Can anyone argue that we are infants, stupid, ignorant, just-at-the-beginning, when it comes to understanding the complex interactions of various sorts of music, dance, and mood?
Brainwashing, coercion: these are likely more advanced than I like to think.
But elicitive techniques, those which pull out, which facilitate expression, self creation, re-formation, joy formation: we are primitives.
And the primitives are likely advanced.
Never, ever, ever assume you know what needs knowing. You are likely a dumbass of the first order, not having even reached the level of being capable of learning.
Certainly, that applies to me.
Who can imagine the heights the human race can reach, if it ever applies its full creative instincts to qualitative joy, to Goodness, to harmony, peace, and the death of wars of various sorts?
I am a Humanist. I do not believe we are the measure of all things. That would imply many bad things about the things. But I do believe we are, relatively, perfectable, that social life is perfectable, that many useful things are knowable that are not yet known or sufficiently widely practiced.
I think we need to keep plugging. We need to keep trying. We need to foster hope and accomplishment. Believe more is possible, and dammit if it doesn’t show up on cue.