Should Music Be A Sin？
Episode Stats
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the relationship between music and culture, and why we should all listen to it. Music has been around for a very long time, and there are many theories about why it's important to listen to music.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Speech is a very effective person-to-person communication device.
00:00:06.240
It allows one person to communicate with one other person.
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Or one person to communicate with a large group of people.
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Music is a mini-to-mini cultural communication device.
00:00:29.300
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.
00:00:44.080
Especially in the context of hearing that we are so anti-art, anti-music, right?
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So this is one of those interesting things where I can say our culture does not do something.
00:00:59.300
And may have led to perhaps even a genetic connection or something.
00:01:06.680
But more broadly, I think cultures should do that thing.
00:01:16.280
Calvinist culture traditionally is very antagonistic to music.
00:01:22.000
Or any sort of frivolous pleasure that was either not evocationist or not very focused.
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A great example is Geneva banned music for almost a century when they were predominantly Calvinist.
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It was any music that was either not, that used words.
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Or was that like explicitly spiritual, I think.
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I remember when I was very young telling my parents that any music was words wasn't real music.
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I'm trying to remember why I felt this instinctually so strong.
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I think it was because I thought that music that utilized anything other than sound to manipulate an individual's emotional state was like cheating or relying on an externality that it shouldn't rely on as a vanity.
00:02:21.460
But what I would say is so historically, we've come from a cultural group that as one of its core motivations is this idea that positive and negative emotional states.
00:02:35.100
Now, most cultures, it's only positive emotional states you would go after that are pursued for their own sake.
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Whether it's from emotion, it comes from music or sexuality or anything like that, are always evil.
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That actions should always be dedicated to what's efficacious.
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And one of the things we'll talk about in a different culture is cultures can go evolve with a person's genetics.
00:03:00.840
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.
00:03:12.320
And people living adjacent to these sort of cultural groups who naturally were uninterested in music would have been much more likely to join these cultural groups.
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Also, the extent to which our cultural groups feel this.
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I remember I did not get my first CD with music on it until I was 12.
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And I went to a store and what I bought was a single because it was the cheapest thing in the store.
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I remember that it was this weird, like I put it on a thing to see what it was like, okay, why do people listen to this?
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Now, but let's talk about why groups use music and the value of music.
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No, I mean, I feel, you know, you're missing the big thing.
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I mean, aside from the fact that music can really give you this almost transcendent experience, right?
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When you're doing it, it really helps to create this group of cohesion, this shared moment.
00:04:04.800
But that, interestingly, secular music, to me, is a really interesting form of worship that is practiced even when people lose their religion.
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So, and this is how music has been used for millennia, right?
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Like music has usually been used for worship and for practice.
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Two, it often includes lore or canon for your culture, right?
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And what to me is so interesting is the way that post-religion music still does that.
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And it's like keyword stuff with, this is what I value.
00:05:01.560
We don't listen to much music, but we do prefer country music.
00:05:04.340
But it is very religious, like in nature, right?
00:05:09.180
But let's talk about why that's the case, okay?
00:05:11.380
So, if you talk about the evolutionary pressures that led to the development of speech versus the
00:05:19.280
Speech is a very effective person-to-person communication device.
00:05:25.320
It allows one person to communicate with one other person.
00:05:30.220
Or one person to communicate with a large group of people.
00:05:35.580
Music is a many-to-many cultural communication device.
00:05:40.680
And that's where music gets really interesting.
00:05:42.940
So, there's some great studies that have been done on this, which show, for example, people
00:05:48.360
who joined various clubs within a school, if it was a music club, they felt friendship
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was that group and camaraderie was that group much faster than other clubs.
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What is interesting is that they did not have a higher ceiling to the camaraderie they felt.
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And there was another one that had two groups of students that would do running, and one
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would do it to like a march step, like music, and the other group would do it without that.
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And the group that was doing it to the music felt much more bonded to each other.
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So, military traditions evolve to an extent, where the military traditions that out-compete
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other military traditions on the battlefield end up being the military traditions that other
00:06:40.700
So, there are evolutionary pressures within military traditions.
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And this is how military traditions found out to do things like the, I don't know, but I've
00:06:49.260
You know, when they're like running, even though nobody ever told them to do this.
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Like, they didn't understand psychologically what they were doing, but just the groups that
00:06:57.560
ran to music seemed to out-compete other groups.
00:07:00.800
And it was because of acting as a social accelerant.
