Reshared post from +Nique Devereaux
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that 1,100 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.Three minutes went by, and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace, and stopped for a few seconds, and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping, and continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally, the mother pushed hard, and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money, but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most talented musicians in the world. He had just played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, on a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
By: Josh Nonnenmocher
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And how many of us could tell our boss, "sorry I'm late, I stopped to listen to a violin player in the subway station," and not get at least written up?
Apparently children do appreciate unexpected beauty. Adults learn to ignore inconvenient beauty.
There was a beautiful sunrise this morning. I wanted to stop, admire it, maybe take some pictures. However, I had to choose getting a paycheck instead.
It was a fascinating social experiment, but I think it's one that talks to how you present content is sometimes as important as the content (the music) itself. (I wrote about it on my blog a while ago – http://thedeadone.net/blog/fuck-content-its-how-its-presented-that-matters/ )
It's not so much that we do not perceive beauty, but that we can't afford the time to enjoy it. I do perceive the beauty of the flowered gardens of the huge villa on the way to work, the intricate and yet addictive beauty of the classical music played by the radio in my car, the amazing colors, in autumn, of the sky at dawn as I drive. But, as +Arlene Medder said, each time I choose to get my paycheck, so that I can eat, dress, survive, and have enough money to enjoy those things on saturday or on vacation.
Here's another question. Would people pay $100 a seat to watch a decently talented, yet, homeless guy play violin if they were told he was one of the best in the world and his violin was worth $3.5 million — then leave the theater thinking they'd had a great musical experience?
What strikes me is that only 6 of about 1100 people stopped to listen for a while. Now I realize that it was a metro station during rush hour, and if I was late for work, I wouldn't have stopped either, but just 6 out of 1100? I'm no expert but it seems like a pretty impressing figure to me. Can't help but wonder how many of the other 1094 did actually perceive the beauty but had to move on (because of work, life, etc.) and how many had, in fact, a few moments to spare but wouldn't bother. It would be interesting if they could repeat the experiment in a different context, such as a Sunday at the mall, and compare the results.
I look at this experiment a different way. I think it indicates that we are more attached to our modern system of wage slavery than even the most astonishing beauty. Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, sure, but nothing beats the power of the paycheck. Nobody stops because they all have very important places to be – it's a workday, after all. And every day is a workday.
We are a sad, mercenary, soulless people.
Or we want to eat tomorrow, it could be that. Nothing mercenary in wanting to eat.
"We are A sad, mercenary, soulless people." (accented a very key word)
That wasn't a note about the individuals, +Christopher Wood, but about the society that forces them to do without all the things that make life worth living in order to be able to afford food in the first place.
That's a touch melodramatic. Most of us schedule our lives so we can fit those 'life worth living' things in when we don't have to worry about boss.
Six out of one thousand one hundred people, +Christopher Wood. That's a staggering enough statistic to justify some melodrama.
The fact that people stress themselves out trying to fit their entire lives into the few hours a week that aren't devoted to sleep, work, or getting back and forth between the two, is enough for me to call this a mercenary culture. We don't raise our kids anymore – that's for daycare to do, because for the first time in human history, it's the norm for both parents to have to work full-time jobs to be able to afford a house. We don't prepare our own meals anymore – that's for restaurants to do. We don't even court each other anymore – that's for dating services to do. We don't really educate ourselves anymore – schools are only supposed to prepare us for the lifetime of employment we expect our children to look forward to, and anything that can't be called "job training" is dismissed as unnecessary in school. We don't play anymore – that's just for children to do, a silly notion of time that we're allowed to devote solely to enjoyment (unless, of course, you can schedule it in around all the work). We have the best medicine that humankind has ever developed – but you're only allowed to have access to it if your employer and their insurance company approve. And we certainly don't stop to smell the roses – that's just for poetry, which nobody has any time for anymore.
All because of that almighty paycheck. Melodramatic? Sure, I guess – but in this mercenary culture, anything that doesn't go onto a timesheet is.
