muflax65ngodyewp.onion/content_muflax/reflections/letting_go_of_music.mkd

title	date	techne	toc	episteme
Letting Go of Music	2010-05-03	:done	true	:discredited

Motivation

It feels very unusual and strange, after thinking critically about the arguments, assessing the evidence and forming a rational conclusion, to arrive at a position that nowadays only two groups share: Christian puritans and the Taliban. It makes me very uncomfortable, but I let's give the argument a good shot anyway.

What conclusion am I talking about? Music is a parasite, or in practical terms, Music exploits you. This is a radical statement, so initial skepticism is very much understandable. If it comforts you, let me get one thing out of the way: I do not object to music out of "spiritual" or "religious" reasons, which, unfortunately, seems to be the most common case. Most likely, music does not "corrupt your character" or "lead you away from God" or any such nonsense. It is also not really an argument for asceticism. No, my main argument comes from memetic theory and a cost/benefit analysis. It is, in principle, a very similar argument broad forward by atheists against religion. The Four Horsemen of Atheism (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, all truly awesome) have argued very much alike, but against religion. I will try to show that their reasoning extends to more fields, one of which is music. This is not meant to falsify or parody their position (I in fact agree with it, at least partially), but to explore the real ramifications.

Being sensible never got anyone anywhere. I don't believe much in carefully adjusting. Jumping right into a big unknown and then compromising always seemed so much more natural to me. If things work out, you are a genius for getting it right from the start. If they don't, you can always just deny everything.

Before I get going, let's clarify 3 things. Firstly, I will build on memetic theory, so you will probably need to know what it's about to understand some of my reasoning. You may want to read "The Meme Machine" by Susan Blackmore or some of Daniel Dennett's recent books, like "Darwin's Dangerous Idea", or at least google it. The arguments aren't really very technical, but if you aren't familiar with basic evolution or what a meme is, then my points may seem alien to you. To understand the perspective of replicators, it will also help greatly to read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

Secondly, let's establish a few terms. I will refer to "not having music" as amusicality, analog to "not believing in god(s)" being atheism. This is totally different from being tone-deaf, disliking music or the like. To be honest, I'm a great fan of music, so this is also not a "disgruntled outsider" kind of argument. Furthermore, I take it as a given that music is a highly advanced memeplex (i.e. group of memes that support each other), in the same way as religion or language, and as such is a replicator and subject to evolution, but independent of genes.

And lastly, why I will bring no argument for amusicality. It might seem odd that I only attack arguments for music, but have no strong argument of my own why "not having music" is too be favored. This follows the same logic of atheism: the one's making the claim are the one's in need of evidence and arguments. The Null Hypothesis (i.e. "there is no correlation between A and B" or "A doesn't exist" or similar) is the default position of science. We start off with an empty set of assumptions and every one we want to add has to be substantiated. To successfully defend the skeptic position, I only have to dismantle all the evidence proponents show, not actively prove the impossibility of the claim. Atheists are used to it in terms of religion: You only show there is no reason to believe in god(s), you don't need to show there is any evidence against god(s). This is logically evident, as disproving such claims is often impossible or simply impractical.

However, my position isn't exactly that bleak. I actually can> make one simple argument for "not having music": it eats up your time. Replace any time you spend listening to music with something actually beneficial and you are in a better position. But even if music were "free" (as in, would use up no resources), my position might still be the rational one.

To be honest, the argument against music isn't entirely unmotivated. (It never is.) I became so udderly obsessed with music that I just got sick of it all. Comparing codecs, hardware, different players, optimizations, genres, recording techniques, musical structure, correct labeling and all this crap, I just got tired of it; and when I asked myself why I was doing all this in the first place, what music gave me in return... I got nothing. Nothing worth the effort, anyway. So it's probably fair to say that I wasn't exactly unbiased.

So let's go and see all the arguments in favor of music. To be clear, it is rare for anyone to defend all of them. But they are, as far as I know, all proposed seriously and the list is complete. Here we go:

The Argument from History

Humans have been playing music for, at least, thousands of years and probably millions of years. It is completely natural for us to do so. Evolution has shaped our brain to encourage this.

This is true, but a fallacy: what is can never inform us what ought to be. Evolution has also made men good at killing and raping, for example. (And also enabled us to use language and science, of course.) What has happened in the past can inform us, but can not be our sole guide. You must provide actual, current benefits.

The Argument from Social Integrity

Human society is, among other things, united by music. People engage in collective music, like festivals, camp fires or choirs. They define their own identity through it ("Are you a metalhead, too?"). It is one reason why human society is so stable and productive. Do you want to advocate chaos and anarchy?

