Should Music Be A Sin?

Description: Malcolm and Simone have a fascinating discussion on the evolutionary origins and cultural purposes of music. They analyze how music builds in-group cohesion, signaling identity, glorifying values, and shaping emotions. From military marching songs to religious chanting to teenage subcultures, music plays a key role in cultural programming and bonding. But they argue overusing music can be indulgent and dulling. An insightful talk on the sociology and psychology of music!

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Speech is a very effective person to person communication device. It allows one person to communicate with one other person. Or one person to communicate with a large group of people. Music is different. Music is a many to many cultural communication device. And that's where music gets really interesting.

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Simone: Hello, Simone.

Malcolm: I am excited for today's topic. It's actually based on a user comment because they were asking about music and culture and how cultures can use music to intergenerationally retain people, to augment people's. Brains and the way people relate to their environment, especially in the context of hearing that we are so anti art, anti music, right?

Malcolm: So this is one of those interesting things. Where I can say our culture does not do something [00:01:00] and may have led to perhaps even a genetic thing, but more broadly, I think cultures should do that thing and here's why. So first, a little background here. Calvinist culture traditionally is very antagonistic to music or art.

Malcolm: Or any sort of frivolous pleasure that was either not evocationist or not evocatist. A great example is Geneva banned music for almost a century when they were predominantly Calvinist. It was, so it wasn't all music. It was any music that was either not that used words. Or was that like explicitly spiritual, I think.

Malcolm: But it was mostly any music that used words. And, and I can understand that sentiment, actually, when I was a kid, I felt the same way. I remember when I was very young, telling my parents that any music was words, wasn't real music. What? Yeah, I, I'm trying to remember why I felt this [00:02:00] instinctually so strong.

Malcolm: I think it was because... I, I thought that music that utilized anything other than sound to manipulate an individual's emotional state was like cheating or relying on, on an externality that it shouldn't rely on as a vanity. I don't, it was very interesting, but, but what I would say.

Malcolm: And so historically we from, come from a cultural group that as one of its core motivations is this idea that positive and negative emotional states you know, most cultures, it's only positive emotional states you would, you would go after that are pursued for their own sake, whether it's from emotion comes from music or sexuality or anything like that are always evil.

Malcolm: Yeah. That actions should always be dedicated to what's efficacious. And so I understand why my culture did this. And one of the things we'll talk about in a different culture is cultures can go evolve with a person's [00:03:00] genetics. By that what I mean is individuals with a sociological profile that were like really into music would have left this Cultural system much faster than those who didn't and people living adjacent to these sort of cultural groups who naturally were uninterested in music, but have been much more likely to join these cultural groups.

Malcolm: And also the extent to which our cultural groups feel is I remember I did not get my first CD was music on it until I was 12 and I went to a store and what I bought. Was a single because it was the cheapest thing in the store. But it was this weird, like I put it on a thing to see what it was like.

Malcolm: Okay. Why, why do people listen to this? Why did they spend money on this? I did not understand now, but let's talk about why groups use music and the value of music. So, I

Simone: mean, I feel you know, you're missing the big thing. I mean, aside from the fact that music. can really give you this almost transcendent experience, [00:04:00] right?

Simone: When you're doing it, it really helps to create this group of cohesion, this shared moment, but that interestingly secular music to me is a really interesting form of worship that is practiced even when people lose their religion. And it's like a worship to their culture and it's a worship to this is who I am.

Simone: And it reminds you so and this is how music has been used for millennia, right? Like music has usually been used for, for worship and for practice. And it helps you like

Malcolm: why it does that,

Simone: right? Well, I mean, one, it binds you to a group too. It often includes lore or canon for your culture, right?

Simone: These are our characters. We, these are our values. This is what we're into. And it, what to me is so interesting is the way that. Post religion music still does that. Look at country music and it's like keyword stuffed with this is what I value. These are the people that matter to me. So it's like back roads, hard work.

Simone: I love my mom. I love my dad. I [00:05:00] love my kids.

Malcolm: That's our favorite type of music. We don't listen to much music, but we do prefer country music.

Simone: Yeah. But it is very religious, like in nature, right? It's like

Malcolm: it's secular, but let's talk about why that's the case. Okay. So if you talk about the evolutionary pressures that led to the development of speech versus the development of music, it's really interesting.

Malcolm: Speech is a very effective person to person communication device. It allows one person to communicate with one other person. Or one person to communicate with a large group of people. Music is different. Music is a many to many cultural communication device. And that's where music gets really interesting.

Malcolm: So there's some great studies that have been done on this, which show, for example people who joined various clubs within a school, if it was a music club, they felt friendship with that group and camaraderie with that group much faster than other clubs. That makes sense. What is interesting [00:06:00] is that they, they did not have a higher ceiling to the camaraderie they felt.

Malcolm: They just felt camaraderie faster. So if you, accelerant. It's an accelerant, right? And there was another one that had two groups of students that would do running and one would do it to like a march step, like music and the other group would do it without that. And the group that was doing it to the music felt much more bonded to each other.

Malcolm: And this is why, so you can look at Military traditions. So military traditions evolve to an extent where the military traditions that outcompete other military traditions on the battlefield end up being the military traditions that other people try to copy, right? So there are evolutionary pressures within military traditions.

Malcolm: And this is how military traditions found out to do things like the, I don't know, but I've been told, you know, when they're like running. Even though nobody ever told them to do this like they didn't understand psychologically what they were doing, but just the groups that ran to music seemed to [00:07:00] outcompete other groups.

Malcolm: And it was because of the actin