Don't Step on the Banana Peil

I honestly do not see how my professor could call this a “perfect essay,” but I had a good time writing and researching it, and seeing them live was fucking amazing, so here you go:

A Great’s Latest Album

            Mastodon’s latest album, “The Hunter” is different from their past works.  Apart from being their first album that is not a concept album, centered on a single theme (i.e. fire, water, earth, and æther), songs each have their own theme and are shorter than the 10 to 13 minute epics “The Czar” and “The Last Baron” from their previous album “Crack The Skye,” and less complex than songs such as “Capillarian Crest” from “Blood Mountain.”  This makes for an interesting contrast for the listener, especially when taking into account the classic rock influences found in the albums combined with their heavy metal roots.  For one with no actual musical training, there are three basic criteria by which I tend to judge music: enjoyability, expressiveness, and complexity.  Talent is implied herein because that should be expected with any good band, though it should be noted that it is rare to find a band composed of four individuals with this caliber of talent in its possession.

            In order for anyone to like music, it has to be fun to listen to.  I call this enjoyability.  Clearly, this is purely subjective.  Enjoyability is an example of a value judgment (Waller, 2008).  Mastodon has this in spades, even for people who do not generally identify themselves as metal heads.  Brann Dailor, drummer/vocalist of the band, stated in an interview that the types of people who can be spotted outside the venues prior to the shows have grown in variety (Stewart. 2011).    The growth in their fan base over the last decade shows that while taste in music is a subjective concept, if a song or band is loved by people that do not normally listen to that particular genre, there is a highly enjoyable aspect to the music.  This would also account for the mixed genres one will find in the Billboard charts, for example.  “The Hunter” is composed of beautifully melodic pieces such as “Creature Lives” and “The Sparrow,” which are contrasted with the fist-pumping unabashedly metal songs like “Curl of the Burl” and “Blasteroid.”  The titles of these songs even seem to imply what will be heard.

            “The Hunter” as an album and the song were both so named for the brother of Brent Hinds (lead guitar/vocals), who was killed during a hunting accident during the recording of this album.  While it is not their most emotional album [I give this title to “Crack the Skye,” which was heavily influenced by the suicide of Brann Dailor’s sister when he was a teen as well as the near-death experience of Brent Hinds(Bosso, 2009)], songs range in expressiveness from lyrics about love, “Straight out of nowhere/ Buried deep inside my past/ Straight out of nowhere/ Hoping you’ll be the last (http://www.mastodonrocks.com/lyrics),” to philosophical insights, “Trust your own truth” and “Pursue happiness with diligence.”  A song is poetry set to music, and heavy metal is no exception, as we can see here. 

            While this album is not as complex as “Crack the Skye” or “Blood Mountain,” the simplicity of “The Hunter” is what makes it a great album.  Gone, but not forgotten are the intricate guitar riffs and drum beats for this album, though in a good way.  The transition that Mastodon has made from über-complex songs to the less-is-more mentality is seamless.  Brann Dailor has noted that for “Crack the Skye,” the band would think of ways to make what they were playing more difficult to play, but that this made the recording process stressful for the group.  With “The Hunter,” because there were members going through stressful lives outside the studio, they wanted to make this recording experience simpler (Ferris, 2011).  This worked to great effect.  Exploring their simpler side shows how they have grown as musicians.

            For someone who has no actual musical training, I think that the best criteria I could ascertain were enjoyability, complexity, and expressiveness.  For Mastodon’s “The Hunter,” the band has put together a great contrast to earlier albums that is beautifully simplistic, animated, and just plain fun to hear.  It is not every day that one comes across a band that could easily be considered greatest in the world.  It is more like once in a lifetime, and I consider myself lucky to be able to count myself as someone who witnessed the future of progressive metal.

Resources

Bosso, J.  (April, 2009).  Mastodon’s brent hinds on making crack the skye.  Musicradar.com.  Retrieved November 30, 2011 from http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/mastodons-brent-hinds-on-making-crack-the-skye-202784

Ferris, D. X.  (November, 2011).  Interview: mastodon’s brann dailor on the band’s latest metal detour, “the hunter.”  Alternative press.  Retrieved November 29, 2011 from http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/mastodon_brann_dailor_interview

http://www.mastodonrocks.com/lyrics

Stewart, A.  (November, 2011).  Mastodon continues to thunder ahead.  The chicago tribune.  Retrieved November 28, 2011 from http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ott-1111-mastodon-20111110,0,3606790.story

I recently wrote this for one of my online college courses, and thought that sharing what I’ve been working on would be a good way to get back into the swing of working on my blog as well.