00:07:05.580
Okay, why is music not used more in dating then, if that's how it works, and if it builds
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So, to us, you and me, nightclubs are this perplexing, insane environment where we're like,
00:07:20.080
why would you go and look for a partner in an environment where you can't talk to somebody?
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Because, you know, our cultural biases are so strong there that we see the idea of dancing
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was a stranger to music is, like, really gross.
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Like, even when I was a kid, I'd go to nightclubs and we're like, I do not get what's going
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But for cultures that have this strong musical predilection, that's what's going on there.
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They're using music as a communication device within a dating ecosystem.
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So, very good question with a very good answer.
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Another interesting way that music can change people is music can activate, and things that
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are done to music can activate many of the same systems that are activated with, like,
00:08:03.440
So, one of the things that we often talk about is humans did not evolve to feel profundity
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So, by that, what I mean is nothing in our evolutionary environment caused people to accurately
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gauge the profundity of a thing to survive more than people who didn't, right?
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And to actually have an emotional set associated with that.
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So, our emotional subset that feels profundity is actually most commonly hijacked with drugs,
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However, music, group chanting, and group stomping can also cause this effect.
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And so, religions or cultural practices that are trying to force convert people, get new
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members, can induce this state of profundity, which can lead to somebody who's going to be a
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being more interested in joining a cultural group than they otherwise would have.
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I've talked a little too much in this one, so I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on
00:09:08.500
I mean, I'm more interested in the ways that secular music is being used intentionally and
00:09:16.520
not intentionally now, and how it's being left behind.
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I mean, I even think about, like, campaign music and how people are so obsessed with how,
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you know, like, which campaign songs they're using, what that communicates.
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Maybe it's just really underrated how much music matters in terms of setting a tone about,
00:09:36.800
So, let's dig into what you were talking about there, okay?
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So, when I was younger, there was this thing called MySpace, right?
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And you'd write a bunch of stuff about yourself on MySpace, but you'd also have a song that
00:09:48.720
played automatically when somebody went to the page, and you might be able to list your
00:09:52.780
And people do that on Facebook still, to an extent, and stuff like that.
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What are you doing when you're listing those individuals?
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You are telling people, this is who I am as an individual.
00:10:03.520
You, other people, you have something that you associate with these artists, whether it's
00:10:08.900
cultural things, or character, you know, when somebody says, I'm a Slipknot fan, or something
00:10:14.820
like that often, they're not saying, I actually like the music of Slipknot, like they might,
00:10:19.600
but usually when somebody's saying that, what they're actually saying is, here are character
00:10:24.880
traits that I want to communicate to the people around me.
00:10:28.100
When people are choosing campaign songs, or music to play at campaign rallies, that's what
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They are conveying traits about them through bundled packages of beliefs about people who
00:10:45.980
So why do you think that teenagers feel the need to do this more?
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Is it just because they're much more socially, like?
00:10:52.180
I think it's because they're less aware of who they are, and so they're much more interested
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because, so teenagers, what happens when you're a teenager?
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You have just moved from the stage where your parents define who you are, to some extent,
00:11:06.680
And if you are dumb, sorry, I don't mean to say that about people who define themselves
00:11:11.760
If you are, you know, less sophisticated in terms of how you think about yourself, great
00:11:17.760
way to define yourself is from, especially in a really glorifying way, because music often
00:11:24.360
is glorifying to the individual that's listening to it, you could say.
00:11:27.520
You define yourself with the music you listen to.
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So it's kind of like being very lazy about how you define yourself and using someone who
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is a whole lot more poetic and eloquent than you to make your life seem and your identity
00:11:41.640
seem more epic, thoughtful, and profound than it really is.
00:11:49.260
I'm somebody who likes, I mean, and this is why I think when I was dating, you know, if
00:11:53.800
somebody ever was like, oh, I really am into, you know, music, and it wasn't like their
00:11:57.640
own music, but other people's music, like if somebody was really into their own music,
00:12:00.940
I don't know, I would find that interesting, like music that they were making.
00:12:03.260
But if it was other people's music, I was immediately like, oh, so like, you don't have
00:12:08.620
What also, though, about the phenomenon of the hot guy who plays guitar in high school?
00:12:16.860
Is it the fact that he plays music that matters?
00:12:22.020
I mean, one thing is, it's not like the guy who plays the oboe who gets all the women.
00:12:29.680
Well, I think that that answers the question for you.
