Phil wrote: It is connected to the belief that popular music, whether it is Top 40 or Metal, is by definition not 'good' music, that whatever kids are writing on their computers or cellphones can't be literature, and that a lack of appreciation for Bach and Mahler is necessarily a lack of good taste.
Could it work the other way? The reverse of that belief might also injure.I mean, we've all been told to ignore Thistlebottoms and Canon Guardians. We've all been taught it's OK, even progressive, to consider pop entertainment on equal footing with serious art. We've all been taught to be tolerant and open-minded ... OR ELSE! We've all been taught that it's important to raise "there's no accounting for taste" to an ideal. We've all been taught that the young are innovators and the old are always blinkered and handicapped by rigidity of opinion.
Could all this "teaching" actually lead us to overlook real deficiencies? We instantly condemn the belief Phil describes above; after all, we've been "taught" to condemn that belief, and for good reason. Yet couldn't our instant aversion to any non-tolerant, non-relativized, imposed standard be, itself, a form of blindness?
Could we become so pre-occupied by enforcing tolerance that we miss some real ongoing damage, some Gresham's Law of the spirit acting without resistance?
------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
