OF SPRAWLING SYMPHONIES AND MUDDLING

Continuing this month’s survey of Books Read, here are a few more entries. OK, the first one’s not a book, apart from the liner notes. But it’s still a major undertaking:

• Gunter Wand conducts Bruckner, the nine symphonies: Listening to these in sequence close together discloses how little the composer grew from the first to last work. They become bombastic fanfares over wavering strings, and heavy footed. Only in No. 8 does he use harps, and then three of them. Despite all of the religious impulse others find in these works, I find them postured, with a vengeful, magisterial deity rather than the blissful radiance I feel in worship. While I have 3, 7, and 9 on vinyl, I am surprised how much of the others I recognize, at least in certain passages. So this has been an instructive exercise, especially in its unintended conjunction with Augustine.
• Warren Johnson: Meddling Toward Frugality. An interesting 1978 volume from Sierra Club Books that is in many ways dated, especially in its expectations of decentralization and increasing local control, much of his overall thesis remains intriguing. His failure to anticipate the impact of globalization, computerization, and the wealth shift to the wealthiest Americans skewers his predictions, yet his expectations of lower worker income is bearing out (despite higher productivity!). His interpretation of muddling as positive, and demonstrated in both corporate and political decision-making, is illuminating. On a more personal note, I appreciate his interpretation of the Eden story as yet one more layer of wisdom: “The Biblical legend of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden seems clearly to describe the invention of agriculture. The tree of knowledge was the knowledge of agriculture: ‘The tree was good for food,’ and the woman took the first step – ‘She took the fruit thereof and did eat’ (Genesis 3:60). The penalty was the expulsion from the Garden [of the hunter-gatherer society] and ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’ (Genesis 3:19). Most important, it was irreducible. Once the knowledge had been gained and populations had risen above the carrying capacity of the hunter and gatherer, there was no turning back. The expulsion from the Garden was final. … Mankind would henceforth live in an intimate relationship with the soil.”