This is probably the strongest general argument in favor of music. It is true that music is a very important social "glue" and it might very well be true that society as we know it would not function without it. But the same thing can be said of religion. There is not a single historical case of a society that got from family-sized tribes to city-states without major help from religion. That, however, doesn't make any religion particularly true. And even if this were true in the past, it doesn't have to be true for the future.

I'll have to admit that I can not completely disprove this argument. I would not advice on any changes to society, like outlawing music, even though I'd love to do a proper experiment. But I can point some things out.

First, there are societies without music. The most famous one are the Taliban, who are thriving and have a stable history. They certainly are a competitive and strong society. Also, the deaf community is active and very tight-knit. The claim is probably overstated, but might have some justification.

Second, I do understand the danger of trying to experiment on this. What if the argument is right and we accidentally do harm civilization? Is it really worth the risk? (I'd like to think so, but I'm also willing to put up with a far greater risk than most people.)

The Argument from Pleasure

Humans take great joy from music. It invokes many emotions, from happiness to anger to sadness. It gives their life meaning, but also just passes boredom.

This one is easy to argue against, but hard to understand. You do not enjoy music because of benefits, but because music is shaped (and has shaped you) to be enjoyable. It (ab)uses your reward system, your fear response, anger response and so on, to pass itself on. It is self-perpetuating, making you feel good so you listen to it so you feel good so you listen to it... Memetic evolution predicts this: brains that are "bored" without music will propagate it more, so any successful music will incorporate selection for this property. This is obvious to any outsider, as it is with any drug, but not for the afflicted. Observe anyone under the effect of a drug, during a panic attack and so on, while you yourself are neutral, unaffected. They will be blind to it; their brain pays no attention to this fact.

Arguing that pleasure in itself is a good thing, is tautological at best and addictive behaviour at worst. If you propose this, then you are in a really bad position. It is very hard to make a good case for pleasure without also argueing for direct stimulation of your reward center. You see, Electrodes can be inserted, a little switch can be attached and you can sit there all day, feeling great! But even most hedonists do not want to defend this.

The Argument from Morals

Music can influence our moral behaviour. Playing wholesome and delightful music to children will shape their character for the better!

This is a bold statement, especially because it has no evidence whatsoever. There is no psychological study supporting this, no disproportionately large chunk of deaf people in jail, no connection between crime rate and music education. If there is any link, it is minuscule.

There is, however, a strong connection between indoctrination and music. Almost every cult, religion or otherwise strong ideology will use music for its purposes. Music's strong potential to move people's emotion can easily be exploited to instill fake unity, bliss or aggression. I would not go so far to disqualify music for this reason, but reject any moral claims as at least neutral. If it has positive effects, it might as well have negative ones. You can not advocate only the one part you profit from.

This argument is sometimes used negatively, e.g. "Modern music corrupts our children!". If you believe it, you must accept this conclusion as well. Music censorship, at least partially, would be the only responsible thing to do.

The Argument from Profits

Billions of dollars are involved. Music is a very profitable industry.

So is heroin. I don't feel I have to say more about this; it is such an empty argument.

The Argument from Benign Symbiosis

Music is useful to us. It enhances our ability to recognize patterns. It supports the learning of languages. It improves our ability to adopt other memes. It has been documented that children that learnt an instrument perform better in school. Music can help to treat mental illnesses.

There exists barely any valid research for any of those claims. The strongest is probably the learning of languages. Basically, this uses musics strong reproductive capabilities by hijacking it. You take language memes, like a poem, or just some words, and apply them as text to some music, thereby making them "stick" a lot better. This seems to work, as far as we can tell. There is, of course, no conclusive evidence. (This is mostly because of the failure of language education and linguistics, and unrelated to music, in my opnion.)

But is this worth its price? Are you able to contain it? Recall that you are using music exactly because it is so fertile. It seems like the opposite of a safe operation to me. Also, is it really effective? Instead of using music to get small benefits in school or elsewhere, read books. Learn critical thinking. Solve puzzles. Address the problem directly, instead of trying to do it through some remote synergy with a symbiont.

However, it can be argued that music was a major driving force behind the development of our big brains. We needed more and more capable meme machines to spread music more reliably, so we were selected for it. We profit from this because the human brain is largely a universal machine, not specialized for any particular meme and so all kinds of useful memes spread better as well. Everyone wants a better memetic "soil", if you want. But if this is true (I suspect it is), then there is a fiendish little twist to it: We can exploit the parasite now! Sure, music used us for its own purposes, endowing us with bigger brains to get a better chance itself, but now that we have those brains, we don't need to have any affiliation to music anymore! What do we care if music survives? Let's use those brains for something good! So long, and thanks for all the neurons!

