The premise is that there be music. It is a deliberately stipulated premise. As such it need
not follow. It isn't even hereditary. That there was and is music proves, at best, that the premise
has been deliberately stipulated many times before, and that it has led to a variety of definite
conclusions. The premise-that there be music-is not one of those conclusions.
Now, to many a fine ear attached to many a fine brain, the premise, on the contrary,
appears to claim: after all those conclusions, it may now be time that there at last be music. Only,
however fine the attachments, however indignant the ear-wagging, and however shocked all those
appear to appear who hear what only appears to have been said - it is all appearances only. The
premise is not even a reaction. Nor is it the valiant expression of free and upstanding determination
to start afresh, where there's a will there's a way, and finally succeed where hitherto all have
failed. Nor does the premise stipulate that there should be better music or other music, but just that
there be music! So the premise is not competitive either, and therefore does not necessarily signal
the search for any social status or the embarking on some corrective action.
In short: the deliberately stipulated premise that there be music is amoral, non-ethical, non-
conformist and asocial, partly in contrast to whoever deliberately stipulates it. For that person is
not a premise; that person only stipulates one. The urge to stipulate and the choice of premise are
functions of one's views on one's participation in society, and these views, be they affirmative or
in opposition, are provoked, if not conditioned, by what happens in that society in the name of
morals and ethics.
Unfortunately, more often than not, we who stipulate are conformists. Instead of
intolerantly discussing only the alternative consequences and conclusions that, given the premise,
we now could envisage, again and again we allow ourselves to defend the premise against those
who just do not want new premises. And we who stipulate cannot be asocial, regardless of what
we proclaim, in that we always find ourselves either pooling with or pitching against society all
those strange concepts our premises generate. We are not, nor do we do, precisely what we intend
to be or do. In various ways, the environment attaches meaning and significance to our
expressions and actions, which inevitably transcends and, in passing, deforms all of our
intentions.
This process occasionally creates a period in which one becomes all environment, and,
unaware of this fact and hidden behind good intentions, one gets stuck.
whenever I get stuck, the environment must be changed. An environment cannot be
changed by obeying the environment, but only by experiments with deliberately stipulated
premises which generate unexploited systems, moments of many alternatives. However, while I
am caught in a feedback loop, I cannot recognize a loophole, even if there is one, because the
foremost property of such a loophole is its imperceptibility. All I can do is artificially increase
the probability of my hitting on a premise that does more than I intended and so might catapult me
out of the loop. Thus, it finally must be added that even the most deliberately stipulated premise
lacks definition and that it mocks definition if it transcends all intentions.
