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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024

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And without making any moral judgements about pop music, I'm still very sure children should be exposed to the occasional string quartet.

A string quartet is not comparable to a brutalist building. While children might find a string quartet boring, I think few if any would find it unpleasant. String quartets generally adhere to traditional norms of harmony and beauty; chamber music is often used to provide pleasant background ambience for social events - a testament to its qualities as inoffensive music without any notably dissonant or anxiety-inducing elements.

Brutalism, in contrast, is, if nothing else, designed to be visually jarring and arresting. It does not fade pleasantly into the harmonious backdrop of life. If you want to compare it to a music genre, compare it to industrial metal or dubstep or something like that. Beautiful to some; but actively (and intentionally) grating to others.