[ExI] Is the ExI email list slowly dying out? And if so, what can be done to reverse such an outcome?

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 5:55 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> ...> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> On Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 5:13 PM spike jones via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >>... Hi Dan, what happens to rap and hip hop? ...
>
>>... Someone riding around with Flowmaster and cranking out beats is kind of
>> not the standard of social appropriateness in today's society. Don't you
>> agree?  Regards,  Dan
>
> OK sure, I agree.  Fortunately the internet never forgets.  So we get to
> cancel any artist retroactively if that artist uttered anything racist or
> homophobic or adolescent or anything we now consider socially inappropriate.
> That means we can cancel most rap and hip hop for being racist, sexist and
> generally impolite, cool, it's a deal.

Haha! Yeah, but this happens anyway and even before the Internet.
People and their work do get re-evaluated and then sometimes
re-evaluated again and again. One need only think of the fortunes of
Christopher Colombus in the US: from basically unknown to unpopular to
tolerably popular (thanks to a rather inaccurate biography) to popular
(becoming an icon for a certain segment of the population: Italian
Americans) to questionable and now divided (because alt-right people
see him as a hero of Western Civilization while others see him
(rightfully IMO) as a rascal, pioneer of slavery, and a tyrant.)

And what's socially appropriate doesn't stand for all time or move
linearly toward ever better and more tolerant things. I wasn't using
the term in some kind of Whiggish manner. (Whig as in someone who
believes history is one of monotonic progress from worse to better.)
For instance? Well, think of the Puritans coming to North America.
They were leaving England to found a quite uptight and rigid society
in North America. What was socially appropriate in Puritan New England
was much more restrictive than in England. To me, from my vantage
post, that's a retrograde movement.

Again, the Internet didn't invent that. Anyone throughout history can
be brought up as a villain or hero at any time depending on what's
going on. Heck, I've seen US paleoconservatives praise Ivan the
Terrible. Why? Well, they tend to be nationalists, so they see him as
uniting Russia and look on with admiration. They also tend to see the
US as somehow not nationalistic enough or at all and would probably
swoon if an Ivan the Terrible-like leader arose here.

> Aside: if you hear elevator music, much of it is Beatles tunes without the
> words.  The Beatles really wrote some good music.  So, perhaps we can
> elevator-ize rap by removing the vocals, ja?  I would be OK with that.

Maybe. Music does get recycled and influences other music. Nothing new
to see here. However, since I have portable music I usually don't have
to listen to whatever's playing in elevators. (To be sure, I've used
an elevator maybe twice this year and I don't recall any music in
either case.:)

Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst