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An ethical Eminem
Posted March 30th, 2011 by Bill Kilburg
In Reference to:
From Integral Talk to Integral Walk: Living an Ethical LifeI enjoyed watching Roger and listening to him speak.
What comes up for me is would people like Madonna who pushed the limits of her, and womens sexual self expression back in the 90s. and Eminem who has written his music from an angry, jealous and hatefull point of view, and Jimmy Page experiencing with the occult, would they and people like them who pushed the limits ,would they have attained the freedom and courage to do what they did if they were questioning if what they were creating was ethical ?
I simply pose that as an inquiry. Because I agree with much of what Roger is sharing . It just seems that the role of ethics may impead on other developmental lines.
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ethics and creativity
Posted April 1st, 2011 by Sam longbothamWhat’s so unethical about Madonna in the 80‘s or 90’s? The sexuality that she expressed may have offend the moral values of some medieval minds but I’m not sure that it’s unethical.
Eminem has made a career out of offending right wing conservative parental types by assaulting their values all for the sake of taking it to the next level. Surely some of his lyrics are unethical but for example when he was take to task for his use of the word “faggot” by Elton John he went on to record a duet with him. In general I’d say he is as ethical as he can be given his state of development and when challenged he has attempted to behave more ethically. In fact I can sight the example of his anti war song focused on george bush as an example of his ethical values being slightly higher than the moral majority who criticize him in that instance. Eminem is offensive because it gets him attention and that’s what sells records... Cd’s... Mp3’s. I think it’s highly possible that he could be just a creative with out being unethical.
Jimmy page and the occult... I’m not sure that’s unethical either unless he was involved with practices that harmed others intentionally. Magic is not real, so what’s the harm if he wants to delude himself.
As a practicing artist I don’t see any reason why ethical behavior would impinge on ones creativity. I don’t think that being controversial or offending some ones moral values is necessarily unethical either. I think there is a bit of a ethics VS community standards issue going on here. A given community may not approve of your foul language but that doesn't necessarily make it unethical. They may not approve of you painting a picture of a naked lady but that doesn’t make it unethical either, unless you sleep with her and tell her she is the only one when in fact she is not.
Sam Longbotham
Artist
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On Self and self…
Posted March 31st, 2011 by Charles BowlingNormal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
Hi Bill,
I can't really speak about Madonna, Eminem, or Jimmy Page; the aspect of our cultural world that they occupy shows up in mine only tangentially. But I am interested in your inquiry about the capacity for ethics to impede our development.
When Roger Walsh added the important caveat that self-sacrifice in ethics is anathema, I actually broke into applause. It's very rare to be exposed to this seldom explored subject; one which I consider to be vital.
It's not clear to me how RW would define self-sacrifice; but here's my working definition: self-sacrifice is the deliberate giving up of a higher value in favor of a lessor one. Just to be clear this means if you have 10 and I have five and we exchange you have sacrificed five. On the face of it, this is not a good idea. But there is more to it than such a simple exchange. You may for one reason or another actually prefer that I have an extra five. That preference is simply a higher value.
In order to operate this way, it's absolutely necessary to have the capacity and willingness to assign value to everything we consider doing; in other words we must be conscious of what we value and what we don't; otherwise we could easily end up pissing away something valuable. This is wasteful behavior, and among other things is not in harmony with what is sometimes called the law of conservation of energy. On subtler levels we can waste things like opportunities.
If we are to operate in an authentic manner, it's inevitable that sooner or later we will come into conflict with cultural mores. As is well known cultures are good at the cookie-cutter approach that brings people up to the average level of the culture; and conversely cultures are almost perverse in a sort of tamping down or leveling process involving anyone who dares to defy convention.
So from a non-self-sacrificial point of view; a person may actually do something that others would consider to be self-sacrificial and they do not. We have seen examples of this recently in the resulting tumult in North Africa were several obscure individuals decided that a life in an oppressed world was simply not worth living. The result of which has been that tens of thousands of other people have been inspired to protest and actually have altered the governmental milieu in which they were raised.
I grant that this sort of life is not always easy, nor is it mistake free. But then I can't imagine an integral ethical system or practice that doesn't require that we keep our wits about us.
Warmly,
Charles
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