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The following essay was written by a poor soul who was born tone-deaf and has never understood music.
Music is the biggest lie ever told. Every day, it suckers people out of millions of dollars and untold hours of time. It springs from an infantile desire to be comforted by a mother's lullaby. