[LAU] re Subconscious Affecting Music

Patrick Shirkey pshirkey at boosthardware.com
Sat Sep 4 09:49:18 UTC 2010


On Thu, September 2, 2010 6:41 am, Hartmut Noack wrote:
> Am 02.09.2010 08:47, schrieb david:
>> Hartmut Noack wrote:
>>
>>> Atrocities and genocide are no inventions of the modern times: in
>>> reverse! In modern times most cultures have learned to name things
>>> atrocities, that were known as "perfectly normal" or even "heroic
>>> deeds" in ancient times.
>>
>> What Rome did to Carthage after conquering it would certainly be
>> considered genocide by modern UN thought. Slaughter the population,
>> enslave the few survivors, transport them away from their country.
>> Demolish the city-state. Sow the soil with salt so it couldn't be used
>> to supply food. Rome did not intend Carthage to ever rise again.
>>
>> And the Roman general who destroyed Carthage was rewarded very highly.
>>
> He cited Homer in greek on the smoking ruins and he was given the name
> Africanus to honor him.
>
> But the romans usually avoided genocide. They where out to conquer
> peoples to make them pay taxes.
>
> There are many other candidates though, from the Saxons of the 4th
> century to the Mongol storm of the 12th to the Nazis here in Germany in
> the beginning of the 20ths century.
> All *before* mind-crushing popmusic with "subliminal messages" emerged
> to drive everyone "mad with sex and violence".
>

We have always had pop music. Doesn't it give you a cause for concern that
we were able to create so much damage in the past without the modern mass
media system brain washing us into complicity?

> NO! Rock/pop music with all its wildness, its unpredictability and its
> absence of formal written rules is a cultural sign for more humanity,
> more freedom and more self-awareness.
>

That may have been the case when rock was considered a new form of art and
it was not at that point considered commercially viable enough to warrant
the interests and adoption of the mass media. It was in effect rebelling
against the system by making it viable to feel and express sexual and
violent emotion.

My concern is that we have now come to a point where the producers making
pop music are crafting works that explicitly aim to perpetuate a frame of
mind that is beneficial to the ongoing production of their artwork (bank
accounts) at the expense of disabling or hobbling the "positive"
progression of the listener.

IMO music and associated media that defines it's listeners as only
interested in the emotions stimulated by sexual/violent imagery is given a
priority on the airwaves over more intelligent options. I find it to be a
detrimental and callous attack on the listener. It also makes me seriously
concerned for the  potential of society to improve when we are constantly
being told what to think by the mass media who can only come up with the
imagery of sex and violence as a sustainable business model.

It is a self fulfilling system whereby the people who are prepared to
participate in it are the ones reaping the rewards offered and the ones
who are not are sidelined and kept out of the discourse even though the
ideas they have to offer are just as valid and potentially more powerful
than the status quo.

By maintaining and accepting a system where the callous, manipulative and
selfish are the ones who get rewarded we are allowing for the future
generations to be subjected to the same abuse.

Hence combating this abuse with carefully crafted subversive pop using the
same production techniques with the explicit aim of rendering the effect
of the more callous music null and void or at least significantly
decreasing the effect seems like a reasonable use of an artists time.




-- 
Patrick Shirkey
Boost Hardware Ltd.



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