Comments on: United, not divided

By: Stoffe

Stoffe — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 19:54:32 +0000

The one band that has opened my mind the most was Die Krupps in the early 90’s, when they successfully combined and popularized metal and electronic music in a way that fans of both genres could appreciate. At least among people I know, they created a lot of bridges, as at least in Sweden in the 80’s, you were either metal or electronic, and never should the two meet, in fact they were mortal enemies. Silly when you look back at it, but that’s the way it was (and we were mostly teenagers taking small stuff waaay too seriously).

Anyhow, from a metal background (which I retain) I then proceeded to discover lots of other interesting music, starting with stuff like Depeche and after a while pretty much listening to anything. Nowadays I don’t listen to genres at all, just divide music into “good” and “bad” according to my taste.

By: James Stephenson

James Stephenson — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:54:39 +0000

Excellent! I particularly enjoyed this post. The analogy is awesome. So as a follow Free Software guy and Metal fan I only have one more thing to say. Rock On.

By: Nils Winkler

Nils Winkler — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 11:47:17 +0000

Good article, but you couldn’t be more wrong about “Industrial”. Time for a history lesson?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_music

By: Aeth

Aeth — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 10:30:16 +0000

Where’s the mention of Rhapsody and Fantasy Metal ?

“For the King, for the land, for the mountains, For the green valleys where dragons fly, For the glory, the power to win the black lord, I will search for the Emerald Sword.”

By: Relation of Ronan Keating

Relation of Ronan Keating — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 23:33:24 +0000

I’m glad that’s been cleared up, now where did I leave my Boyzone CD?

By: EvilDead

EvilDead — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:54:38 +0000

You forgot grindcore.

(just my useless 2 cents

By: aodhagan

aodhagan — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:23:51 +0000

So, while I’m sure in the volume of your rant and the comments that followed, I was supposed to take something Metal away from this process. However, what I really think is the interesting concept here is the movement to create collaborative software and the competing camps within. Is it Free Software or Open Source? We can’t even agree on a name for the worldview. Is it really even one unified worldview at all? Gnome or KDE? Vi or Emacs? Bash or Korn shell? GPL or CDDL, or maybe MPL/BSD/Artistic? Choice can be amazingly powerful and ideas grow by incorporating new information. I wonder though where the line is drawn between the segmentation being constructive to becoming destructive. Are competing software projects inherently aiding one another by providing alternate perspectives? Does half joking/half serious bickering between projects actually further grow the affinity concerned parties have with each project? Linux distributions have become like protestant denominations. There are a lot of flavors, that everyone plays lip service to as being quite acceptable, but yet the divisions remain all the same. While individual initiative is absolutely required for a movement like Free Software to succeed, I wonder if that same individualism is the source of apparent fragmentation within the community. Is the communities greatest strength also its greatest weakness?

By: adamzap

adamzap — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 17:59:52 +0000

Jono, good post as always, but I must say...Black Metal should be described by it's musical characteristics (tremelo picking, etc), not its religious affiliation.

Believe it or not there are some Christian black metal bands that are as brutal as ever.

By: JF

JF — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:50:58 +0000

I also want to note that, in the 21st century, we may actually see manifestations of subcultural nationalism have an effect on world politics, but this is less likely than ethnic or civic nationalism, for they’re more volatile. There is one non-traditional nationalism that’s a permanent characteristic of an individual, and it’s taking a transnational form, and that’s queer nationalism. It’s gaining steam and pushing for an end to discrimination to members of the queer nation, with things like chamber of commerces and everything, so that’s kind of an example of these… new nationalisms, I suppose.

By: JF

JF — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:46:21 +0000

Excellent, excellent post Jono. When I’m not jamming your inbox with janitorial stuff from Launchpad’s bug database, I’m actually a political science student focused on nationalism. And unlike the vast majority of people studying nationalism, I actually talk about what I call “non-traditional nations” (although, I need to find a better term for it), which is actually subcultural nations. They’re not as permanent as things like ethnic and civic nations, but subcultural nations, like being a metalhead, the metal nation, or a geek with the geek nation, function exactly the same way than ethnic, civic, and religious nations do. They’re social entities with a culture, often their own language (or lingo), traditions and so forth.

The purpose of my studying these nations, beyond the pleasure I get out of it, is to demonstrate that national affiliation is inherently pluralistic and even more diverse than we thought. You can’t just be an American, a Canadian, a British (well, you guys have pluralistic national identities already with English, Scots, Welsh, etc.), Chinese or Japanese. You’re always part of many national groups and some of them are transnational. For example, the metal nation is transnational. Wherever you are in the world, a metalhead is a metalhead. There’s obviously influences from his own surrounding and so forth, but you’ll likely feel a certain bond with a metalhead regardless of how foreign his ethnic or civic culture is to you. In Canada, we have a seperatist movement in Quebec, and its leaders claim that you can only be Canadian or Quebecois, you can’t be both. That national identity is mutually exclusive. My goal is to show that, no, national identities are inclusive and that you don’t have to choose between any of them, that personally, I can be Acadian, Canadian, North American, a geek, a junglist, an otaku (a moderate one, but still), and a world citizen and this is entirely normal and healthy. And I mean, that’s only scratching the surface of my identity which is complex, like all identities.

This post illustrates superbly that the personal emotional dynamics regarding subcultural nations is exactly the same than any other nation. If you had been for example, a Chinese-Canadian, you can substitute the inner conflict between being Canadian and Chinese and having to choose which is most important to you. So, I’m not sure I can use blogposts in essays, but if I can, I might use this sometimes, thanks.