Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
As some of you may have already seen on the Twitter feed, last night I compared musician, recording artist, and (apparently) reactionary cultural critic Jack White to philosopher Albert Borgmann. I don't think I was just being glib. Here's White in an interview, discussing the sort of experiences he hopes to encourage with his art and business:
Your record label, Third Man Records, makes a concerted effort to avoid having their recordings appear on the Internet, most notably with the emphasis on vinyl production ...
I would never say we're anti-Internet at all, I'd say we're pro-real experiences. Pro-things that occur when you get up out of your chair and experience things with other human beings face-to-face. When we have concerts [at Third Man Records headquarters in Nashville], we don't allow people to film and take photos. That's not about not letting people have a memento, that's about: how sick are you of watching people in the crowd not looking at the stage? They're watching a tiny little TV screen in their hand instead of watching what's really going on in life.
In the film "It Might Get Loud," White reflects on technology from the artist's perspective: "Technology is a big destroyer of emotion and truth… that's the disease you have to fight in any creative field, ease of use.” Creativity, according to White, comes from applying oneself within the constraints of a medium, as he explains in the White Stripes' micro-song "Little Room:"
Well you're in your little room
and you're working on something good
but if it's really good
you're gonna need a bigger room
and when you're in the bigger room
you might not know what to do
you might have to think of
how you got started in your little room
Now see Professor Borgmann's take on the need for life to be centered around and circumscribed by real -- rather than reproduced or mediated --experience; as White puts it, "what's really going on:"
A focal thing is something that has a commanding presence, engages your body and mind, and engages you with others. Focal things and the kinds of engagements they foster have the power to center your life, and to arrange all other things around this center in an orderly way because you know what’s important and what’s not. A focal practice results from committed engagement with the focal thing.
For example, a guitar is a focal thing -- it commands from me a certain kind of engagement of my body and mind. As I learn to play it(a focal practice), it engages me with the larger tradition of music and the community of musicians. The meal is a focal thing and its preparation is a focal practice. The wilderness is a focal thing and hiking a focal practice. The stream, or the trout, is a focal thing -- fly fishing the focal practice. In the life of the Christian community, the bread and the cup are focal things and the Eucharist the focal practice. Focal things and our engagement with them orient us and center us in time and space in ways that technological devices do not. A focal thing is not at the mercy of how you feel at the moment, whether the time is convenient or whatever; you commit yourself to it come hell or high water. It helps, of course, if it’s a shared commitment, because when one person weakens, the other person can make up for that weakness. Two weak persons, each expecting the other to be strong, will be strong together.
For a quick introduction to Borgmann's thoughts on technology, culture, and Christianity, I recommend his book of essays "Power Failure."
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Jul '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
as a musician who once played live and ultimately eschewed that aspect for the laptop-recording-onanistic style of music production I can certainly understand what Jack White has to say.
From the perspective of a futurist: I have always wondered if technology will become so seamless that it will erase the distinction between man and machine. When I think about the act of creation, for instance with a guitar, the instrument is an incidental filter to the creative will. What would art be like if we were both able to transmit our creative will directly and had the discipline to self-filter that flow of will?
Jack White's analysis is correct but in a way it's almost a little bit lazy. An artist relies on the medium to make some of the limiting decisions for him. I am curious if future artists will be able to make artistically relevant decisions for themselves when given the proper freedom of will.
Jul '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
I guess I need to know what "reactionary cultural critic" means. Reactionary is a word Marxists used in the past to describe the opposition, usually defined as the church and the tycoon community. Based on this short interview, it seems White is talking sense. Is it okay to be reactionary now?
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
I've been in the TV business for 30 years. Amount of video tape I have of my kids growing up: Maybe 30 minutes. Regrets? None. I watched my children grow up and had fun with them. I directed them for their lives, not a video production.
