music , mind , thought and emotion

Ozfly, loved what you said about surf. What mind state - what type of receptivity - does the surf catalyze? When you are looking at the surf, and you forget you are looking, is there surf and you, or does surf/you only exist after you look and you then look back and think about it. When you are experiencing beauty most deeply, does the perciever/percieved dichotomy collapse in only percieving?

Question: detlof looks to cross-cultural connection and continuity (Oz, your tribal reference), but shouldn't, evolutionarilty speaking, the desire towards music go back further if so engrained? And, if so, what is the Darwinian incentive?

In other words, music is experienced in a passive, receptive mode of mind and body - hardly what evolution would select as a viable behavior for either a predator or prey. Remember, its not just rest that defines being drawn to music (animals sleep to rest), but its leisure in in what one is drawn to. So, what evolutionary mechanism would favor that dynamic? If only instinctual prey/predator (the "hard wired" part) then what selects such an unviable luxury of a being being drawn to music?

But then, remember, what we are drawn to is music, but by another name, more fundamental, it is being drawn to beauty. Is being drawn to beauty hard wired (doesn't seem so from above) or learned? Does this explain why humans listen to music and Bonobo Chimps do not? But...who "teaches" me to look at a sunset and see its beauty? Does anyone ever need to be taught?

If the inertia to be drawn to music/beauty is not instinctual per se, and it is not learned through listening to anothers thoughts on the experience (socialization), then where does it come from? Perhaps, consider this: there is a dynamic to evolution that parallels the Darwinian instincts of the deep mind, and parallels the evolution of thinking, and yet, just now, latent in all forms, is emerging more prominent in homo sapiens, so now we sit here and discuss it? Are we, below developing instincts to hunt and flee, below the developmemnt of advanced thinking, have also always been moving towards a fuller and fuller receptivity to beauty? Beside the arc of Darwinism has there also been an arc towards beauty?

When you look at surf, or sink deeply into the music - immersed in beauty - the mind is silent. In that moment, the mind is absent prey-predator impulse, or thinking, and is open to what is, in this case melody.

Have we been evolving towards the ability to silence the animal mind, the socialized mind, and, in so doing, "see" more beauty, hear more beauty?

The Chimp can't let his mind fade, but you can.

The answer is not in the instinctual past, or in the socialized present, it is in our collective future.

So, why do we all want to listen to our stereos and sink without thought into that beauty?

It is a Taste of who we could be.

Then, in that silent space, where your mind is silent, what are you connected to? Does it have something to do with what 6ch said of the opened heart?

Hmmm.

Procreation requires rhythm. Humans added harmony. Once you get tired (or old enough) you don't need the rhythm part anymore. Hence most asian or Western European music.
I REALLY gotta get some sleep....

Thanks for the laugh, Subaru! Very funny.

Does evolutionarily developed recognition of patterns in sound necessarily lead to (even though it may form the underlying matrix) to the receptivity to beauty that we presently experience. The former (pocreation,prey/predator reactions) all represent an active mind directed at the environment to manipulate some object there. Receptivity to beauty/music, however, is characterized by a "letting go" of the active, analytical, objectifying mind as one sinks deeper. What Darwinistic mechanism would account for such a shift, especially if physical viability is decreased by the latter?

Logically speaking, there are two possibilies:

1. Darwinistic evolution of sound perception is not determinant of music appreciation, and each is a separate dynamic of evolution, or

2. Darwinistic evolution on sound recognition (active) is integral with music appreciation (receptive), and, contrary to being a separate mechanism, is one that forms the devolpment for the latter; active mind is not determitive of receptivity, but forms the ground for its emergence.

My evidence? What I've been saying all along (listening Zaikesman?):

When you first sit down to listen, you listen predominantly with the thinking mind; seeing sound as source-objects, interested in detail and accuracy that bounds those projections from the space around it, your language to describe it dominated by visual terms (predators are visually orientated), seeing the sound as if it were "out there", a la Valin's "statue garden", external to you, in the environment outside, something to manipulate. Then, as you sink deeper you "let go" of this urge to think-the-sound, you move from active to receptive, your mind more sensitive to emotions towards the music in the relief of thoughts being absent (hence, the emotion-based language used to describe this level's experience), with thinking fading the dichtomy between inside/outside collapsing, the music is not out there, but integral with you.

The journey your mind takes every time you sit down for that late Friday night listening session is reflective of the evloutionary journey the collective human mind has taken to...get to the place where you can experience music/beauty as you do.

This is not a coincidence....

Asa, I think Subaru's comment could find an easier parallel in the idea of 'harmony & "appropriate" rythm' put forth in ancient greek tragedy. There, harmony (i.e. beauty or perceived "correctness") is interactive UNLESS the forces of nature or the "cosmic rules" foresee otherwise. (We cannot overcome the natural and cosmic rules.) But we are bound/expected to distinguish beauty from its opposite (i.e. dynamic approach)... That presupposes we specifically pursue your 2nd point. Not the first, nor the basic premise.
I may have missed the point, however..:)

Greg, you made my brain think hard. Thank you. Some of what you say are things I don't know, but I will try to answer.

Yes, # 2 option above is correct. The evolutionary development of receptivity to beauty has been developing right along side the Darwinian side (active analytic cognition). When you are an amoeba you are completely focused on the exterior with a binary thought pattern that shifts only two ways (light/dark, pery/predator etc.). With modern humans, the influence of the environment on our evolution has lessened with the inverse increase in our power over matter (technology). This, in turn, leads towards a situation where humans are less prey of the environment and have space in their mind opened towards "beauty"; in the lessened instinctual thoughts towards the external a space is opened in which the dynamic arc towards receptivity towards beauty emerges.

My question would then be, when does sound become "harmony"? It only happens in the mind, ie I can't walk out my front door and point to "harmony", so what accounted for that shift in perception? What caused us to see sound as harmony (read: music). I believe my argument against a Darwinistic catalyst above still holds in the comtext of this question. What caused the primordial mind to structure sound into patterns that had meaning, apart from telling him that the leaf moving behind him was a predator? Why did he become suseptible/open/receptive to that "harmonic" meaning?

Yes, we hear music in the matrix of its structure of sound, but the "cosmic rules" that dictate that structure (a whole different discussion on what they are), do not determine meaning.

Structure does not fall from the sky; it is created by the mind. The will towards that creation is prior to the structure that is produced, regardless of a template for structure. What will manifected in us that caused us to structure sound from that focused on sound instinctually, and towards a structure that moved towrds receptivity towards "harmony"? The structure changed, yes, but that was only a symptom of a change in the orientation of the mind towards sound. The will changed. What caused that reorientation, one that had a contrary purpose from Darwinistic-engrained instincts. Didn't it have to be a "cosmic force" not accounted by Darwinism?

What is a force that moves the mind towards meaning, even as that move makes him/her less viable against the environment?

(Hint: Next answer could be that "harmony" lead towrds social cohesion in group, thus having a social Darwinistic cause. I don't agree but its a good argument...)

Detlof: what is the meaning of "harmony"? Or rather, the meaning of its experience? What was/is its purpose? Beauty and an Opening of the Heart?