What is a Libertarian?

            With the recent attention being paid to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign, the word “libertarian” is being used more frequently in the main-stream media and elsewhere.  Occasionally it is used in a derogatory fashion; other times it is complimentary.  We should look at the term and what it truly means before using it in any manner.  In any situation, it is always helpful to better understand a term before applying it.  Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines libertarian as: “1. an advocate of the doctrine of free will; 2. a: a person who upholds the principles of individual liberty especially of thought and action; b capitalized: a member of a political party advocating libertarian principles (2011).”  It is principally the second, two-part definition which will be explored in this case.   

What it means to be a libertarian varies from person to person, so it is important to look at the meaning of the word before delving into the different facets of the expression.  There are two basic types of libertarians, as denoted in the dictionary definition.  There are the Big “L” Libertarians, i.e. the Libertarian Party, and the small “l” libertarians, which include anarchists or anti-statists.  Both advocate the principles of human rights, non-aggression, and self-ownership, yet there is disagreement upon how to manage these issues. 

The central tenet of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership.  What does self-ownership mean?  In essence, self-ownership is the belief that individuals have proprietary ownership of not only their bodies and minds, but the fruits of their labor.  David McGregor (2005) puts it this way:

If you spent ten hours of your life, last week, on the creation of a new coffee table for your home, then that object is the result of your own life’s effort. You expended your own energy in its creation. And, as a result, it is now your property—and rightly so, because it was created by your energy and intention. Ultimately, it is a product of your mind—brought to fruition via the actions of your body.

So then, self-ownership is not only the ownership of one’s own body and mind, as in what to eat and therefore do, but also the products of one’s own work or energy.  For example, this is what leads to the conclusion by some that taxation is equivalent to extortion.  Even when used for “good” ends, the conclusion is that taxation is not voluntary and therefore is theft.

The Libertarian Party seeks to minimize the impact that the State has upon the life of the individual.  A major part of the Libertarian Party’s platform is the maximization of individual rights as opposed to interference by the state.  The Libertarian Party believes that the state should be relegated to the defense against force and fraud (Finkelstein, 2007), i.e. human rights.  The “small ‘l’” libertarian could believe that the state is both unnecessary and harmful.  The room for variation within this ideology can cause some confusion in this way.

There are and have been a good number of thinkers who have not only advocated a free society but also self-ownership without the state.  It is important to understand that not all who support a minimal state are at the same time advocating the abolition of the state in its entirety.  One of the reasons that anti-state libertarians advocate a stateless society is the monopoly by government on the use of force.  This is seen as crucial to the state’s existence (Rothbard, 1998).  In other words, if one individual does not have the right to aggress upon another, how can the state? 

Because there are variations of all schools of thought, it is necessary to get a background of what one is addressing before wholly endorsing or opposing.  Libertarianism is no exception.  There are libertarians who fully believe that the State is a means to the end of protection of human rights, and those who believe that the State does not do such things and therefore endorse only voluntary association.  Both, however, believe that libertarianism is the ability to do what one chooses with one’s own life, so long as one does not infringe upon another’s right to do the same.  In other words, my rights end where yours begin.

There is danger, however, in labeling a group, especially when based on pre-conceived notions, rather than on cold, hard, fact.  No matter the ideology one supports, it is always beneficial to have a general understanding of all ideologies rather than to support one blindly.  Libertarianism, as an example, embraces ideals based in both the “left” and “right” paradigms, and one would do well to understand all ideologies before supporting one.

Resources

libertarian.  (2011).  In Merriam-Webster.com.

Retrieved November 22, 2011, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hacker

McGregor, D.  (January 2005).  Self-ownership: the foundation of freedom.  Retrieved November 20, 2011 from http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/macgregor/macgregor2.html

Rothbard, M.  (1989).  The ethics of liberty.  Retrieved March 12, 2010 from  http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

  In addition to deciding the efficiency of a government, it is also important to consider whether government infringes on the rights of humans in order to justify its existence.  Charles Sayward (1982) uses a hypothetical situation in determining the justification for the State and whether it infringes on the rights of people.  In his hypothetical situation, Sayward determines that the State cannot be morally justified because it infringes upon the natural human right to the private enforcement of justice.  This hypothetical situation outlines a case in which a man is mugged and is prevented by the State in his right to exact just compensation for the crime against him in order to maintain his own individual dignity.  The State in this situation prevents the act which the victim has a right to take because it prohibits the use of force or coercion by anyone other than itself.  This is hypocrisy, which can be considered to be unethical by the virtue of justice.  If government is made up of individuals, it is unethical that it should be allowed to take actions that are unacceptable for an individual or to create a monopoly on what is construed as acceptable.

