Ode to Joy

[EC]

You read that title and the music started playing in your brain. One of the few pieces of music that everyone knows. It is like the Mona Lisa, or the 3 Graces. You just know it and have no idea where you first learned it. It has always been there. Close your eyes. Enjoy the music while seeing two of the greatest pieces of art of all time.

For over a billion people, what you just did is something profane. Not merely a sin, but actively evil. Haram, to use the right term.

Music, representations of the human form - forbidden in Islamic culture. While most are reasonably tolerant, you get the wrong person while singing, your head will meet a heavy rock. Yet the urge to create is still there. To make beauty of nothing and to give up to God the most precious gift you can - your skills. No one who has been to Cordoba will ever say there is no art there. It is breath-takingly beautiful. Somehow, a mix of both Islamic culture and Christian culture have created something greater than the sum of it's parts. The loving depictions of the saints, on a backdrop of mathematically perfect and painstakingly formed mosaics. It is perfection in stone. The joy of creating perfectly expressed by two opposed cultures.

A crossbreeding of cultures sounds wonderful. If it was not for the crossbreeding of the Iroquois culture with the settlers, the constitution would look significantly different. Cross cultural fertilization is good, right?

It depends on the cultures. More importantly - who wins.

[olde north church]

Hiawatha left his family and friends, and joined Dekanawida in his travels, becoming his chief spokesman. One legend has it that Dekanawida, while brilliant, had a speech impediment, and depended on Hiawatha to do his public speaking for him.

Interesting line from linked page.  If I'm not mistaken, Moses had a speech impediment and Aaron spoke for him.

[rangerrebew]

More importantly - who wins.

You took the words right from Hitler's mouth.  I'm leery of any "planned" breeding whether it be making an Aryan race or intentionally trying to modify ethnic groups by interbreeding.  Both have great potential for building Aryan type races especially if the cross cultural breeding is done to build a super race.

[EC]

I was half thinking of that famous line - history is written by the winners.

It both is and isn't. History may be dictated by the winners, but the scribes are usually the people who have been there all along and who will add their own notes and points of view.

[massadvj]

Up until the Democrats started playing ethnic groups against each other, this country was seen as a "melting pot" of between-cultures breeding that would yield something much more beautiful than what came before.  Certainly, my Arabic Christian grandparents intentionally insisted that their children NOT learn Arabic, but English.  They wanted their children to be Americans, to marry Americans, and they wanted American grandchildren.  They weren't very interested in hyphens in those days.

Today, people are told they are "different" because they are Hispanic, or African-American, or whatever.  They are told they must hang on to their cultural heritage, which often includes ancient hatreds.  And so the dream of the "melting pot" is no more.  Personally, I think the melting pot was a good dream.  And I think God does as well.  Else why would He genetically program us in such a way that the farther we breed away from "home" the more robust our offspring will be?

[EC]

They wanted their children to be Americans, to marry Americans, and they wanted American grandchildren.  They weren't very interested in hyphens in those days.

That is one of the most beautiful things I have read in recent days.

The melting pot is still there and still takes about the same amount of time. 3 generations seems to be the rule. Grandparents immigrate. The children grow up American and slightly distance themselves from their heritage. Who wants to be the weird one at school? Their children are American - full stop. Yet proud of their other heritage too and curious about it.

It is a wonderful ideal that has worked well for centuries. Swedes, Italians, Irish, Scottish, German, English, Spanish - all coming together to create one nation and one people. It makes for some beauty. 

[massadvj]

That is one of the most beautiful things I have read in recent days.

The melting pot is still there and still takes about the same amount of time. 3 generations seems to be the rule. Grandparents immigrate. The children grow up American and slightly distance themselves from their heritage. Who wants to be the weird one at school? Their children are American - full stop. Yet proud of their other heritage too and curious about it.

It is a wonderful ideal that has worked well for centuries. Swedes, Italians, Irish, Scottish, German, English, Spanish - all coming together to create one nation and one people. It makes for some beauty. 

