Why You May Need to Be A Musical Hitler
In a previous post, it was commented that ethics may have nothing to do with competence.
Let’s recall my definition of competence:
Knowledge + Ability + Ethical Stand-Point = Competence
Reader Chris from the Collaborative Piano Blog felt that most successful modern musicians failed to show any kind of positive ethics.
I agree, completely. But I also need to add that ethics needn’t be a good thing. Let’s take the example of Adolf Hitler:
He had a strong knowledge about the socialist party, and the ability to run it. But what made him the horrible dicator was his ethics towards jews. He managed to communicate such a strong set of values to the German people that they all believed and followed him.
Despite the strong analogy, having ethics is different from “being ethical”. Maybe I shall correct my formula:
Knowledge + Ability + Personal Values = Competence
I hope you see why this last part of the cake is necessary – Knowledge and Ability could be taught to a robot, values are personal. Most importantly, they’re usually very unique from person to person.
To finish off, let me give you another example:
A musician’s values might be his stance towards music: Does he just listen to music, does he actually play a lot, is it his job or hobby, what does he get out of music?
A personal example would be my stance towards hip-hop: I don’t really listen to it, but I enjoy dancing to it or playing a funky beat in the band. I celarly define this and have no problem admitting that I don’t listen to hip-hop, or that I don’t know many hip hop artists (which is maybe why I should be reading The Hip Hop Roll).
What your ethics are, I don’t care. Define them clearly, though, and you’ll be one step closer to your musical self.
1 Comment
By the way, I did not say that “most modern musicians failed to show any positive ethics”. What I said was:
“However, looking around me and at the ways musicians have acted over the years, I would have to conclude that musical accomplishment has absolutely nothing to do with ethics.”
It’s like comparing apples and oranges. You can separate music-making and ethics. But please don’t take my comments out of context, in spite of the fact that it might make a good byline–it’s a much better practice to directly repost the original comment rather than exaggerate it right underneath the picture of a certain fascist dictator!