Posted in the dunk tank because I expect to be dunked on.
So I got in a discussion with a friend that someone they knew was hardworking because they were doing a degree in music theory on a PhD track while also juggling multiple jobs. I was impressed with all the jobs this person was doing, but I said that music theory as a degree is absurd and most liberal arts degrees are related to professional bullshitting (re: writing useless essays about a specific quality of something) than they are about something socially useful so I didn't find that aspect impressive at all. In my eyes, the socially useful thing about a music theory degree would be applying this idea to make good music, or to teach others about it. Notably, music theory is not about engineering a stage for good acoustics, nor is it about building instruments. It leads to nothing tangible, but rather is a sort of meta-analysis of music as a whole. Its possible to receive a music theory degree while making bad music. And bad music and good music is wholly subjective, its possible to put on a very musically skillful display and have no one like it, or not be interesting enough that a good swath of people enjoy it.
Compare this to, say, an architecture degree. There can be artistic expression in architecture, but its incredibly important to put people through a degree program for rigor to avoid architectural deficiencies which can kill people. The point here is that any sort of rigor drilled into someone in a music theory PhD pipeline has questionable benefits, and is likely a waste of time and labor. However, it is possible that it would be useful to have music theory certifications that are relatively quick, cheap, and potentially free to get to help teach musicians music theory to improve their art, maximizing social benefits. And I think that is something that can be applied to a lot of liberal art degrees.
Maybe this is colored by the way my grandma taught me about Socialist Czechoslovakia. There were benefits for artists, but people could only get free/subsidized degrees if they went to do something very practical such as architecture, engineering, science, and so on. Which is why so much socialist art is baked into something practical, like housing.
But why would you do that? There is poverty in America, and even if we have houses to give people that are empty, there are other forms of poverty to address. It is not a simple thing to solve, that is why it has never been solved, and it requires a lot of science and engineering to fix.
And why does there need to be a PhD program? I keep asking and no one explains. Why spend 10+ years to study music rather than actually making it which is a social good? Studying it does not produce anything, unlike say an architectural program, where studying architecture can produce safer housing.
I'm a bit confused by this - aren't we both in agreement that poverty in the west is primarily a policy choice? That's what radicalized me to begin with, at least. That this poverty is totally unnecessary. So I disagree, it's truly not as complicated of a thing to solve as it's made out to be.
I'm glad we at least agree that music is a social good. My personal view is yeah, I don't need 10+ years of study, 4 is enough for me. But I do know music PhDs, and they all make incredible and unique music, fueled by the research they did. The studying was part of the production process, in shaping them to be the composers they are now. I don't know how to explain this to you. Some musicians just need 10+ years to truly flourish as the musicians, teachers that they are. Also, music research isn't just people studying Bethoven, there's so much more going on. Just because you don't consider it a public good doesn't mean it isn't helping to advance the arts.
I think there's still some disconnect here - what exactly is your view of music in your socialist utopia? Because in mine, we first reorient productive capacities to the public good instead of for profit - and then we have some sort of large organized workforce of musicians who have some degree of freedom in their labor. Is this not your image?
It actually is complicated, actually. I implore you to look into China's poverty alleviation efforts. There are many kinds of poverty and each adjustment can only help in a certain way, and there are some forms of poverty that you need to be very careful when solving, such as geographic poverty, because you could accidentally do genocide with that one by separating endangered culture groups into smaller divisions. For example, China straight up gave people free condos in a better location once, the people used to live in literal mud huts. Huge improvement. However, this did not solve their poverty because they were still practicing things like farming and manufacturing in ancient ways that cannot be produced to scale. So you need to re-educate people that have no framework for learning that was developed from childhood. And this sort of thing is absolutely applicable to many parts of the West, and don't act like it isn't.
Like I listened to a Chinese guy explaining to other rural Chinese people about the benefits of toothpaste and they greeted him with skepticism. The education issue is dire in many places. So we're talking wounds that can't be mended easily for an entire generation of people.
Word thanks for that perspective. That's interesting I really should read about China's poverty alleviation efforts. My first instinct is to think anything negative I read about AES poverty eradication is a minute detail / side effect that US friendly media harps on, outweighed by the actual experience of the masses. But yeah obviously it's more complicated how I made it out.
Still, I can't help but feel you're under some capitalist realism thinking. It seems like we both want 'bread' but we disagree on how many 'roses' we could get if we were in power. Anyway good talk.