+Darque Wing Did we ever have time for those things in the past, though? Outside of a privileged upper class, no society really had time to participate in culture.
There's still a ways to go with creating a society that doesn't require everyone to work for 8 hours a day, or a society that doesn't rely on slave labour. At least some of the technology is there, now, but social change is needed to push things forward.
+Darque Wing Ever since we had to spend the day picking up roots and fruits and/or hunting other animals to survive, we didn't have time. If you compare the average modern human being with the average human being in the Middle Ages, the modern one has MORE free time that the Middle Ages one. Once upon a time there was no "weekend", or "vacation" or "summer break" to enjoy things, and only the wealthy and nobles could ever produce/enjoy arts.
So, this modern society actually allows us to have far more time to enjoy arts, beauty and music than what we could have if we still lived in a pre-historical society.
If Eddie Vedder pulled out a guitar and did this, the outcome would be very different.
+Todd Barchok – Sure we did! You know, before the invention of the clock in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of folks kept track of what they had to do during the course of the year, not hour. They didn't have anyone standing over their shoulder every five minutes checking to make sure they're being productive. They either had enough at harvest time to survive the next year or not.
Now, we are, thanks to our modern tools, more productive than any other humans throughout history. We make more progress in an hour of design or manufacturing than entire civilizations did in the course of decades just a few centuries ago. Communication used to mean spending weeks taking a message to its intended recipient, but now we can instantly reach anyone and then get back to work! And yet now, we are, thanks to our mercenary culture, expected to spend even more of our time working than ever before.
We're Scrooge before the three ghosts. Dickens was talking about society at large (and this is a thing we inherited from our European roots, so he was talking about us Americans, too) when he wrote about the bitter miser. It's all of us – the whole society is the bitter miser. Ironically, entering an age in which technology has transformed so many of the difficulties of human existence into mere formalities, instead of enjoying the fruits of humanity's genius and the new age of enlightenment it could give us, we have doubled down and become even more bitter, even more miserly.
If anything, this proves what anyone could have suspected, the people who would pay $100 to see this guy in concert and the people riding the subway are minimally intersecting groups.
+Darque Wing Uhmmm no. I don't see your point.
They didn't have anyone standing over their shoulder every five minutes checking to make sure they're being productive. They either had enough at harvest time to survive the next year or not.
Those who didn't have enough at harvest, died of hunger. Those who did have enough at harvest, were the ones who could harvest enough to 1) sustain (poorly) themselves and 2) pay the huge tributes to the high-ups (landlords/nobles/church, depending on the time period). In 13th century in Christian Europe, a farmer worked on average 15 hours a day everyday (except sunday where 2 hours were devoted to Mass), which left very little time to sleep, let alone enjoy their time with children. So, forget about music!
Now, I work 8 hours a day from monday to friday; ok, that's the official number, the reality is that I work at least 10 hours a day if I include extra time and the time I "work at home", plus I have the whole weekend off. Quite a difference, I think.
And yet now, we are, thanks to our mercenary culture, expected to spend even more of our time working than ever before.
yes, we work a few hours more than what's officially required. We work 10 hours a day when our contract says we should work 8 hours a day. In the 1920s, our fathers worked 13 hours a day when their contract said they had to work 10 hours a day, and saturday wasn't off (only sunday). Before 1500 in Europe, an artisan worked from dusk to dawn (except sunday). In 1200, if you weren't a nobleman/noblewoman you worked even on sunday, or you wouldn't have enough food to even get the energy to say "I'm hungry".
The only thing that got worse, in a sense, is that centuries ago we worked for survival only while modern society gave us another reason called luxury. But isn't beauty, and art, a form of luxury (if by luxury we include anything not directly useful for our physical survival)?
Maybe the problem is that our free time is more regulated and restricted than it was before. In my opinion, the experiment does not highlight our lack of free time, but our unwillingness to take a few moment for ourselves when something unexpected happens, outside of our tight schedules.