Jun '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Limits --like the space, time and body-weight of the guitar in music-- are what give broad cultural meaning to art. It is the nature of the craft, the interaction with nature that allows the specific language to be mastered, spoken, understood and appreciated, not the unmitigated "will," feelings or ideas of the disembodied artist in a vat, in my experience of music and art.
Always liked the cut of Jack Whites retro-music jib. And yes, here it is a-ok to be reactionary, I think...but I tend to be rather romantic when it comes to art...and life.
Jul '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
I would say as things are now, this is true. I am certainly not speculating that an unleashed, unlimited will is going to be preferable. What I am curious about is can humans self-select meaningful limits when the arbitrary limits of physicality are (possibly) removed? Imagine the awesome artistry it would take to be able to first imagine and apply useful limits, and then to have the discipline to work within those limits of your own choice.
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Couple of thoughts. I am absolutely down with the idea of a less mediated life. But I am struck by how forced Prof. Borgmann's argument seems.
Certainly someone growing up with technology might not perceive the same distinction between fly fishing as a focal practice and video gaming as a focal practice. I'm pretty sure nothing says committed engagement quite like Call of Duty 3. Sympathetic as I might be to Borgmann's aesthetic -- an angler in a pristine Montana stream at twilight, versus a pimply teenager in a darkened basement -- this surely seems to be a matter of taste.
The second point I am struck by is the strain to include Christian practice in his notion of engagement. Surely the purest example of the unfiltered, engaged religious experience would be Buddhism or Quakerism where ritual is at its most minimal. The Eucharist, not to mention the Church's absolute control over its administration, surely gets in the way. I'm not knocking Christian practice mind you -- just noting Professor Borgmann's seeming desire to have his wafer and eat it too.
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
This distinction between religion and ritual is a pretty recent artifice, and it's foreign to religion as understood by most practitioners inside actually existing traditions.
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
And no, it's a categorical difference, not a matter of taste. For more abut the difference between simulated and material experiences, see Matthew B Crawford, who turned me on to Borgmann.
Jun '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Might be a decent argument if the wafer were just a wafer... but as the Eucharist is God Himself, a more direct or 'pure' encounter exists nowhere else except heaven. Seen from this perspective, Borgmann's point is more poignant and relevant.
Jun '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Fantastic interview, btw.
I also agree with Mr. Frost that the distinction raised by Mr. Urdan is more than a matter of taste.
There is a quality that emerges between the craftsman and the mediator of art/craft that to me results in something extra ---an extravagance of art appended on to the maker/crafter and the instrument, a trinity. There is an excess thisness, an irregular Haecceity of one and one equaling three in the overflowing weave. Same applies to religious ritual, I believe. The applied craft releases the wisp of art and spirit.
Even in Buddhism or for that matter Sufism or Yoga there is, in the very least, an intermediary discipline (meditation, contemplation, teacher) that is learned, that otherwise stands between the individual and the spirit of all individuals –call it a traditional or religious craft, if you will.
I, for instance, am a professional woodworker, and I find little if any difference between my particular art/craft and music or sailing or, for that matter, meditating or contemplating life, death and God: finding what is otherwise hidden.
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
On the distinction of religion and ritual being recent artifice, given that Siddahartha's teachings about the internal path to enlightenment predate Christ's teachings by roughly 500 years and predate the rituals of the Christian church, I would still maintain that the Professor's argument (and Samwise's point about the body of Christ) are circular to his point. You have to already believe something about Christian practice in order to accept that they are not mediated experiences in some way.
I also remain thoroughly unpersuaded by the notion that digital experiences are less authentic rather than merely less appealing to those of a certain age/socio-economic status. And even if I am the last Ricochet holdout, I will resist the Shopcraft as Soulcraft bandwagon to the end. These are aesthetic and ultimately personal choices but not truth. Motorcycle maintenance might feed the soul, but the forward march of knowledge and technology has alleviated far more human suffering and is ultimately the greater purpose. Nothing against whittling mind you, but it's no more life centering or socially engaging than computer programming.
