"We get more dangerous as we accumulate knowledge, and that's both a sadness and something to control, try to learn to live with, make terms with"
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Danger, in Lou Harrison's mouth, isn't the action-movie thrill of genius gone rogue. It's the quiet, accumulating hazard of becoming capable. A composer who spent his life studying everything from medieval modes to gamelan tunings understood that knowledge doesn't just refine taste; it widens your blast radius. The more you know, the more you can bend systems, seduce audiences, dominate collaborators, or flatten traditions into usable material. Mastery isn't innocence with better tools. It's leverage.
The line works because it refuses the standard Enlightenment pep talk. Knowledge is not automatically progress; it's amplification. Harrison's "sadness" isn't self-pity. It's a moral grief: every new technique, every historical insight, every cross-cultural encounter carries the possibility of extraction, arrogance, or control dressed up as sophistication. Coming of age in the 20th century, with its technologically enabled catastrophes and ideological certainty, Harrison had front-row seats to the idea that intelligence can scale cruelty as efficiently as it scales art.
His phrasing is also tellingly domestic: "control", "live with", "make terms with". Not conquer, not purify, not renounce. He frames ethics as ongoing maintenance, the kind of discipline artists practice daily - revision, restraint, listening. For a composer who championed alternative tuning systems and non-Western influences, the subtext lands even harder: learning from others can be reverent, but it can also be acquisitive. Harrison is asking for a mature relationship with expertise - one that admits its shadow, and still chooses responsibility over the glamour of unchecked power.
The line works because it refuses the standard Enlightenment pep talk. Knowledge is not automatically progress; it's amplification. Harrison's "sadness" isn't self-pity. It's a moral grief: every new technique, every historical insight, every cross-cultural encounter carries the possibility of extraction, arrogance, or control dressed up as sophistication. Coming of age in the 20th century, with its technologically enabled catastrophes and ideological certainty, Harrison had front-row seats to the idea that intelligence can scale cruelty as efficiently as it scales art.
His phrasing is also tellingly domestic: "control", "live with", "make terms with". Not conquer, not purify, not renounce. He frames ethics as ongoing maintenance, the kind of discipline artists practice daily - revision, restraint, listening. For a composer who championed alternative tuning systems and non-Western influences, the subtext lands even harder: learning from others can be reverent, but it can also be acquisitive. Harrison is asking for a mature relationship with expertise - one that admits its shadow, and still chooses responsibility over the glamour of unchecked power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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