Did our grandfathers' grandfathers work more than us, without weekends and vacations? I'm sure they did. Was their life (and work day) so busy that they wouldn't stop for a moment to enjoy something beautiful? Personally, I doubt it. I don't have any hard evidence, but my personal, limited experience is that when you step out of our rich, frenetic cities you find that people are more willing to enjoy life whenever they can, even for just a minute, even if they are poorer than us, even if survival is not a given. On the other hand, we tend to enjoy things only when it's appropriate.
By the way, it's not like in the Middle Ages people did not have their own popular music and arts.
But it's important to know whether you're comparing to a pre-Industrial or Industrial society. The twentieth century saw a lot of progress – kids aren't working in factories anymore, safety is important now, etc. – but hardly enough to mitigate the slave-driving qualities of the owners of the factories from the beginning of the industrial era onward. As for the
For an agrarian people, fifteen hours a day during harvest, yeah. During a few very critical points of the season, absolutely. But during the rest of the year? No, probably not. Watching crops grow and snow fall doesn't require the same level of labor. And certainly not at the same hectic pace or in the same numbers that harvest required, when all hands were on deck to make the most out of every second of sunlight. The estimates of how long they worked that confidently state that the "average workday for a serf was fifteen hours" or whatever – think about it, according to whom? How would anyone know that? The serfs certainly weren't keeping timesheets. Hell, the clock wasn't even invented yet, so it's not like anyone there at the time could have even known with much accuracy. I'm thinking more from my experience on farms, and the way that the year's labor concentrates so much around a few major days and the rest of it is maintenance, daily chore kind of stuff. Which isn't to say it is easy – quite the opposite – but that it isn't as rigidly regimented and scrutinized hourly as anyone in today's society.
That was also a very different home that people were returning to after working, +Luca Zenari. If someone was working fifteen hours, then there were yet more people who had been home all day, cooking, cleaning, raising children, doing all the things we don't have time for anymore because we decided that it's no longer okay to have an extended family living under one roof. We send grandma and grandpa off to die in a nursing home, rather than living with the family – which means it isn't a father who has to go work fifteen hours in a field anymore, but both parents (and all those uncles and aunts, and even grandmas and grandpas – thanks, Walmart!) each having to work their eight-hour days that are far more than eight hours. And if the Republicans get their way, we'll send the kids back to work, too!
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that life was peaches and roses before the Industrial Revolution, or that an agrarian lifestyle was something that we ought to return to. Far from it! What I'm saying is that we were mercenary before, and when we finally had the technological capacity to ease up on the relentless grind and enjoy life a little, we, as a species, chose not to, and instead became even more mercenary. We traded slavery for wage-slavery, but our lives are no less controlled for it.
But, you have to admit, it's kind of funny – I say we're mercenary, and your response is, "We've always been that way!" For the sake of argument, let's say, okay, you're right – mankind has always been all about making the regular guy work his ass off every second of every day. But now, with the state of technology today, it's no longer involuntary. It's no longer a matter of necessity – now it's a choice. And our choice is clear: we just want people to work like slaves, and we don't care if it's actually needed. If you want to see the cost to humanity for that attitude: six out of eleven hundred.
(Sorry if I use italics, it's the only way I know to "quote" your words and not get lost in the discussion)
For an agrarian people, fifteen hours a day during harvest, yeah. During a few very critical points of the season, absolutely. But during the rest of the year? No, probably not. Watching crops grow and snow fall doesn't require the same level of labor.
A farm, in the past, wasn't exclusively devoted to either raising crops or raising animals: this differentiation is only modern. In the past (even recent past) in a farm you had both animals and crops, and while it's true that in winter you dont' have crops to raise, it's equally that taking care of animals require more labor in winter than summer. Also, it's not "a few very critical points of the season" but two whole seasons devoted to working the soil: spring and summer. Even nowadays you can't skip a day, because you're either turning the soil or planting seeds or watering, or cutting, or spraying chemicals or collecting fruits or cutting grain….
