Kill of your taste buds with dangerous chilli and concentrated artificial sweeteners until cake and celery taste the same. Squick yourself out until your libido crawls into a corner to never ever come out again. Learn to love a genre of music that sounds just like tinnitus, then turn the volume up a lot. Oversaturate your brain with information until it just flows through you. Read about the most horrifying atrocities in history until your heart turns to stone.
Some of these are obviously silly. But less extreme versions of a similar principle with a bit of common sense added have seems occasionally useful in some contexts.
Learn to love a genre of music that sounds just like tinnitus, then turn the volume up a lot. Oversaturate your brain with information until it just flows through you.
From my perspective as a fan of acoustic music, many modern listening habits resemble your proposed over-saturation technique. People used to be surrounded by naturally occurring noises, or noises resulting from ordinary activity. Music was something to be sought out and treasured. With the exception of the rich and powerful, many people from the past would find the notion of tuning out mechanized “background music” bewildering and alien.
As a music teacher, I noted that there seems to be a portion of the populace that is unable to follow all but the very simplest melody, and is unaware of subtle nuances in the timing of beats. I wonder if this is simply parallel to the automation of other aspects of human culture. (Wonder Bread to artisan bread.)
Yea. The hard question is if it’s a good or a bad thing. Good consequentialism practice to actually figure that out rather than just siding with your own favourite genres tribe or moral ick reactions.
siding with your own favourite genres tribe or moral ick reactions.
Wow, both of those strike me either as a stretch, or a sign there could be more consideration of the facts. The kind of sensitivities I’m alluding to easily cover a dozen genres of music. Ick reactions, if there are any, would be aesthetic, rather than moral. (And I do enjoy electronica as well as acoustic music.)
The sensitivity I speak of is grounded in empirical fact. You can measure, record, and analyze overtones of acoustic instruments. You can do the same for sensitivity to rhythmic nuance. Melodies and their modulation of tension and release are empirical fact as well. I think that cultural practices that reduce sensitivity to facts and awareness of reality are generally undesirable.
I think that’s the same kind of insensitivity I faced as a child, when I observed interference fringes for the first time, and adults told me I was somehow off base.
Would a cultural loss of sensitivity to literary nuance be a good or a bad thing? Would a cultural loss of sensitivity to emotional nuance be a good or a bad thing? Sometimes the correct answer is found in the same direction the bias pulls to. I’m against amusia and unawareness, not electronica or specific genres.
What about the opposite?
Kill of your taste buds with dangerous chilli and concentrated artificial sweeteners until cake and celery taste the same. Squick yourself out until your libido crawls into a corner to never ever come out again. Learn to love a genre of music that sounds just like tinnitus, then turn the volume up a lot. Oversaturate your brain with information until it just flows through you. Read about the most horrifying atrocities in history until your heart turns to stone.
Some of these are obviously silly. But less extreme versions of a similar principle with a bit of common sense added have seems occasionally useful in some contexts.
From my perspective as a fan of acoustic music, many modern listening habits resemble your proposed over-saturation technique. People used to be surrounded by naturally occurring noises, or noises resulting from ordinary activity. Music was something to be sought out and treasured. With the exception of the rich and powerful, many people from the past would find the notion of tuning out mechanized “background music” bewildering and alien.
As a music teacher, I noted that there seems to be a portion of the populace that is unable to follow all but the very simplest melody, and is unaware of subtle nuances in the timing of beats. I wonder if this is simply parallel to the automation of other aspects of human culture. (Wonder Bread to artisan bread.)
Yea. The hard question is if it’s a good or a bad thing. Good consequentialism practice to actually figure that out rather than just siding with your own favourite genres tribe or moral ick reactions.
Wow, both of those strike me either as a stretch, or a sign there could be more consideration of the facts. The kind of sensitivities I’m alluding to easily cover a dozen genres of music. Ick reactions, if there are any, would be aesthetic, rather than moral. (And I do enjoy electronica as well as acoustic music.)
The sensitivity I speak of is grounded in empirical fact. You can measure, record, and analyze overtones of acoustic instruments. You can do the same for sensitivity to rhythmic nuance. Melodies and their modulation of tension and release are empirical fact as well. I think that cultural practices that reduce sensitivity to facts and awareness of reality are generally undesirable.
I think that’s the same kind of insensitivity I faced as a child, when I observed interference fringes for the first time, and adults told me I was somehow off base.
Would a cultural loss of sensitivity to literary nuance be a good or a bad thing? Would a cultural loss of sensitivity to emotional nuance be a good or a bad thing? Sometimes the correct answer is found in the same direction the bias pulls to. I’m against amusia and unawareness, not electronica or specific genres.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia
Good points all of it, you’ve though way more about this than I have.