Music
DEAR JEANETTE: I have noticed that at least some contemporary music deals with brotherhood and caring for one’s fellow man. Do you feel that this is encouraging for mankind?
Dear : Yes, we do feel that this type of music is good and that the popularity is encouraging! Popular music expresses much human sentiment and feeling, of various kinds. Those who like any particular type do so because it echoes something that they feel inside, sometimes only subconsciously. At the same time, they are reaffirming, strengthening, that belief in their subconscious by the choice of the music and by the frequent hearing and experiencing of it.
Often, however, we are listening to music which we have not specifically selected for ourselves, on the radio, in the stores, or as selected by someone at our home or work. Unless you consciously tell your subconscious to “ignore the words and music” or to “listen and believe what you are hearing”, the subconscious will automatically absorb and accept what it hears. Thus it is very good when the good “sentiments” are expressed in our popular music.
The music itself is also important as sounds are among the most potent vibrations that constantly bombard us and thus affect our lives and literally our very bodies. Science now tells us that all things appear as they do because of the rate of vibration of the atoms of which they are composed. (If you do not understand this, don’t worry about it. Many of the rest of us don’t either but we can still accept it and understand something of how it affects our lives.)
Music which is too harsh, jarring and loud is detrimental to good physical and mental health regardless of the “good” ideas which may be expressed. There is considerable evidence that frequent, prolonged exposure to overly loud music is causing permanent damage to hearing abilities of our young people. On a more subtle level, and therefore more difficult to prove, are other physical effects and also mental and emotional “scars” that are experienced by the personality.
At least some of you will be familiar with William Congreve’s 300 year old couplet, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.”. This can indeed be true whether the “savage breast” is in a person or in a lower animal. It also has many subliminal effects so that music played for the public in different kinds of stores, offices, etc. will sometimes be specifically selected for the effect it will have on the employee or customer. Music can make you linger (and therefore hopefully buy more). It can help you work faster or more smoothly, dulling the monotony of routine factory work for instance. It can make you work faster, or move on out of the area more quickly so that others can be served. The effects can be as varied as the music that we hear.
Thus the people who compose, produce, and select the music that we hear have an effect on our lives, often to a much larger extent than we are consciously aware. When they open themselves to, and ask for help from, the highest powers of which they are aware, then their selections will be beneficial to mankind. When they are under the influence of a lesser power, their work moves to the other end of the scale and can become detrimental to mankind.