Music and Speech

I've often wondered why we like music. It seems sort of arbitrary, and it may actually be soon (more on that later). But regardless, we do like music. It's found in every culture around the world. It is truly ubiquitous as a human trait (barring a small portion of the population whose brains are wired differently). So why do we like music?

Well it could just be a fluke. Maybe we just like music because it's something our brains just evolved to like. However I'd like to posit a different hypothesis. Of course this is just my opinion, and it could be wrong, but I think it hangs together pretty well.

Start hundreds of thousands of years ago. A branch of proto-humans starts experimenting with sound. This isn't anything new or unique. Dolphins and various birds make a whole host of complex sounds to communicate. Many animals do complex mating dances and calls. Of course many animals don't do much of this. Slugs don't do a whole lot of anything. Cats have a few different meows and hisses at their disposal, but there's only so much you can communicate with that.

So this branch of proto-humans finds that having a wider range of noises they can both make and distinguish gives them a unique ability to coordinate with other member of their species that other animals can't. As so it was that speech was selected for. We probably made different pitches of grunts, whistles, hums, and so forth. Over time this became so useful that we started developing physical structures to aid in the creation of these unique sounds.

At a certain point, this evolution of noises hit a tipping point where the ambiguity of what we were conveying was replaced with codified languages. Why have to distinguish between a high pitched noise and a low pitched noise when we can agree on logical operators which can literally convey anything (math, science, religion, emotion, etc.).

So what does it have to do with music? I like to think that music was a skill which allowed our proto-human ancestors to get better at both the making and distinguishing of sounds. I can almost imagine groups of proto-humans dancing around in circles stamping their feet in rhythum and making coordinated sounds not all that dissimilar from music. The species which practice music and had an appreciation for it were able to better recognize subtle differences and relationships between sounds that non-musical minds could not. There may well be different paths to speech that don't involve music, but I think music was a very obvious and simple tool to enable the evolution of speech.

And this never went away. But will it? We have a robust set of communication techniques available to us. Different spoken languages, art (which may have similar roots as it relates to other centers of the brain), math and logic, sign language, facial expression and so on. As far as developing a patter of making noises to communicate with other members of our species, we're pretty much “there”... right Well there's two answers I think are plausible (actually more than that, but these are the broad categories). An optimistic view and a pessimistic one.

First the pessimistic. We really have gotten about as much out of the tactic of making music as we can get. Music is nice, but it's vestigial and has served it's purpose. Over time, we may lose the ability to care about music. As we use complex languages born out of a musical background, the need for that skill will just fade away. Perhaps not completely, but it will no longer be a powerful driving evolutionary force as it was in the past leaving it to be overwritten with more applicable software.

Now the optimistic. We have very little insight into what traits actually drive our future evolution. It's reasonably easy to look at our history and see why we evolved one trait over another. But predicting where we will evolve next? There are just too many factors at play to know which one will dominate others, especially with something as complicated as the human physical and emotional reaction to beauty. Doesn't that sound optimistic? Our profound ignorance in the forces at play guiding our evolution? Well the optimistic part is that we've had complex language for a long time, and we still have music as well. It should be obvious to anyone who loves music that the parts of the psyche that are touched when listening to or creating music are deep and meaningful. Regardless of what it may have started out as, we have incorporated it into how we as humans think. It's quite possible it serves a different purpose now. Maybe more along the lines of why we dream. Or how we connect emotionally with others. Maybe it's still fine-tuning how we connect with people. It's a form of communication; of poetry. When we hear a touching lyric in a song, we contemplate it's meaning. We act on those emotions. Music may be more central to how we think than we even realize.

El Trumpo

Of all the traits of the so-called president trump, I'd like to focus on some of his personality traits which most would agree he exudes. I will then show how those traits combined with his position of power leads to a situation which causes myself and many others to be very concerned.

Donald Trump is a narcissist. He think he's the greatest thing since sliced bread. He puts his name on things in great big block gold letters. He tells us he's the only one who can defeat ISIS. He tells us he's going to bring America (back) into a golden age of power and prosperity which none before him have been able to achieve. Even assuming for the moment that all that were true, how frequently he feels the need to tell us about it goes a little bit beyond that of the average Joe.

He demands attention. Even in his previous life, The Apprentice, his twitter feed, his books, lying about being his own publicist, goes to great length to be not only noticed, but paid attention to. Positively or negatively, he doesn't seem to care.

