I was amazed at how interesting class today was. It hit on a number of philosophical areas I never expected to talk about in a history of music such as the concept of self, self-ownership, and the ethics of slavery.

Professor O’Malley spoke at length about the idea of the “divided-self,” the idea that each person has multiple selves. One makes a decision, the other regrets it, one acts one way in a situation, the other acts differently in a different situation, etc. I wholly and emphatically reject this. Each person, outside of severe mental insanity, is one person, one self. I may have regrets or choose to act differently at different times, but it is just me making that decision. Not competing mes. Praxeology, how we understand economics, supposes itself on the understanding that human action is purposeful. Every action a person takes is because it is a chosen action, whatever the motivation might be. This implicitly means there must be one self making those decisions and performing those actions. Perhaps I have a bigger hostility to the phrase “divided-self” and what it implies than the point Professor Malley was trying to make, but my point stands all the same: there is one self.

“Voluntary slavery” is deep dive into arcane libertarian theory; the only person I’ve ever heard expound on it at length is Dr. Walter Block, and he lives in arcane libertarian theory. It’s a fascinating concept though. I remember trying to explain it to my Business & Ethics class in 12th grade. Slavery, as defined as forced labor, is immoral for the same reason all aggression is; it’s a violation of the property rights of another individual. But such a thing as “voluntary” slavery be possible? A person can choose to sell their labor. Could they sell it permanently, 24/7? Yes, I suppose. But can someone be “owned?” Isn’t libertarian theory built on the immutable principle of self-ownership? But if I own myself, can’t I sell myself just like I would a car or an apple? If I can’t, can I truly say I even own something I can’t sell (ie myself)? It’s a difficult metaphysical question that I don’t have a straight answer for. The closest one I can grasp is the acceptance of natural, physical laws outside of man’s control.

The point of today’s class was to drive home the enormity of the technological revolution that took place in the 19th century. Outside of reruns of Little House on the Prairie, it was good to realize how limited pre-industrial life was. Most people never left 30 miles outside the place they were born. That’s one thing to hear, another to understand. The same goes for diet. Well, obviously they were more limited than we are now. But thinking about it and realizing how much their diets depended on the weather, the seasons, and how monotonous and repetitious it was leaves one with a kind of hollow feeling. With mechanization, the world was more interconnected; people, and food, could travel. With physical travel came telephones and the transformation of communication. Suddenly time mattered; time zones were established because they were never needed previously. In under two generations, most people in the United States experienced a displacement of space and time around them.

A corollary to this point was the obsession with standardization. Clocks everywhere would be in perfect alignment. Life would be regimented, displaced after centuries of custom to fit in a newly industrial and punctual world. F.W. Taylor was mentioned, a fetish of turn of the century Progressives. By the late 1920s Taylorism had become unfashionable.