Nietzsche loves a dance party: “The Bureaucrat”
The dance party. Get a bunch of 20-somethings together with lots of booze on a Friday or Saturday night and–almost like clockwork–a dance party will break out. Doesn’t matter the location–club, house party or a sparsely-attended get-together–at some point between 11pm and 3am, a dance party will form. I’m pretty sure its instinctual.
And I couldn’t be happier. I always welcome–no, encourage–the manifestation of a dance party. Here’s this amazing social phenomenon that draws individuals together and produces this fluid mass of uninhibited energy and expression. And all smiles, it’s fun!
But the lyrics of most of these dance numbers…ugh. They’re generally these thoughtless, empty platitudes that say little of meaning, assuming–of course–that one can extract any meaning at all. And in the rare instance where a song gets deep, waxes philosophical, it’s some sort of nihilistic message of collectivism. I mean, come on…we’re talking about “artists” here! If they think at all, they think in the paradigm of post-modern socialism.
So that needs to change. Mainly because I really want to throw a libertarian dance party. A bumpin’ dance party that communicates self-affirmation, autonomy, individualism and personal responsibility. Really! I mean, how awesome would that be. And, I know–as an individual who has a synth and dabbles with that kind of stuff–I’m not one to lament but act.
In the meantime though, I’m going to collect a list of up-tempo songs with messages that speak to liberty and throw one up here every weekend in a thread entitled “Nietzsche loves a dance party”. Why Nietzsche, you ask? Um, hello! I’m name-dropping. Ha. Actually, I’ll explain the Nietzschian reference later, in installments since this will be an ongoing project. (Apologies for my intellectual procrastination…for those that can’t wait, good luck with The Birth of Tragedy.)
Without further ado, what follows is <trumpets sound!> the inaugural “Nietzsche loves a dance party” pick. As Thoughts on Freedom states, it’s “a clever piece of libertarian satire”…who target is “that canker on all societies prone to statist solutions: the bureaucrat.” Enjoy!
Michael Tyson — The Bureaucrat
[quicktime]http://michael.tyson.id.au/music/Bureaucrat.mp3[/quicktime]
Please comment with your suggestions!
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April 7th, 2008 at 8:59 am
Katie’s last blog post..Cheers! Beer’s been back for 75 years.
April 10th, 2008 at 3:32 am
Collective effervescence is something I’m sure Nietzsche would have loved but he didn’t get out enough to experience it! I blame Richard and Cosima Wagner (mainly Richard) and his evil sister Elisabeth for suppressing the truly liberating nature of his writings and twisting them for their own hateful purposes…
At any rate I’m sure Friedrich would have enjoyed a good dance party (although I think he would have passed on the booze) and I’m interested to hear about your take on ‘traditional’ Nietzschean ethics. I do prefer a bit of an alternative reading myself
April 14th, 2008 at 12:33 am
[...] alas, I’m evading elucidation of my Nietzschian reference for another week. And my blog will suffer the consequence of–horrors of horrors–even [...]