Music and Illusion

Music and illusion by Judith D. Mitchell

Musicians grasp lyrics out of life experience and sometimes out of their visual and hearing senses. What they see in the news and hear in their social lives are the subjects of songs.

In the USA, we live at a fast pace. The pace is driven by technology and by the corporate use of humans to produce goods that people need to live.

The age of information is so valued that once people started using technology, individuals and corporations decided they needed to spread the ability to gain knowledge, to all people. If it is used properly, knowledge is good.

Science is telling us that the earth and the very life we value is in danger because of environmental factors. So spreading knowledge or the right kind of knowledge is valuable.

But the lyrics of this song combined with journalistic news, show us a jumble of crossed signals. These crossed signals are affecting reactions of groups and individuals around the world.

Its as if fast paced societies threw a knowledge bomb at slower paced societies and the slower paced societies think they are going to fix their lives by killing and blowing up their own environments and socially inherited beliefs. Violence is the fast way to reorganize a society.

When people see the injustice around them they immediately think along the lines of "How can I fix this?" People want change but they want it to be righteous change. Every belief system has their own ideas about how to rule the world for the good of everyone. Which way is right?

Here are a couple of examples;
1. In a recently released book, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cockburn, we see some explanation of the reasoning behind the slaughter of people who live outside of the Isis belief system. Isis has yet to find out that even if they succeed in ruling the whole world, society won't conform to their belief system, it will just say it does, until the next uprising comes along.
2 In Baltimore,even if the police become more adept at handling society with a balanced, meaningful, caring, lack of bias,there is still a criminal element created by poverty that needs to be addressed.

According to Wikipedia, there is a branch of social psychology called crowd psychology. When a large group of people band together to work out one or two particular person's ideals, the group loses their sense of responsibility as individuals and follow the group mentality. When the group of individuals increase, their unity of mind increases. This does not always play out with force, some large groups bring in peaceful change. Other groups use violence to push their ideals.

But if there is a large ideal being pushed you can be sure the musicians of the world will hear it, see it and sing about it. So, The song Rule the World by Walk Off The Earth says:

"I chased illusion
Then I watched it fade to black
throwing me off track
Found revolution
Found it in a simple fact
I ain't coming back
I materialize the feeling
To carry on, to carry on
I know some will say I'm dreaming
But, I carry on, I carry on

They say no way, oh, I say I'll rule the world." It's a catchy song with a catchy tune.

Maybe music rules the world. What do you think?