Stop humming and learn math

“Music stays the same across time but also transforms across time and it is full of layered patterns and the patterns interact harmoniously with one another. I was fascinated with music because it gives people the direct intimation of meaning. Even if they are nihilistic punk rockers they still can’t criticize the experience of meaning that they engage in when they are listening to their favorite band. It helps them transcend the nihilism of their rationality.

"I was listening to Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony and it’s one of these complex, multi-level pattern, pieces of auditory sculpture that I believe represents being — because being is multiple levels of patterned transformation interacting simultaneously and music is a representation of that — which is why I think we find it meaningful.”

I was listening to The DuncanTrussell Family Hour Podcast when that little dissertation was dropped upon me seemingly out of nowhere. The guest was Jordan Peterson. Peterson is a professor of psychology at Toronto University with a content-rich YouTube channel.

So music gives an avenue to access the very nature of being? That’s beyond significant. I think I’ve felt what Peterson is talking about but I’ve never been able to voice it.

Immediately after hearing this revelation of the existential quality of music I found myself attending my son’s fourth-grade recorder concert. It was as great as the current paradigm of music education can be.

The fact that I was going to a fourth-grade recorder concert is something that is reportedly becoming rarer and rarer. Something is better than nothing, I’m told. However, I remain unconvinced based on the dominant paradigm of music, which was presented almost immediately.

We were shown how learning music supports learning math — as if music is math’s lackey. I’ve seen the same thing in corporate public service commercials. You know the ones of which I speak.

These bits of propaganda show a bunch of cute kids playing music — their faces wide open and innocent — while the voiceover talks about the value of music in relationship to math. Of course, this miracle is occurring only because of the “generosity” of the corporation.

Obviously the richness of what Peterson was discussing is missing here. Why is music important? Because it makes you better at math or because it can help you understand the nature of beingness?

The shitty answer is “both.”

Later in the day when I picked my son up from school he was humming Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, which was one of their recorder selections. He said it had been in his head all day.

Great. So my kid is humming frivolous nonsense all day instead of learning math. How is he ever going to have a happy and successful life if he spends his day humming the Ode to Joy? I mean, where’s the joy in that?

I think we need to be honest. We don’t want a content and happy society, we want a productive society. But doesn’t being content and happy come from being productive? Yes — in part — but not if happiness and contentment are constantly being sacrificed on the altar of productivity.

The richest country in the known history of the world can’t afford to be happy and content if it means a drop in productivity. Sorry music, you’re just not productive enough. Now stop humming and get back to work.