00:12:32.060
It's not the music that is turning on the women.
00:12:35.140
It's that these are most often the guys in like a high school environment.
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Like in high school, guys aren't making speeches that rooms of people are listening to often,
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Like that's not a thing that's happening, at least in a cool way.
00:12:47.020
Like they find us like a science and they're talking to old people, but not like peers
00:12:53.420
But music, yeah, you can have a guy play music who's a teenager and a bunch of other cool
00:12:58.860
teenage people listening to that person playing music.
00:13:01.840
So what's happening there is a phenomenon you see.
00:13:04.800
We've talked about it in other videos, which is when women see other women or men interested
00:13:10.340
in a male, their attraction rating for that male dramatically increases.
00:13:19.760
And so that being the case, if I was a guy who found some other way to communicate to cool
00:13:26.440
people in mass within a high school context, I would probably get the same amount of people
00:13:38.440
I mean, I was captain of my debate team, right?
00:13:40.740
And I, in many environments, would talk, you know, one to many was in a high school environment.
00:13:47.140
I also did a lot of speeches, like rank campaigns and stuff like that.
00:13:50.000
And I did really well in terms of the, the, now this was interesting.
00:13:56.160
It was not the people in my high school, but the people in, in the surrounding town.
00:13:59.280
I think you completely ignored your own local market, right?
00:14:03.000
Yeah, I just completely ignored my own local market because my own local market required,
00:14:07.180
and this is also really interesting about high school, playing the high school dominance
00:14:10.420
hierarchy, instead of just being the most attractive person of the people that this person
00:14:15.360
had, had, had engaged with, which meant that I was playing a very different game and a much
00:14:24.300
Well, so what about, I don't know how to put this, but like weirder or more esoteric music.
00:14:30.240
I mean, do you think that like the, the more mature person who enjoys going to Baroque concerts
00:14:38.640
is being just as social signally about enjoying Baroque music as a teenager who goes to a
00:14:46.540
popular music concert or do you, you know, I feel this.
00:14:50.500
I often criticize people when I think they're listening into classical music to try and look
00:14:56.460
Do you think, do you think I listened to, to Baroque music because I think it.
00:15:01.080
No, I think music is able to manipulate an individual's emotional state.
00:15:05.220
And I think that some people, and this is my approved use of music and music as a tool
00:15:10.440
for manipulating your emotional state, I think is very valuable.
00:15:14.440
Now, obviously I would view that tool as completely indulgent if you're using it to modify your
00:15:18.820
emotional state in a negative state so that you can feel extra sorry for yourself, which
00:15:25.260
So essentially it doesn't look pretty sad breakup songs when someone dumps you.
00:15:29.180
But because they're just completely indulging in this negative emotional state, which is lowering
00:15:35.500
However, while we do not value like happiness, right?
00:15:40.180
I do believe that people are more efficient when they're happy.
00:15:43.720
And so I do see the value of listening to music that can augment your, your level of happiness
00:15:51.500
So what I can say about that, just like really quick is in terms of at least music and focus,
00:15:56.360
the, the research is pretty mixed, but what I have from like the gist of it after reading
00:16:02.240
a bunch of them is if you like the music and you think that it will help you focus, it will
00:16:09.420
So there is no like type of music that is like necessarily proven to help you focus.
00:16:13.960
It's more like, if this is your focus music, it will help you.
00:16:19.780
And this is where I think, you know, I was going to mention workout music, right?
00:16:24.460
Some music can be used to augment your mental state into an environment where you find something
00:16:33.960
So the point of workout music is for whatever reason, it modifies your mental experience of
00:16:41.500
working out to make that experience more enjoyable than it is when you are not listening to workout
00:16:47.420
So, so on that front, I want to get what you do with music.
00:16:51.940
Cause actually you are for someone who doesn't, doesn't respect music that much, right?
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You are whenever doing something on your own, doing a task that doesn't necessarily require
00:17:02.600
If you're unloading the car, you have an AMV playing and AMVs are anime music videos.
00:17:09.480
It is music set to like remixed clips of anime shows or movies.
00:17:16.260
What are you doing with your state and how do you choose what songs and, you know, like
00:17:21.380
I think that there are many tasks and environments where I'd benefit from some level of mental
00:17:26.780
dulling, you know, whether that's alcohol or having music or an AMV on in the background
00:17:33.240
So are you saying that music has the same effect as of like mentally dulling you?