All government institutions have, over the course of history, grown to a point which, according to William Reichert (1969) they are “Leviathan,” enormous and out of control.  It is thought by anarchists that Thomas Jefferson’s idea of limiting government and compromise with Alexander Hamilton’s idea of political power was an “impossible task” and the downfall of Jeffersonian democracy.  It was the pluralists, according to Professor William Ernest Hocking, who failed to remove the monopoly on the power of coercion and force from the State.  As a consequence, government has grown into the “Leviathan” state in which it remains today.  Hocking was unable to rationally assert, as the pluralists did, that “political power might be shared by a diversity of associations within society, when the state stood above them, armed with the means to make them all subservient to its superior will (cited in Reichert, 1969, p. 139).” 

  Anarchists are faced with the difficult task of defending the thought that the State should not exist because it does more harm than good.  It was succinctly put by Henry Thomas Buckle when he wrote that “no great political improvement, no great reform, either legislative or executive, has ever been originated in any country by its rulers.”  Buckle acknowledged that politicians are constantly enacting legislation, however any problems that these legislative enactments solve were first caused by previous legislative enactments. If this is the case, than it is safe to say that much of this legislation was enacted without consideration of ethical ideals or obligations.

“The fundamental question of political philosophy is whether there should be any state at all,” stated Robert Nozick.  Government and politics have become hot topics in society today, and for good reason.  While it seems that the majority of people simply want to live their lives in the most ethical manner possible, it is impossible to do so without considering the law and government and their impact on the daily lives and ethical ideals of the citizenry.  It is imperative to consider the effect that government has on the people and their freedoms insofar as the ways in which government is itself an unethical institution when considering its role and infringement on liberties and rights of the people.  The idea of anarchy implies chaos and mob rule to many, however it is important to point out that many intellectuals have contemplated this philosophy for the last couple of centuries, and found that mankind is greatly hindered and harmed by the very people that are chosen, or that inherit the right to, rule over others.  These scholars find that man is better off left to self-government, because unlike the common misconception, anarchy means not chaos, but simply an absence of government, which comes from the Greek anarchos, meaning no rulers.

Freedom, according to William Holmes “is the very essence of anarchism.”  Holmes also states that “[n]o man can be a consistent [a]narchist who would abridge the freedom of others.”  This cannot be said for the State.  It is well-known that slavery was an institution that was not prohibited in America for the first part of its history.  It was a popular means of acquiring labor by plantation owners in the Southern States, and is a practice that has a history dating back thousands of years.  Like slavery, government often implements legislation which infringes upon the natural rights of human beings.  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon stated, “liberty [is] not the daughter but the Mother of Order.”  Proudhon’s successor, Mikhail Bakunin, described the State as:

“born historically in all countries of the marriage of violence, rapine, pillage, in a word, war and conquest… Even when it commands what is good, it hinders and spoils it, just because it commands it, and because every command provokes and excites the legitimate revolts of liberty.”

This, clearly, is not an example of the practice of the ethical ideals of loving kindness and justice. For example, the draft, started in time of war to provide soldiers for that effort, took citizens from their homes involuntarily to fight and die for the State.  Using its “monopoly on the use of coercion,” the State forces human beings to bend to its will. According to Henry David Thoreau, the military is “both an instrument of the nation’s coercion and an example of it…” Thoreau goes further to say that, “The State never confronts a man’s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.” This is a fair assessment and is a far cry from the ethical ideal of justice and loving kindness. Coercion is never an example of either of these ideals.

It is difficult for most people to imagine a stateless society, however, people of different cultures lived without a State for centuries, such as the Tiv and Nuer of Africa, some well into the twentieth century.  Peter Leeson gives two theories for the construction of government.  The first is what he calls “social contract theory,” and the other, “predatory theory.”  In the first theory, it is suggested that individuals decide that it is beneficial to construct some form of government because it is “socially efficient.”  If done voluntarily, this does not infringe on individual rights or violate ethical ideals. The second theory suggests that government is formed out of the greed of some who find it advantageous to have the power of using force against others. This does not follow the ideals of beneficence, compassion, justice, or loving kindness.  Citing numerous works, Leeson determines that in the absence of government, private institutions, such as arbitration, are put in place which “preventconflict and encourage cooperation.”  In private organizations such as this, reputation is a major factor in whether those using the services provided will respect its word or action.  This worked well for numerous anarchistic tribes for many years. Would it not have been a more ethical approach to leave these societies to their own designs than to impose governments on those who may have seen it to be unnecessary?