The medical use of music might be justified. Psychotherapy is in a terrible state right now, but the existing studies seem to support effectiveness of music in some cases. While I personally would prefer other methods, I would nonetheless agree that a reasonable case can be made for music in the hands of a professional. And this is the crux: we are talking about serious illnesses and therapy, certainly not recreational use.

Finally, I feel that this argument is very dishonest. It is really a rationalisation. No one sits down, thinks "Hey, singing those songs would get me better test scores in 10 years!" and then does so. You listen to music because you like it. Later on come the "reasons" and "beliefs" on why it really is good for you. If I showed studies disproving all such claim, would it change the argument? Most likely not. You would still listen to music, those scientists be damned. They are probably frauds anyway!

Argument from Spirituality

Entweder durch den Einfluss des narkotischen Getränkes, von dem alle ursprünglichen Menschen und Völker in Hymnen sprechen, oder bei dem gewaltigen, die ganze Natur lustvoll durchdringenden Nahen des Frühlings erwachen jene dionysischen Regungen, in deren Steigerung das Subjektive zu völliger Selbstvergessenheit hinschwindet. Auch im deutschen Mittelalter wälzten sich unter der gleichen dionysischen Gewalt immer wachsende Schaaren, singend und tanzend, von Ort zu Ort (...). Es gibt Menschen, die, aus Mangel an Erfahrung oder aus Stumpfsinn, sich von solchen Erscheinungen wie von "Volkskrankheiten", spöttisch oder bedauernd im Gefühl der eigenen Gesundheit abwenden: die Armen ahnen freilich nicht, wie leichenfarbig und gespenstisch eben diese ihre "Gesundheit" sich ausnimmt, wenn an ihnen das glühende Leben dionysischer Schwärmer vorüberbraust.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Geburt der Tragödie ¹

This is in my opinion the strongest and at the same time rarest argument. It surprised me a bit that so many people seem to listen to music for any other reason than this.² But then, mystics have always been in the minority, so there.

The use of music for spiritual purposes extends to virtually all mystic practices, be they shamanistic rituals, prayer, meditation or the more modern drug-based practices, as exemplified by Leary or Crowley.

In fact, I suspect there is a strong correlation with "being spiritual" and "liking music". The link may be the ease with which memes can enter your brain - your memetic immune system, if you want. This holds true for me (I was a gnostic theist for a long time, having personally talked to several gods and all. It was a hard struggle towards logic and reason for me.) and many people I know.

Also, there is a strong connection to the amygdala and temporal lobes. I don't want to reiterate the point here and will just point to the awesome talks on neurotheology by Todd Murphy, specifically [Using Neuroscience for Spiritual Practice] and [Enlightenment, Self and the Brain]. There is some great research popping up in recent years for sure.

Honestly, I don't know how to retain my contrarian attitude here, seeing that I agree with the argument. You may try to attack spirituality (in the sense of mystic experiences, not believe in woo) as bad in itself, but this is very rare even among hardcore atheists and materialists.

The argument that mystic experiences will lead to pseudoscience or superstitions is easily disproved; just have a look at how many both scientists and mystics are still clearly rational. Good examples may range from Michael Persinger on the science side, to Sam Harris somewhere in the middle, and the Dalai Lama on the religious side. Sure, like any counter-intuitive and large open question, spirituality lends itself to false believes, but that's a general human problem, not something specific to the topic. The answer are good rational practices, not abandoning music.

Conclusion

In the end, one thing stands out: many attitudes towards music, and their rationalisation, are indistinguishable from memetic addiction. People are being exploited by music. It has shaped our brain for its reproductive advantages. Sure, we may have won the game of natural selection sometimes, but this is of little concern to music. The memeplex has all characteristics of a virus. It eats up as much of individual resources as it can without disabling its host. We are constantly encouraged to listen to more music, get more music, recommend it to our friends and so on. It spreads for the sake of spreading. Good music is judged not by its inherent benefits to individuals or the species, but by how popular it is, that is, how good it is at spreading. Being an ear worm is a good thing for music to be. If someone states they doesn't listen much to music, then the most common response is one of disbelief, utterances of "How empty and meaningless my life would be without music!", of "What is wrong with you? Are you depressed?", followed by hundreds of recommendations because "There has to be some music out there that you like! Just listen more to it!".