00:17:38.780
Well, so you know that I get my most productive work done often at 2am to, you know, 6am.
00:17:44.420
When you're kind of half asleep, but also not interrupted.
00:17:47.600
I try to wake up and be in that sort of half asleep state.
00:17:50.080
I just am much more productive when my brain is not fully functioning and I'm much less
00:17:57.900
So I generally try to do when I am, when I am doing something productive, but that is otherwise
00:18:05.000
like mentally grinding, like going through emails, which is the majority of work I'm doing
00:18:09.200
or, you know, writing something that isn't fully mentally stimulating, trying to distract
00:18:15.260
a part of my brain that might otherwise distract the rest of my brain with aberrant thoughts.
00:18:24.760
And when I was younger and I would take things like, you know, Ritalin or something like that
00:18:31.100
I did not listen to music when I was working because it dulled my mind enough that I was
00:18:42.400
Now we can talk a bit about the evolution of music, but I think it's very interesting.
00:18:47.080
In a previous video, I wanted to do on this where I was showing that like a, if you play
00:18:51.660
music for some birds that can speak, they'll start dancing very similar to the way that
00:19:00.420
And then I realized I couldn't put any of those videos in because they all had popular
00:19:06.540
But what we can see is that in a pre-speech animal that has a lot of mental processing
00:19:14.300
dedicated to vocalizations, you are going to have the ability to essentially massage that
00:19:20.300
part of its brain in the same way you might massage somebody with like your fingertips in
00:19:24.160
your hands, where like you are subtly touching like a large portion of them in a way that creates
00:19:31.540
And then specific historic religious groups began to utilize this for many to many communication
00:19:39.800
and group bonding rituals, which are obviously a thing of utility.
00:19:44.280
And so evolution being a cheap programmer, as we always say, evolution is a cheap programmer
00:19:47.980
basically hijacked this system and said, okay, yeah, let's cause people to create these
00:19:55.080
And that's how evolution, because the groups of humans that were able to create these faster
00:20:02.400
bonds when undergoing this many to many communication ceremony or types of ceremonies ended up out
00:20:08.440
competing likely, you know, martially and in other ways, other groups of humans.
00:20:15.620
Well, so, okay, what about the future of music?
00:20:21.600
I mean, there's also the weaponization of music, right?
00:20:23.940
Like music has been used in like Guantanamo Bay to quote unquote, like torture people, right?
00:20:28.740
So how do you think that for better or for good or for evil music should or can be used in the future?
00:20:35.420
Well, so I think the really sad thing is the way music is weaponized best can happen organically
00:20:42.900
within a cultural group and that music can be used to completely destroy the value system
00:20:51.560
So I'm not going to name names here, but, you know, we were talking about country music.
00:20:55.920
Country music, I think, is actually really reinforcing for the cultural groups that listen to it.
00:21:00.980
But if you look at the themes of country music, it's typically, you know, I really respect and
00:21:07.960
Well, yeah, hard work, family values, and appreciating what you have, which is not a lot.
00:21:14.080
And when it's negative, it's typically you cheated on me.
00:21:18.480
So I fucked up your car or killed you or, you know, you abused your wife.
00:21:26.060
You know, those are like the more negative country music themes.
00:21:29.240
However, they still at the end portray a positive value, which is don't, you know, fuck around
00:21:38.720
However, when I look at other music clusters and the value systems that they portray to,
00:21:47.260
and this is a cross, I'm not like talking about just one group, right?
00:21:53.440
Yeah, like either super materialistic, super focused on very unsustainable relationship formats.
00:22:00.380
Like even when I think about, and not to like hate on Taylor Swift songs, but like when I hear a lot of her songs,
00:22:05.200
which I enjoy like listening to in a certain mood, like I'm like, oh man, this is encouraging a really toxic relationship.
00:22:14.160
I can't model what you're thinking of here because I don't know the song.
00:22:18.900
I just hear the lyrics of just, you know, we're, we're dangerous or bad for each other, you know,
00:22:25.220
Or, and, you know, also just like other really fun, playful songs or like, I love Katy Perry songs.
00:22:30.740
A lot of them are just more about like partying and stuff, which, you know.
00:22:34.880
So you don't say Katy Perry because that's, that's a music that's not going to get us in trouble.
00:22:38.220
Like a song, like what's the song where she's talking about being Japanese or whatever.
