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Re[2]: The troubles (revisited)



Music or sports or anything else cannot make you dumb. It
depends how you use it. It depends on what you use it for...

I'll have to disagree with this contention if the author includes
rock & roll in her portmanteau as "music" as evidently she does.
I would also point out that it can make one deaf as well as dumb!

I have attended a couple or three of rock concerts. In every case
I have observed the sound was cranked at least twenty dB above a
reasonable level, and I understand completely why this was done.
The purpose is not solely to substitute quantity for quality. An
element of anethesia or narcosis is involved as well. The higher
mental functions are disturbed and prevented by the deafening
sound. One truly enters an altered state of consciousness which I
find disagreeable but which some find pleasant. (I might point
out that some enjoy turning their minds off. Alcohol and cocaine
evidently provide some relief from Weltschmerz for some people.)

My brother, a pilot and designer of hovercraft*, tells me that
when one goes aloft in a small airplane he "leaves half his
brains on the ground" because of the reduced mental functionality
engendered by the incessant roar of the engines. He claims every
pilot knows this, so I don't understand why everyone else doesn't
recognize that the same phenomenon can be observed in action at
rock concerts. In my experience rock music is almost always used
in this manner, and frequently it is used for this purpose. The
contention that "it depends..." is therefore irrelevant.

Of course I recognize that "rock & roll" encompasses some works
of considerable musical merit, a characteristic which can be
appreciated when the volume is reduced to human scale. That is
why I found myself at rock events, after all; I'm not inherently
masochistic. Earplugs (which I also use when mowing my lawn)
don't help much. Yes, I do think that some of the Beatles' music
is in this category, more enjoyable to listen to than much of
Bartok in my view. Somehow these two B's don't stack up to the
Three Originals (Bach, Beethoven & Brahms), however.

As for sports not making anyone dumb, it depends on the sport.
Boxing has certainly impaired many brains; likely football has
done so as well. There is also a cultural element in the sports
Gestalt that mitigates against conspicuous intellectuality in
its participants. This varies from sport to sport, but we track
guys were intellectually distinguishable as a group from the
baseball players with whom we shared a locker room (and season)
when I was in college. Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel were as much
admired for their unselfconsciously dumb utterances as for their
considerable talents in sport.

Here again one must differentiate sports. Mountain climbers and
golfers are allowed to be smart; some quarterbacks are too. An
interior lineman had better not demonstrate that he is clever,
however; his stereotype is of someone "just following orders".
Since little intellectual virtuosity is expected of professional
football players many never complete their university programs.
Some players allow themselves to be exploited by college teams.
They get a good foundation for the future provided they are
among the very few who go on to remunerative professional sports
positions, a smaller proportion than the fraction of physics PhDs
who go on to prestigious university positions.

While I don't agree with all Tom said, I don't think that blaming
rock & roll for the troubles is a worse generalization than
blaming television. However neither attitude is constructive. The
troubles, I think, are real. Identifying their causes would only
be constructive if we could hope to eliminate any we identified.
In the cases cited that is not a credible threat. After all, both
cigarettes and alcohol are uncontrovertibly troublesome, yet the
will to eliminate them does not exist in our society.

Bleak, isn't it? The best you can do is to influence those around
you, and those of us who have been given the bully pulpit of the
teacher are in a better position to do so than many in our society.

Leigh