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NancyLebovitz comments on Making History Available - Less Wrong
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That's a start. The next step is that you have a good bit in common with other people, but also substantial differences. They lived through history as themselves.
As for "America always having existed", I heard somewhat from a book about the geological history of the English Channel. It took a number of sentences to explain that there was a time before there was an England or a France and I was getting impatient, and then I realized that the amount of repetition probably was needed to bring the point home.
A bit of free association.... did you know there was a nation of Burgundy which has been all but forgotten? I found this out from Mary Gentle, whose Ash novels have some intellectual horror so awful that I stopped reading.
N uvfgbevna/nepunrbybtvfg svaqf fbzr irel fgenatr fghss, naq fur'f orggvat ure erchgngvba ba vg.... naq gura nyy gur rivqrapr qvfnccrnef. V unira'g svavfurq ernqvat gur frevrf, ohg vg qvqa'g frrz yvxr n pbairagvbany zlfgrel, jvgu fbzrbar fgrnyvat gur rivqrapr-- zber yvxr ernyvgl fbsgravat naq erivfvat vgfrys.
Actually, sometimes people do make accurate predictions, but they also make a lot of false predictions. The accurate predictions are much more apt to be remembered than the false predictions.
If you want to see a major effort to view past people as being themselves rather than modern people, see Ta-Nahisi-Coate's writings on the Civil War.
I think that this era is the best in general for a lot of people, but there are specific things which were done better in the past. People in the middle ages and the Renaissance were better at dressing up. It's possible that Eastern European Jews before the Nazis were better at producing mathematical geniuses than we are. Was there something about the educational system? Europe before WWI produced classical music so good that no one has been able to compete with it (for classical music, not music in general) since then.
I'm pretty sure the resident music experts disagree with this.
I should have been clearer that what I meant by good classical music is music which appeals to the general public.
Again, there are Neoclassical works that "the public" love just like "the public" love the old masters. Pulcinella Suite is a direct example that "competes," but really anything from that era of Stravinsky is a great example. Francis Poulenc's work is immensely popular (his clarinet duet and clarinet concerto are particularly good). In fact, directly after WWI is when all this stuff came out because europe couldn't afford large orchestras.
This idea that modern classical music can't be fun and entertaining is just plain strange! Serialism really gives modern music a bad name. People still compose tonal works, and tonal music is not considered "uninteresting."
I beg your pardon...!
There's nothing "bad" about serial music. (Individual works may of course vary in quality.) Not all music needs to be "accessible". You're right to point out that some modern music is, but it's okay if also some isn't. One just cannot expect everyone to be able to keep up indefinitely with increasing musical complexity.
Not even Beethoven is accessible to everybody, it seems.
But not all modern music is inaccessible. In fact a lot of is more accessible than the old masters (I mean come on, The Firebird isn't hard to understand at all). People seem to act as if once serialism came around all composers immediately threw out all ideas of tonality and harmony and that's not true. Many people openly rejected ideas of atonality.
I don't really have anything against serial music. Some of it is pretty cool. But that's not what "modern music" is.
I like to point out this line in particular, and then point to minimalist (and post-minimalist) composers.
Music doesn't have to get necessarily more complex. Composers, like any large group of people, don't agree on anything.
Well wait a minute: you were the one who pointed specifically to serialism as the culprit for the "inaccessible" reputation of "modern music". If you consider minimalists inaccessible also, why didn't you include them in the blame?
No, I don't think minimalists are inaccessible. You suggested that there is "increasing musical complexity," and I was merely pointing out there doesn't necessarily have to be "increasing musical complexity."
I cited increasing musical complexity as the reason why serial music is considered "inaccessible". I didn't say anything about non-"inaccessible" music.