People will cluster into cultural "regions" based not on physical proximity but on mutual attitudes

[koganbot]

At the very end of my Why Music Sucks broadside of February 1987 I wrote a paragraph that in retrospect might seem supernaturally prophetic. Whereas now, such a paragraph, with a few of the words changed, would be the common, received wisdom. However, despite almost every sentence of it being right, I think it's fundamentally wrong. But see for

Comments

[koganbot]

Question in regard to diction:

"despite almost every sentence of it being right"

or should I have written

"despite almost every sentence of its being right," making "its" the possessive?

diction?

[dubdobdee]

what's wrong with: "despite almost every sentence being right"? it's not as if the sentences you're referring to can sensibly belong to anything else...

"despite its every sentence being right" is workable, though the almost gets in the way of this formulation a bit)

"despite almost every sentence of its being right" means something ore like "in spite of every sentence that belongs to that aspect of it which is right" -- which is not meaningless, but surely a different thing

Re: diction?

[dubdobdee]

in other words, "its being right" redirects the possessive from the sentences towards the rightness: "the sentences of its rightness" would be a slightly strange way of referring to all the sentences n it that were right, as opposed to "the sentences of its wrongness" and "the sentences of its who-knows-ness"

Re: diction?

[dubdobdee]

besides being strange, this second version would offer no implication what proportion of all its sentences "the sentences of its rightness" took up: almost all or almost none

An editor always helps

[koganbot]

Well, imagine we were discussing a person, we'd want to say "despite every sentence of his being right" rather than "despite every sentence of him being right," though of course that's not quite parallel. But yes you're right, we can and should get rid of the "of it" altogether; thank you; talking to an editor always helps, though we now are faced with the choice between, "Despite every sentence being right" and "despite every sentence's being right"! Compare, "despite his being right," which I'd generally prefer to "despite him being right," though I don't know why. I'm not clear on the principle, not sure what it is or how to apply it. Follett must have some opinion on the matter. (But probably you should get offline and stop thinking about such things. When is BSF due?)

[freakytigger]

I would say the "might be horrible" bit isn't received wisdom yet, though it's a strong strand of opinion.

My understanding of this bit of social history is very incomplete, btw, but the impression I get is that the hyper-locality of village life etc. is now seen as somewhat overrated: there was a lot more movement (of ideas as well as people) than historians assumed, though obviously none of it happened at the speed it could in the 20th and 21st cs.

[edgeofwhatever]

So why did you think regionalization might be horrible?

[koganbot]

This paragraph came after a number of passages where I was complaining about, among other things, the insularity and narrowness of my postpunk indie-alternative music and fanzine world.

[edgeofwhatever]

And is that the angle you think might be fundamentally wrong?

I feel like mental regionalization probably puts you in contact with more people who are unlike you. I mean, if I stood on a street corner in New York and said, "Everybody who's in their twenties, wears skinny jeans, goes out drinking on Saturdays, votes Democrat, works in media, and is interested in music, come here!" I would probably gather a pretty large crowd pretty quickly. (Well, assuming people were obedient.)

Meanwhile, if I managed to gather all the people I talk to online about Platinum Weird in one spot, and gave the same order, I would probably be the only one who fit the bill. As Dave said better than I did below, the different sections of our personalities don't necessarily overlap.

[koganbot]

Well, such insularity was and is real, and my musical subgroup(s) did seem to be evolving towards such insularity. E.g., while I couldn't imagine Thurston Moore saying in 1981, about any kind of music, "Oh, we don't listen to that kind of music," since, though I barely knew the man, I knew his world. But I could imagine lots of Sonic Youth fans circa 1987 saying it, or, if not saying it, doing it. And of course there's serious insularity and ignorance encasing a certain type of left or right political activist. And conservative NY Times columnist David Brooks will from time to time express his worry over the fact that he's seen geographical studies that show that in comparison to 50 years ago Democrats are likely to live where they're surrounded mainly by other Democrats, and Republicans will live surrounded by other Republicans, whereas in the past there was much less physical segregation in this regard. And dubdobdee said on one of my thread's yesterday that

[sm_woods]

As usual, I can't keep up with all the comments on all your recent threads, so maybe I'm missing the obvious here (would hardly be a first) but I don't see what's "fundamentally wrong" about what you wrote -- not the prediction itself but your negative characterization of it?

[koganbot]

Dave and Erika have added some posts above and below that say pretty well where my pessimism goes wrong, why the interest groupings aren't really locales you can hide out in, how, though you can fend off some people and issues, you won't have everyone wholesale fending off everyone else - the people you potentially would ensconce yourself with will bring a lot of the unexpected with them, and your own interests will take you to unexpected groupings. Downthread I suggest that we shouldn't underestimate what we get from weak friendships and casual encounters.