Here I'm speaking exclusively by my experience: I was born and raised in a farm, and worked there until I graduated.
The estimates of how long they worked that confidently state that the "average workday for a serf was fifteen hours" or whatever – think about it, according to whom? How would anyone know that?
My memory may betray me now, but what I remember is that most of these estimates are made thanks to several court and judicial recordings (made in latin, mostly) from the past, where more often than not it was asked "what was the accused/testimony doing when the vesper's bells rang" or "when the church bells called for the first prayer of the day". So they are, at best, very optimistic estimates.
_ Hell, the clock wasn't even invented yet, so it's not like anyone there at the time could have even known with much accuracy._
Time, before the clock was invented, was guessed by the sun and stars position: sundials were always used, and every church or monastic settlment had bells which rang during both day and night to call for the religious prayers. It was called Liturgia Horarum or, in english, Liturgy of the Hours. Each Hour (12 in the day, 12 in the night) called for a prayer in monasteries, and to call every monk bells were used. Bells, though, can be heard from very far away, and so were used by everyone (farmers and artisans for example) as their way to know the time. 1 bell toll meant hora prima (first hour, roughly 6 AM), 2 bell tolls meant hora secunda (second hour, 7 AM) and so on.
Of course, in summer day hours were longer and in winter shorter, since hours were calculated using sundials, and at night it was the opposite (summer night hours were shorter, winter night hours were longer), due to the difference in how fast the stars' movements were in different seasons. That's why historians give only "average" time estimates, because the time measurements vary according to the season.
EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_hours something about the liturgia horarum
To tell you the truth, in certain country (and here I speak about Italy, where I live) most of the farmers still used the bell tolls as their clock until not long ago (like, 60 years ago), because not everyone could afford a wristwatch in the post-WWII Italy. Of course, by that time bell towers used real clocks instead of sundials to check the time!
If someone was working fifteen hours, then there were yet more people who had been home all day, cooking, cleaning, raising children, doing all the things we don't have time for anymore because we decided that it's no longer okay to have an extended family living under one roof.
Ok, I actually consider that as part of work, which means that if you are cleaning, cooking, raising children you are not enjoying free time. Free time is what I personally (my opinion) consider time you spend only for yourself and/or not for your survival or your family survival. It's arguable, I know.
One last consideration: it's true that outside of the cities you tend to notice more of the beautiful things around you, yet that doesn't mean you have more time do enjoy them. My grandparents never ever saw a painting in their life, except for the two painting of the holy family and the crucifixion in church, and the only music they knew was the religious songs. While, instead, I can pride myself of owning and having listened every piece produced by Johan Sebastian Bach in his life, and I had the chance to see several art museum all around Europe.
What I try to say is not that we have always been mercenary, what I say is that we have never been. We simply put survival above arts, and enjoy arts (and beauty) only when we are sure we have gone beyond the need to survive. That's different. My opinion (but you can correct me of course, because I can't even pretend to know you that much) is that you think that our society turned us into mercenaries only because we are paid with money (the word "mercenary" has a strong tie with "money" in many languages, after all), and money has some shade of evil in it, for our culture; while in the past cultures, it wasn't money what you worked for: it was food and shelter, which we still perceive as basic needs, not as evil consequences of industrial society.
argh… sorry, time constraints. I really must go back and fix that first paragraph in the last post and respond to +Luca Zenari. I will bookmark and return soon.
I am reminded of Maslow's hierarchy of needs… Basically people are far too focused on their 'lower' level needs (i.e. survival, in the modern world represented by a paycheck), rather than 'higher' ones (i.e. Appreciating music)
+Mark Cunningham Does make a very interesting point as well, since people do not expect to hear good music being preformed in a station, and so very possibly did not even pay attention to it for long enough to actually notice the quality.