It sure looks like the behaviour of addicts. If you are not devoted to music, at least a bit, you must try harder! These are memes that ruthlessly exploit their hosts. Natural selection has shaped them to be highly resistant, persuasive and addictive. All of music theory and education is only occupied with how to make more popular music, how to spread it better, how to increase its impact. It conveys no message (or only an empty shell of one), it teaches nothing, it gives you nothing except pleasure. It circumvents the purpose of a reward system by directly stimulating it without giving something in return. It is a parasite.

But what now?

I thought, "Okay, calm down. Let's just try on the not-believing-in-God glasses for a moment, just for a second. Just put on the no-God glasses and take a quick look around and then immediately throw them off". So I put them on and I looked around.

I'm embarrassed to report that I initially felt dizzy. I actually had the thought, "Well, how does the Earth stay up in the sky? You mean we're just hurtling through space? That's so vulnerable!" I wanted to run out and catch the Earth as it fell out of space into my hands...

I wandered around in a daze thinking, “No one is minding the store!” And I wondered how traffic worked, like how we weren't just in chaos all the time. And slowly, I began to see the world completely differently. I had to rethink what I thought about everything. It's like I had to go change the wallpaper of my mind.

-- Julia Sweeney, "Letting Go of God (which my title is, of course, an allusion to)

That's a bit how I felt at first. Really, can my reasoning be right? It must be wrong! Dvořák's 9th symphony, a parasite? ゆらゆら帝国's "Sweet Spot", detrimental? Demons & Wizards, really a satanic band? Impossible! And even if, can I ever be able to let go of them? Can I not listen to music? Will I not die of boredom, depression, isolation? Will it not cheapen my life to be amusical? Will nostalgia not overpower me?

It began to settle in. I remember the same thing happening to religion. Not praying, not talking with the gods, not feeling this sense of mystical bliss, this was really hard for me to accept. But it seemed the only honest thing to do. The only true understanding you can have. And after a while, the old way seemed silly. You begin to truly understand the world a bit better, not making excuses, running down dead ends, but learning an actual powerful lesson. Trying to understand or work with anything without embracing rationality and science is always a bad idea.

Safer Use

But there is something important to clarify here: Just because something is a parasite doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. In fact, most parasites are actually quite useful to their host. They share a common interest in the hosts well-being, after all. The crucial thing to understand, though, is that the virus is interested in its own replication the most. The host will always have to fight hard to ensure that the relationship is still symbiotic and not exploitative.

Basically, the normal safer use rules apply. Don't overdo it. Establish pauses, don't repeat anything too much, diversify your tastes. Avoid mainstream sources, which are mostly characterized by pure popularity. (And ruled by agents that have the moral strength of tobacco companies.) Don't mix activities too much: doing something "on the side", all the time, is always strong evidence that it has become an addiction. You know the drill - make sure you still benefit enough to make it worth it.

The Future

New habits will grow to fill the void, better habits. New memes will come. The world goes on.

But then I found this on Youtube: [Berryz工房 - Dschinghis Khan][]

Yes, it's a Japanese cover of the German song Dschingis Khan. I don't know whether they are playing it in heaven or hell, but probably both. So good, yet so bad... If you ever needed proof that humanity has gone batshit insane, well... JPOP's the end of all theology, the end of all faith. You may believe whatever you want why there are no gods around today, but no one, religious and atheist alike, ever proposed that they simply got too alienated with us. I mean, JPOP, for Cthulhu's sake! You had all those great ideas for humanity, visions of paradise, or eternal servitude, or food, or whatever, but at some point, humans just stopped caring about the sacrifices and the prayers and just went on covering 70's pop. There's no chance of redemption anymore and from that day on, the gods simply didn't believe in us anymore. Nyarlathotep might have given us the atomic bomb, but even he is freaked out by Hello! Project. The mad, monotonous music surrounding Azathoth's throne, I might have identified it.

---

1. Translation:

   Even under the influence of the narcotic draught, of which songs of all primitive men and peoples speak, or with the potent coming of spring that penetrates all nature with joy, these Dionysian emotions awake, and as they grow in intensity everything subjective vanishes into complete self-forgetfulness. In the German Middle Ages, too, singing and dancing crowds, ever increasing in number, whirled themselves from place to place under this same Dionysian impulse. (...) There are some who, from obtuseness or lack of experience, turn away from such phenomena as from "folk-diseases," with contempt or pity born of consciousness of their own "healthy-mindedness." But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called "healthy-mindedness" looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them.

   ↩︎

2. This is a bit after-the-fact rationalisation, though. Like most people, I started listening to music not voluntarily, but was exposed to it and simply liked it. Only much later did I discover its great potential and changed my usage. ↩︎