00:22:45.200
I mean, what's the, what's the song teaching people to value partying all day, being so
00:22:50.820
This, this one goes to the kids out late at the club and it's Tuesday.
00:22:54.440
This is the ones who are playing for bottle service with your rent money.
00:23:00.380
It's a very engaging song in that I think it emotionally uplifts your mood.
00:23:04.640
But if you're like, it is, it is a cultural toxin in terms of the value system that is glorified
00:23:13.460
And so these sort of musical, I don't know what you can call them, musical bombs or musical
00:23:21.560
toxins can be induced into a cultural group and used to keep that cultural group, you know,
00:23:28.600
mentally addled in an adversarial relationship with like police, for example, and all sorts
00:23:34.480
of negative things that, you know, just organically evolve.
00:23:39.440
So when we talk about where music is the most toxic, it's actually music that just organically
00:23:44.880
And that the only thing you can really do to fight that is, is if you're within the cultural
00:23:50.680
group and you're just like, Hey, I put you, you, you know, you're not going to be able
00:23:55.000
to change society as a whole, but you can within your family say, we don't listen to music like
00:24:02.360
There are many like conservative Christian cultures, which are like, Oh, we don't listen
00:24:10.960
But the devil's music, when people are like, Oh, that's the devil's music.
00:24:14.160
We might look at that as like backwards and a weird thing to say, but people say it because
00:24:19.620
And as a final point on music, this was actually a chapter that we ended up deleting from our
00:24:25.020
book to an extent, but basically we say that, that groups that really know like conservative
00:24:31.980
groups that really seem to engage in fun parties seem to have higher fertility rates than their
00:24:38.120
neighbors, which don't seem to engage in fun parties.
00:24:41.880
And a great example here would be Jews, conservative Jewish groups seem to have some of the most
00:24:50.660
We look at the cultural groups that I think I feel more instinctual kinship with the Anabaptist
00:24:57.360
cultural groups, you know, Amish and Mennonites.
00:24:59.200
You know, when I look at their parties, it's stuff like, let's build a house and all the
00:25:03.060
wives will go and make food for us that we'll get to eat.
00:25:06.020
And then we'll lift the barn and carry the barn.
00:25:08.140
And I see that, I go, that looks like a good time.
00:25:10.500
But actually, and this is just like a personal thing.
00:25:16.620
I am almost like instinctually repelled when I see some of these like Jewish parties where
00:25:23.340
I can tell everyone is having like a lot of fun, but I just noticed like the people touching
00:25:29.520
Yeah, it's sweaty and it's hot and there's a big crowd of people.
00:25:31.840
And it looks like everyone's sweaty and like, it probably smells bad and like, and they're
00:25:36.420
not talking, like they're not engaging with ideas.
00:25:38.940
Because they're, they're, they're having fun for fun's sake.
00:25:43.280
And I think that this is where something comes to where I can say, I think that those events
00:25:51.220
But this is also why, and this should be another video we should probably do, that people begin
00:25:57.100
to almost genetically specialize for their cultural group.
00:26:00.280
We get what we call like an evolutionary vortex where the group draws people in who would
00:26:06.120
thrive in a group like that and kicks people out who wouldn't thrive in a group like that.
00:26:10.100
And just me, this sort of music party environment is something that when I look at it, I'm just
00:26:17.580
like, oh my God, the floor is probably sticky and people are touching me without asking me
00:26:25.400
Yeah, no, but you, you, I mean, Simone, would you say you feel the same way?
00:26:34.240
Like the only way I would be remotely okay, like mentally with those situations in the moment
00:26:40.840
is if I'm so sloshed, I'm probably blackout drunk, if we're being totally honest.
00:26:57.920
I want a five foot bubble of personal space and you can stay out of it.
00:27:06.960
I went to one concert in my entire life and the only, it was, it was BlizzCon.
00:27:12.260
So I went to BlizzCon and they had a Foo Fighters play.
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It was a video game conference and they had a band come, but I got to see the concert experience
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My only takeaway is if I ever go to a conference again, I'm going to need earplugs.
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It did not look to me like people were like jumping up and down, but having fun in this
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kind of totally mindless way that I just cannot mentally engage with.
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Hey, I'm, I'm glad that I'm married to someone who does not drag me to concerts.
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This could even be seen as behavioral isolation.
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People like you and me, we find each other in our weird and no music environments where
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And a, we can say our, our final point on music is it is probably the optimum cultural