One of the things I enjoy about the Olympics is watching a black man win an event and thinking: in all likelihood he is from Africa, the Caribbean or the USA.  But he isn't from anywhere else.  The same with a Chinese-looking gymnast.  Might be Chinese or American, but not likely from anywhere else.  It's true of all skin shades and ethnic types from milky white, blonde and blue eyed to the darkest, brunette and brown-eyed.  They could be from Sweden, or Africa, or China, or the Pacific Islands -- or they could be Americans.  But they aren't likely from anywhere else.

I wonder what people from other countries think when they see this?

[andy58-in-nh]

You read that title and the music started playing in your brain. One of the few pieces of music that everyone knows. It is like the Mona Lisa, or the 3 Graces. You just know it and have no idea where you first learned it. It has always been there. Close your eyes. Enjoy the music while seeing two of the greatest pieces of art of all time.

For over a billion people, what you just did is something profane. Not merely a sin, but actively evil. Haram, to use the right term.

Music, representations of the human form - forbidden in Islamic culture. While most are reasonably tolerant, you get the wrong person while singing, your head will meet a heavy rock. Yet the urge to create is still there. To make beauty of nothing and to give up to God the most precious gift you can - your skills. No one who has been to Cordoba will ever say there is no art there. It is breath-takingly beautiful. Somehow, a mix of both Islamic culture and Christian culture have created something greater than the sum of it's parts. The loving depictions of the saints, on a backdrop of mathematically perfect and painstakingly formed mosaics. It is perfection in stone. The joy of creating perfectly expressed by two opposed cultures.

A crossbreeding of cultures sounds wonderful. If it was not for the crossbreeding of the Iroquois culture with the settlers, the constitution would look significantly different. Cross cultural fertilization is good, right?

It depends on the cultures. More importantly - who wins.

Well done. Very well done.

Beethoven's Ninth symphony is one of the most sublime pieces of music ever committed to stave paper.  Its fourth movement makes glorious use of Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy, expressing the universal longing for peace and contentment for all mankind, music and lyrics entwined together in a perfect Choral, soaring with hope and... yes, the joy of life. 

It is also very much an expression of the Romanticism of its time, filled as it was with political turmoil, social change, and industrial revolution. I have also imagined that it serves as a premonition of sorts, of a spirit that would soon sweep a less felicitous sort of "revolution" across Europe in the mid-19th century.  But with those war drums came a collapse of aging European family dynasties and the reordering of ancient alliances that in turn helped begin the great migration to America of peoples from many so different lands.

And once here in the New World: their customs, cultures, habits, faiths and artistic expressions all combined to create something truly new and dynamic. Joining them (as we are today endlessly reminded) were the children of those who arrived in America not of their own choosing, but who carried their own rich cultural histories and expressions along with them. The result, in musical terms alone was an explosion of creative energy: Appalachian ballads were born of Scotch-Irish folk legends, gospel tunes and work songs coalesced around the Mississippi delta to become the Blues, syncopated piano melodies gave birth to Ragtime; now add some horns and urban percussive rhythms and you've got Dixieland jazz... All in all: a beautiful tapestry of American sound, representative of the great melting pot we were. 

[rangerrebew]

Up until the Democrats started playing ethnic groups against each other, this country was seen as a "melting pot" of between-cultures breeding that would yield something much more beautiful than what came before.  Certainly, my Arabic Christian grandparents intentionally insisted that their children NOT learn Arabic, but English.  They wanted their children to be Americans, to marry Americans, and they wanted American grandchildren.  They weren't very interested in hyphens in those days.

Today, people are told they are "different" because they are Hispanic, or African-American, or whatever.  They are told they must hang on to their cultural heritage, which often includes ancient hatreds.  And so the dream of the "melting pot" is no more.  Personally, I think the melting pot was a good dream.  And I think God does as well.  Else why would He genetically program us in such a way that the farther we breed away from "home" the more robust our offspring will be?

Check my signature.  Its what George Washington thought of the idea of diversity.