Everything

02001-09-19 | Uncategorized | 0 comments

Here is a quote by Ken Wilber, from his wonderful book A Theory of Everything:

I am often asked, why we even attempt an integration of the various worldviews. Isn’t it enough to simply celebrate the rich diversity of various views and not to try to integrate them? Well, recognizing diversity is certainly a noble endeavor, and I heartily support that pluralism. But if we remain merely at the stage of celebrating diversity, we ultimately are promoting fragmentation, alienation, separation and despair. You go your way, I go my way, we both fly apart – which is often what has happened under the reign of the pluralistic relativists, who have left us a postmodern Tower of Babel on too many fronts. It is not enough to recognize the many ways in which we are all different; we need to go further and start recognizing the many ways that we are also similar.

Ken goes on to say:
Building on the rich diversity offered by pluralistic relativism, we need to take the next step and weave those many strands into a holistic spiral of unifying connections, an interwoven Kosmos of mutual intermeshing. We need, in short, to move from pluralistic relativism to universal integration.
End of Quote

I have always experienced the world through music. I associate each country with its music first, its history and politics later. I feel that my music is, and has always been an attempt to integrate what has moved me emotionally, whether that was folk music from around the world, Jazz, Classical music, Rock, Pop and more. I have always felt that I needed to try to integrate this music in some way because if I couldn’t integrate the music, those different styles would always be fighting within me for my attention. It took me a very long time to achieve any resemblance of integration and I feel that so much work is still ahead. I would be the first to admit that some of my music from the last decade was a successful integration and some of it fell short.

I also understand that some people despise any sort of integration. They love their little corner of culture and they will defend it to the death. There is something beautiful in this stance. But, it is an impossible stance, because everywhere kids are exchanging ideas via the internet and in just 10 years our World Culture will be very very different from today.

Jazz WILL sound different in 2011, despite the efforts of Winton Marsalis.

Flamenco WILL sound different despite the efforts of traditionalists, and the same will be true for other Folk music and for Rock and Pop etc…

Integration or fragmentation.
Intermeshing culture or separation.
Interwoven world views or alienation.
It is our choice.

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