Against Feminism? Some Of It Definitely…

For pretty much my whole life, feminism has been there, and I generally agree with the proposition that many women have been denied opportunities to develop their lives and minds for themselves, and in ways that can enrich us all.   

If I’m against feminism, I’m against the more militant, blindly idealogical, and threat-making wings of feminism.  I’m deeply suspicious of its totalitarian impulses and the inability it has to critique itself (the limits of both gender and equality arguments which have been its drivers, and are now playing themselves out in the political arena).

I find that through failures like these, feminism promotes thinking which can be quite dangerous to political stability and free-thought.  Like most reasonable people, I usually find myself too busy and too sane to engage such extremism.

Here are a few questions I’ve posted before that might have some use:

1. Were the idealogical excesses of the women’s movement an acceptable outcome in the goal of securing more freedoms for women?

2.  How much public support can you give to the gender equality arguments without surrendering private freedoms? 

I harbor more doubt our professional and educational institutions when they admit such ideas unchallenged.

Mike Oldfield’s To France: By A Spanish Pianist…and Plato?

Mike Oldfield wrote tubular bells, the eerie background music for the Exorcist.  He also wrote To France, a tribute to Mary Queen of Scots escape from England which is covered in the video above.  The song catches some of the spirit of English ballad and traditional folk while dealing with Protestant/Catholic subject matter.

Spaniards have a real interest in Oldfield, and I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t some shared Catholic traditions that spark the Spanish interest in Oldfield’s music (besides all the shared history).

………. 

On a related note, an emailer wrote me wondering why I had posts about music, when many other posts contain arguments which are contradicted by an indulgence in music.  I’d say there certainly is a lot of naivete and danger in seeking transcendance through music, which is so easily used by politicans, armies on the march, churches, dictators, …even witch doctors… to soften the mind rather than sharpen it, to incite the passions, and even perhaps to corrupt the spirit.

It’s not anything you won’t find in Plato, or in this essay on Plato, frankly:

This also meant that the artist is two steps removed from knowledge, and, indeed, Plato’s frequent criticism of the artists is that they lack genuine knowledge of what they are doing. Artistic creation, Plato observed, seems to be rooted in a kind of inspired madness.

So, good point, dear emailer.