Maybe some of the let's-double-the-space-program crowd could back me up here?
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Note to self: stop using the phrase "mind-you." You're not yet 87 years old...
Jul '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Here is a question I have been wrestling with lately: If we are wired in some fashion to a priori recognize certain "things" in the universe (in a Kantian metaphysical sense), couldn't aesthetic experiences, though not in themselves self-evident, be derivatives of self-evident truths ? If this were so, wouldn't this mean that some "aesthetic" choices are in fact not solely derived from the senses but appeal to us by their approximation to an underlying truth ?
this of course depends on my current belief that were are in fact hard wired with certain faculties.
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Well, there is something a bit twee and fancy-pants about the items Professor Borgman chooses as "focal things" -- fly fishing; guitar; cooking -- and I think Trace has a point: if you're 14 years old, XBox Live probably fits that bill, too. It involves the body, the mind, and a worldwide community you're playing with. It's the modern version of those parks where people are playing chess.
The Jack White interview, though, seems to me to be saying a slightly narrower thing. (I'm dismissing his statements about "technology" as young-fogyism. I mean, really? This from a guy who plays an electric guitar and records his sound waves onto recordable media? Give me a break. That was pretty amazing "technology" not too long ago. Or when he uses the word, does he mean only "technology that happened recently?")
I agree with him, though, about this tendency always to have a camera between your face and the world. I can't tell you how many parents I watch rotely and religiously photographing every move their kids make at a birthday party, on a playing field, without really ever just experiencing it for real. Put down the camera.
Jun '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
If I might say, to me the difference between playing Xbox live and cooking or pond-fishing is analogous to the difference between an online chat and a face to face conversation --and the composure and risk that each, in their nature, require and demand.
My son is a hockey player and we are all too often having to take long drives up and down the East Coast to games and tournaments. Of course, my son, like most sons these days, has all the tech-gadgets and even a mini-theatre in the back-seat that he frequently employs with headphones. However, on our last trip I made a deal with him that on this trip we would both sit in the front seat and find things to talk about, and when nothing to say quietly observe –traffic, the hills and landscapes, signs and marquees, bumper stickers, license plates everything the senses could. What a wonderful ride we had.
Not to be a Luddite, but our children have been driven a long way from working it out in the neighborhood or schoolyard to being an impervious part of the enigmatic global online community.
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
NB: I am WAY over my skis here...
Aesthetic choices are such of a time and place that I'm not sure they can equal truth. Sure there are qualities associated with various pastimes that involves skills and character qualities that are universal and may in fact be morally superior, but those qualities can be manifest in any number of hobbies and activities and appreciations.
Like Tim, I too encourage my 12 year-old to unplug as much as possible because I share that value of wanting him to engage with the live bodies around him and to experience new things. But I also encourage him to put down his book at times for the same reason. And now that Amazon is selling more digital books than print books the inferiority of the digital may have to be reconsidered.
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Sorry to have gotten left behind. I have read-only access to the site during the workday.
Rob: I think it's reasonable for Jack White to draw a line somewhere between technology our grandparents had (e.g. electric guitars, the written word, the fork) and technology still hot from the mold. The latter deserves a skeptical look and some effort at shaping it before it cools into something we and our kids take for granted. And yes, chess in the park and networked video games are both recreation, but just because one is the "modern version" of the other, does the conversation just end there? Aren't there additional questions worth asking about how minds and technology develop together, and whether every change is necessarily a good one?
Trace: "...the forward march of knowledge and technology has alleviated far more human suffering and is ultimately the greater purpose." Woah. Greater purpose? As I find myself always having to explain to libertarians, I'm cool with penicillin. But I'm not sure what conduces from the claim that technological progress is the "greater purpose." The word limit and family demands are both closing in, so I'll leave it there..
May '10
Re: Jack White, Philosopher of the Real
Music and technology are inextricably linked. Think about pianos; Metallurgy and cabinet making.