static (was Re: who knows about brazil?)

From: adario (adario@thingsburnup.com)
Date: Wed Jan 31 2001 - 17:45:46 CET

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    here is a nice resource for brazilian music:
    http://www.slipcue.com/music/brazil/brazillist.html

    stephanie, you raised a question that i myself have wondered about with all
    my intellect, body and soul. i would like to go into this more, but for
    now, i only have enough time to post a quote from phil agre (see
    http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.notes.and.recommenda17.html)

    paz,
    aaron dario
    ps i will be in rio in march :)

    ---------------------------------
    ...
    This is particularly true in the first world, in countries like my
    own, where institutions work relatively well and infrastructures
    are maintained to support them. Institutions and infrastructures
    shape our lives while remaining largely out of sight. We inductively
    learn that the world works in a certain way, but we don't understand
    how much complicated effort goes into producing and reproducing the
    institutions and infrastructures that enable the world to work
    that way. The result might be called first-world myopia. People
    in the first world live in a dream. We think that we determine our
    own fates, that we are free and autonomous individuals, when in fact
    we live in bubbles whose preconditions would scare us if we knew
    just how numerous they are. If there's a rock in the road, we just
    assume that it's someone's job to pick it up. The supermarket will
    have food in it. Airplanes fly. You can get parts for your car.

    Contrast this first-world myopia to the situation in a country like
    Brazil where the institutions don't work as well. The Brazilians'
    whole consciousness is completely different. They have an elaborate
    cultural sense that daily life is a matter of improvisation. Things
    are getting better in Brazil, especially in Sao Paulo, which except
    for the dreadful city government might as well be New York. But they
    still feel culturally that they know how to keep things moving even
    when the institutions and infrastructures break down. In a sense it's
    a more conscious way of life. First-world myopia means that you can
    forget, or never even know, about the elaborate institutional systems
    that make it possible to live in a bubble. Then when an institution
    does fail, for example if you are a victim of identity theft and the
    credit reporting agencies and cops aren't interested in helping you,
    then you are clueless, stranded, completely on your own. It's not
    something that first-world culture understands.

    This is not a problem in Brazil. Everyone in Brazail is painfully
    aware of the vast institutional background that makes their lives
    possible, precisely because that background keeps breaking. And it's
    not just individuals who possess this knowledge but the culture as
    a whole. The culture as a whole knows what to do when things break.
    This knowledge flows freely through social networks, and people
    maintain social networks precisely to stay alive when the institutions
    break. Who, then, is better prepared for the institutional upheavals
    of the wired world? The Brazilians, of course. They know what it's
    like to have the institutional ground shift under their feet. Banking
    revolutionized? Universities upended? Government imploded? Industry
    structure turned inside-out by fluctuating global commodity prices?
    No problem. Brazilians know what to do about that. It's a great
    country...

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: stephanie <nnine@yahoo.com>
    To: Leslie N. Shill <icehouse@redshift.com>; Steve Catanzaro
    <stevencatanzaro@sprintmail.com>
    Cc: acid <acid-jazz@ucsd.edu>
    Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2001 10:22 PM
    Subject: who knows about brazil? was rant...

    > ok so one of the things i've been struggling with as a
    > responsible bleeding heart liberal, is this: yes, all
    > these wonderful things should get funded, but is
    > governement (as we know it) even the appropriate
    > channel for that? (obviously this is quite a paradigm
    > shift...so let's leave it alone for now)
    >
    > but with this talk of money and poverty and funding
    > and art and the discreet charm of the bourgoisie and
    > its pandering to minorities in the form of latin
    > megastars, and the role of audience and how we don't
    > value art from the guts out, you gotta think of
    > brazil, right? one of the most respected origins of
    > shake-yo-ass-cofuse-yo-mental art and they are pretty
    > poor. So where does it come from? Africa? Goverment?
    > A tendency to break into impormptu song? the need
    > for a coping mechanism for poverty? And what of this
    > rumor that the kids these days distance themselves
    > from sambe like we shy away from country, and are more
    > into american-ized styles?
    >
    > I'm not even going to try to answer b/c I don't know
    > jack shit.
    >
    > If anyone knows something, it'd be cool if you could
    > share.
    >
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