He will disparage anyone or anything which he feels is not inline with his desires or beliefs. This is evident by the numerous lines in his tweets and speeches to the effect of “...The so-called Judge...” or “, which/who is highly overrated” (substitute Hamilton, Bill O'Reilly, The Atlanta Falcons, had they won the superbowl, Mother Theresa) is so pervasive in his speech, as a tactic he uses it about as much as he takes breath.

He does not have a problem lying, and worse has seemed to successfully wiggle out of his lies with an interpretation of reality which denies the existence of objective truth. The number of times he's said he never said something only to state, bald-faced and un-repentant that he never said it is shocking really.

He is a conspiracy theorist, and is generally unwilling to accept information which goes against his beliefs. Like all conspiracy theorists, any attempt to show him otherwise is either futher evidence of “the coverup” or “the dishonest media” or elicits a further refinement of his belief which encompasses the presented information. Take for example the “birther” conspiracy. Or the investigation into Clinton's emails. Or voter fraud. Or one of any number of similar thoroughly investigated and documented cases. The level of evidence he demands to be “proven wrong” is so far beyond reasonable that it is practically impossible (thus giving him an out to say “you can't prove that). In the birther conspiracy, he, after seeing his long form birth certificate and numerous other pieces of information demanded something along the lines of “a high-school year book from his graduating class, signed by a teacher”.

So in summary, he is a narcissistic, loud-mouthed, unhinged (to whatever degree you wish to believe) conspiracy theorist who the only thing he loves more than attention is an audience.

I tried to think of a crazier person to try to, by analogy, illustrate just how bizzare a character he is, but everyone I could think of prior to his Presidency pales in comparison. Kayne West was the first person who came to mind, but I feel that does him a great disservice being put in the same arena as Donald Trump. Maybe Charlie Sheen during his “wild” phase. Or anyone from the cast of The Jersey Shore. All these people love attention. All these people have views on the world which are on the best of days, fringe, and on the worst of days, schizophrenic. They have their spheres of influence, but it's limited.

The leadup to his election was troubling for so many reasons, but the thing that stuck with me was we gave a crazy person a megaphone and an enormous captive audience. In such a situation, how could a person like Trump not spiral out to bigger, stranger, more provocative things?

Despite that, roughly half of the fraction of people who voted decided there was something there worth exploring. To the half who didn't vote for him, we were able to see this pattern evolve and where it would go. Now, not only did we give him a megaphone and an audience, we gave him the loudest megaphone and the largest audience possible (the world), but we gave him power. Offhand remarks must now be actually considered for their implications because the person making them controls the largest military in the world.

Some have said that the system of checks and balances would prevent a truly tyrannical presidency from evolving, but again, that seemed unlikely before the election and even less so now. Refer back to the start of my writing. If he disagrees with something, he will disparage, insult and circumvent until what he wants is realized. If that means signing an executive order, that's what he will do. If that means blasting anyone in government with the balls to stand up to him in every theater possible he will do that. If it means firing qualified individuals to replace them with personal friends to whom he has promised power, that's what he will do. As a single man, the things he can do with his own two arms is limited. But that is not what a President is. A president is a coordinator, with a hand in everything this government does. He may not be able to unilaterally decide to drop a nuclear bomb on whatever country he wishes, or repeal the civil rights act, but he can absolutely fire anyone in his cabinet who doesn't step in line, and make life hell for those he can't directly fire. He has already proven that. He fired the woman from the justice department for standing up to his ill-concieved executive order. He has slandered and insulted members of the public, the media, and the government. He has made life as difficult as he possibly can for anyone who opposes him and he is well within his rights to do so. Those individuals, many of which are in Congress, the house of Representatives or the supreme court are faced with the tough decision of potentially having their entire life turned upside down and dragged through the mud for the next 4 years, or shape up and kiss the ring.

What would you do? I can't say I would do any different than many are. Getting your life turned upside down as a Congressman could end your career in politics. It could ruin your marriage, children's upbrinings, financial and psychological well being. And there's always the belief which, as I said I personally feel is misguided, that things won't be that bad. This is politics. Politics is and ugly duplicitous game. Sacrifices are always made even by the best among us, to say nothing of those in the middle of the bell curve. As Pablo Escobar used to say, “Plomo o Plato”; Lead or Silver. A bullet in the head or a bribe in your pocket. Standing up to his insanity will get you a bullet to the head (metaphorically speaking... I hope). Whereas support does not go unnoticed. Trump has certainly kept many of his promises to those who helped him become elected (think Steve Bannon, Vladimir Putin). And even the lesser among those getting in line are at the very worst, be left alone. A shimmering prize for simpily turning a blind eye to the overt insanity the man preaches on a daily basis.

