Twelve thousand years ago, give or take, the static pleasures of this long, undifferentiated epoch gave way to history proper. The hunter-gatherer bands lucky enough to find themselves on the flanks of the Zagros Mountains, or the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, began herding and farming. The rise of agriculture allowed for permanent settlements, which, growing dense, became cities. Urban commerce demanded division of labor, professional specialization, and bureaucratic oversight. Because wheat, unlike wild berries or the hindquarters of an aurochs, was a storable, countable good that appeared on a routine schedule, the selfish administrators of inchoate kingdoms could easily collect taxes, or tributes. Writing, which first emerged in the service of accounting, abetted the sort of control and surveillance upon which primitive racketeers came to depend. Where hunter-gatherers had hunted and gathered only enough to meet the demands of the day, agricultural communities created history’s first surpluses, and the extraction of tributes propped up rent-seeking élites and the managerial pyramids—not to mention standing armies—necessary to maintain their privilege. The rise of the arts, technology, and monumental architecture was the upside of the creation and immiseration of a peasant class.

(via Early Civilizations Had It All Figured Out | The New Yorker)

Wow! Such an amazing article!!!

https://jamesclear.com/why-facts-dont-change-minds

The world would be a better place if we all approached discourse with this attitude or mindset.

This bit about proximity:

“Perhaps it is not difference, but distance that breeds tribalism and hostility. As proximity increases, so does understanding. I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s quote, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

From the article:

"Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe. If they abandon their beliefs, they run the risk of losing social ties. You can’t expect someone to change their mind if you take away their community too. You have to give them somewhere to go. Nobody wants their worldview torn apart if loneliness is the outcome.

The way to change people’s minds is to become friends with them, to integrate them into your tribe, to bring them into your circle. Now, they can change their beliefs without the risk of being abandoned socially.

The British philosopher Alain de Botton suggests that we simply share meals with those who disagree with us:

“Sitting down at a table with a group of strangers has the incomparable and odd benefit of making it a little more difficult to hate them with impunity. Prejudice and ethnic strife feed off abstraction. However, the proximity required by a meal – something about handing dishes around, unfurling napkins at the same moment, even asking a stranger to pass the salt – disrupts our ability to cling to the belief that the outsiders who wear unusual clothes and speak in distinctive accents deserve to be sent home or assaulted. For all the large-scale political solutions which have been proposed to salve ethnic conflict, there are few more effective ways to promote tolerance between suspicious neighbours than to force them to eat supper together.”

More:

"If the goal is to actually change minds, then I don’t believe criticizing the other side is the best approach.

Most people argue to win, not to learn. As Julia Galef so aptly puts it: people often act like soldiers rather than scouts. Soldiers are on the intellectual attack, looking to defeat the people who differ from them. Victory is the operative emotion. Scouts, meanwhile, are like intellectual explorers, slowly trying to map the terrain with others. Curiosity is the driving force.

If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”

If British children gathered in the glow of the kitchen hearth to hear stories about magic swords and talking bears, American children sat at their mother’s knee listening to tales larded with moral messages about a world where life was hard, obedience emphasized, and Christian morality valued. Each style has its virtues, but the British approach undoubtedly yields the kinds of stories that appeal to the furthest reaches of children’s imagination.

[…]

Popular storytelling in the New World instead tended to celebrate in words and song the larger-than-life exploits of ordinary men and women: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Calamity Jane, even a mule named Sal on the Erie Canal. Out of bragging contests in logging and mining camps came even greater exaggerations—Tall Tales—about the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan, the twister-riding cowboy Pecos Bill, and that steel-driving man John Henry, who, born a slave, died with a hammer in his hand. All of these characters embodied the American promise: They earned their fame.

[…]

In Scotland, Bateman in turn suggests the difference between the countries may be that Americans “lack the kind of ironic humor needed for questioning the reliability of reality”—very different from the wry, self-deprecating humor of the British. Which means American tales can come off a bit “preachy” to British ears. The award-winning Maurice Sendak-illustrated book of etiquette: What Do You Say, Dear? comes to mind. Even Little Women is described by Bateman as something of a Protestant “parable about doing your best in trying circumstances.”

(via Harry Potter vs. Huckleberry Finn: Why the British Tell Better Children’s Stories Than Americans - The Atlantic)

SOURCE
Corporate Takeover - The Collapse of the Muzak/Music Distinction

Urban Outfitters makes music playlists available for download on their website. About the sixth in the series (LSTN#6), the most recent at the time of this writing, the company says, 

“THNKS FR DWNLDNG LSTN! We’ve scoped the Internet, scoured our iTunes library, barged our way onto guest lists and caught 3 AM secret shows — all in the name of compiling 25 of the best new tracks out there. Hey, it’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it.”

Muzak is functional music used to promote consumption. The difference between pre- and post-reconfiguration muzak is that the former was produced specifically for the purpose of being piped into public places in order to influence people. Licensed music might or might not have originally been recorded with the intent to distribute massively, but in many cases the music was not produced for the express purpose of being played in stores to increase sales. That is, many artists’ original goals did not include contributing to the creation of a brand (presumably). So if “Yesterday” by The Beatles is muzak when played in a retail outlet, where it’s played for the utilitarian purpose of inspiring consumerism, is it muzak when played on a home stereo system? Is “once muzak always muzak” a valid principle, or is it now possible for a song to be both music and muzak? Could it be that the distinction is no longer useful?

“So if ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles is muzak when played in a retail outlet, where it’s played for the utilitarian purpose of inspiring consumerism, is it muzak when played on a home stereo system?”

Shopping is no longer a task whose stressfulness can be ameliorated by the soothing, almost subliminal broadcast of a light arrangement of “Stardust”; it is rather an opportunity to engage with products while listening and discovering compelling music, music the consumer will want to take from the store into the home. 

This is the central movement: background music utilized the familiar sounds of domestic music to familiarize and make comfortable public spaces; foreground music utilizes taste and lifestyle to acculturate consumers about what they should listen to in private. 

And of course, if consumers have compelling music experiences in-store, they will seek to recreate them with their iPods at home, at work, in transit, at the gym, etc. If consumers are moved by music they hear in stores, they will willingly program themselves by listening to songs whose central associations are with commercial products.

[…]

Business has infected our memories; commodities are part of the associative matrix recalled when we listen to music in private. The music itself has become a commodity through its functionality. The formula is: generate interest in the music, sell the music, sell the product. What can remain music as opposed to muzak is reduced to the domain of the unutilized and unutilizable.