbed from us, that has
caused Western Culture to achieve its highest highs and yet its lowest
lows?

What will happen to the potency of our arts as our leave the extremes
of our Homo-sapien adolescence behind? Was Gandalf being prophetic in
"The Lord of the Rings" when he told Frodo that once the Magic Ring is
destroyed, many evils will pass, but also many things of great beauty?

If it is true that it is Religion and Myth that has propelled our
artists to greatness in the past, then what happens as religion becomes
increasingly antiquated by science, and one by one the gods are dragged
down Mt.  Olympos, replaced by psychologists and socio-biologists? (If you
are offended by my calling religion antiquated, don't worry--even Eros'
mystique has taken a beating:  nowadays one can buy prophylactics with his
bread and milk!)

>(Artists) only seldom belong to a social weak part of society, having
>connections to aristocracy, highest officials, other high-valued artists.

Many were at the *mercy* of the aristocracy and high officials, which
reminds me of an earlier post where I discussed, (to the shock of some),
dominance and submission:  Many of the most prodigious composers, in
submitting to the desires of his patrons, made a name for himself far
outlasting the name of the patron.  With all the books written on how to
hone one's dominant personality skills, it makes you wonder why more books
haven't been written on how to be a successful submissive!

Where am I going with all of this? I'm sure many will consider my writings
just more "doomsday" stuff, but I am not saying that no one can surpass
the creativity of past artists--it just seems to me that now the best and
brightest have found that they can play with the materials of the universe
itself, both the exterior universe, (science), and the interior universe,
(psychology).  It is no longer necessary to express ideas symbolically, as
in the arts, no matter how exquisite the final product might be.

I am also not saying that music cannot exist without the extra-musical
elements of gods and monsters--I'm talking about what *causes* people
to write.  Can you think of any great music, (until recently), that was
written without a religious/philisophical or mythical/literary prompting?

A final note on the Animal Within:

>You for sure know the "Milgram Experiment" with elektro
>shocks beeing applied by test persons to victims answering questions.  The
>test person inceases the voltage, and does not stop it.

In a similar experiment, 87% of Macaques would rather go hungry than pull
a chain that would shock and unrelated Macaque in full view.  Maybe we
should try to be more like the amimals!

If you are intested in some fascinating reading about human nature, I can't
recommend Carl Sagan's "Shadows of our Forgotten Ancestors" stongly enough.

John Smyth