Glaring Omission

[Madiel]

People don't listen to any idiots.

No. They listen to the best idiots available to them.

You seem to be arguing that modern technology has somehow created an appetite for idiocy that didn't previously exist. I disagree. What it's done is made feeding that appetite a lot more efficient.

As for your assertion that they're not "idiots" but clever immoral people... well, like always it's a bit of both. Ever since Yes, Minister was a show I've always remembered that if you have to choose between a conspiracy and a cock-up, the more likely option is a cock-up. I'm sure there are at least some people out there who are evil clever plotters, just as there's always been such people. But there are also plenty of people who are reckless, careless, stubborn and just plain stupid.

You seem to believe that somehow people used to listen to the "good" intellectuals but now for some reason they've switched to listening to evil clever people instead. Which raises all sorts of questions about how it was that modern life suddenly made the evil clever people so much more successful than the good clever people. I just don't really think that's the main thing that's happening. Technology itself is pretty neutral. You can go through historical lists of kings or presidents or what have you, and historians will tell you that there's always been lots of bad ones. We notice the here and now because that's where we live.

[Jo498]

We have the charge that people rather listen to clever evil people than to truth and reason well documented and analyzed 2400 years ago in Plato's dialogues (e.g. "Gorgias"). And anecdotal evidence goes back another few hundred years to false prophets and advisors in some old testament stories or other ancient literature.

However, I think the flooding with ephemeral trivialities, sensations, scares etc. has become much worse today, even compared with a few decades ago, because of the internet and social media.
Sure, here was tabloid press and trashy TV although in my country this didn't start before the late '80s. I could barely follow Postman's arguments in "Amusing ourselves to death" because German TV was so "harmless" compared to how he described US media.

But this is ambiguous wrt the power of manipulation. On the one hand it has become easier to blow up nonsense, on the other the quasi-monopolies of established media are much weaker today because of alternative net-based media.
E.g. in Germany people following established media could be seriously surprised by Harris losing to Trump (and apparently lots of overpaid German journalists were or convincingly pretended to be) but everyone following international alternative sources should not have been surprised.

[Florestan]

People don't listen to any idiots. They listen to influencers paid by the billionaires to brainwash them to support political ideas that in the end benefit the billionaires. Those idiots aren't really idiots. They are immoral greedy people who don't care about causing a lot of harm to the society if it benefits themselves financially.

You are on to something: the real idiots are actually the tens of millions of people who believe and disseminate all kinds of inanities and lunacies, people who supposedly are better educated and better informed than their ancestors 200, 300 or 500 years ago but whom reality proves as naive and gullible as those were, making one wonder whether public education has been any good at all. That an illiterate peasant could believe witches exist (because the abbot and two monks saw them copulating with Satan just last Friday) is less surprising than a high school graduate who believes viruses don't exist (because whoever saw them?) --- and the instances could be multiplied indefinitely.

[Madiel]

Now that we've all cheered each other up IMMENSELY, it might be time to remember that the thread was about the music that you've neglected to listen to and/or collect.

Faure's Requiem for me of course, if I haven't said that already. Total Faure nut. All the major chamber music. Complete piano music. At least 8 or 9 discs of songs. No Requiem.

[Florestan]

Faure's Requiem for me of course, if I haven't said that already. Total Faure nut. All the major chamber music. Complete piano music. At least 8 or 9 discs of songs. No Requiem.

You win the thread. Hands down and by ten country miles. 

[Madiel]

You win the thread. Hands down and by ten country miles. 

Against the person who has never listened to Beethoven's 9th?

I feel overwhelmed at my achievement.

[Florestan]

Against the person who has never listened to Beethoven's 9th?

Ah, yes, sorry, I forgot about that. Well, a close second place, then. 

[Karl Henning]

Now that we've all cheered each other up IMMENSELY, it might be time to remember that the thread was about the music that you've neglected to listen to and/or collect.

Faure's Requiem for me of course, if I haven't said that already. Total Faure nut. All the major chamber music. Complete piano music. At least 8 or 9 discs of songs. No Requiem.

Oh, that omission does glare!

[LKB]

Oh, that omission does glare!

It does, indeed. I read that and started laughing hard enough to scare the taxi driver taking me to work ( he's OK now ).

[71 dB]

Faure's Requiem for me of course, if I haven't said that already. Total Faure nut. All the major chamber music. Complete piano music. At least 8 or 9 discs of songs. No Requiem.

That's really crazy. Often the Requiem is the ONLY work by Fauré people are interested off (because it is insanely beautiful music) while totally ignoring his awesome chamber music.

[hopefullytrusting]

Just shows how much can change in two months time:

Just reorganized my recordings today, and I now have three new composers dominating my top owned slots:

3. Reger   
2. Mozart
1. Bach     

A living composer is in 4th, and will likely surpass Reger, and that is, of course, Tine Surel Lange.