This is what it boils down to. We have set all the pieces in place for a very tyrannical looking 4 years. Whether we have death squads, curfews, military law, remains to be seen; I don't think we will. But as I've hopefully made clear, we have installed a government with all the pieces in place to commit serious abuses of power, and there is almost nothing we can do to stop it should we desire. We are essentially at the good will of the administration, and given who that administration consists of, we should all be very concerned.

Words to Live By

I'm gonna get all philosophical on you all for a minute and talk about the two snippets of advice/information that I think have changed my outlook on the world more than any others.

The first is a quote misattributed to many and evolved over the years to the point I won't even claim I know who said it first (however I found a very interesting article on the subject you can read on your own). With my own personal flourish of interpretation is is basically this:

Small minds talk about other people. Average minds talk about things. Great minds talk about ideas.

First before I invite too much criticism, I admit off the bat, this, at face value could be very misleading (see the article I linked above for some of those nuances). But the point I think is very true is the first of the three points: small minds talk about other people. Talking about other people is easy. Especially so when it's negative or judgmental. Take for instance, someone who's brother has a substance abuse problem. Talking with your friends about what your views on drug addicts are, or how he made a choice, or how he's thrown away his life are comments as easy to speak as breathing. Or take politics. The 2016 presidential election was a shitstorm of people talking about other people, and in truly vitriolic and detestable ways. Or my favorite (or should I say my least favorite) example; reality TV. I'm talking here about shows like "The Real Housewives of " or really any combination of the elements "spoiled rich people get drunk, yell at eachother and fuck a lot". Those shows take the small-mindedness to another level. They take all that easy-to-spew negativity and turn up the dials on it. Making it more vile, more vapid, and sadly, more entertaining. It glorifies being small minded. It encourages you to sit and bask in the shit they're spewing and feel good about it.

The second two points, average and great minds, I think part of me believes too, but with trepidation. A quote as elegant as this was written by someone clever, and so the dice are loaded towards that end of the spectrum right off the bat. But regardless, I think moving away from just bitching about other people is the right direction to go. In my own life, I hate talking about people. I admit, I'm a bit of a loner. I like computers and solo motorcycle rides across the plains. So the need to blather on about the shortcomings (or even accomplishments) of other people has never come as naturally to me as I think it does to others. But I'm very conscious when I speak about what I'm talking about. I'm taking no position here, but for example: am I talking about Hillary Clinton being a bad person? Am I talking about the security at Benghazi? Am I talking about how peace can be achieved in the middle east? There obviously has to be an intermingling of these three categories. But I feel if you have to invoke talking about a person and their character traits, it should only be along the way to a broader point which can actually affect something.

The second bit of advice is not really a quote, and I don't remember who said it to me; I think it was one of my college professors, but they told me to start counting every time you say my, me, or I in a sentence. I (1) do it a lot. We all do. When I (2) was growing up I (3) had an older brother. My (4) best friend was in his grade so I (5) spent a lot of time hanging around adults before my (6) time. Adults would always ask me (7) how I (...) was doing. What was going on in my life. How growing up was going. It became clear to me as I grew up, that my natural tendency was to talk about myself. But it struck me that the adults in my life were not. They were asking me how I was doing. They were not talking to me about their days. What their jobs were like. What was on their minds. This always struck me as odd. When I was told to start counting personal pronouns, a light went off in my head. Learning to open up and care what other people are talking about is invaluable. I have many friends who after not seeing them for years will spend an entire evening talking about themselves, never once asking how I'm doing. This doesn't insult me; I understand the tendency. It just makes me a little sad that they're not aware enough to realize that they're talking to another person with the same hopes, fears, desires and stories as they have, and all it would take is a simple "and how are you doing?" to unlock those, and solidify the friendship.


What does it all mean? Don't talk about other people, unless you absolutely have to. If you must, try to think about the circumstances of those people, and not just the person as an isolated system. And rather than talking about others, if you find yourself talking to others, try to avoid saying I. You'll be shocked how much you do it, and how much you'll learn from and about the person to whom you are speaking.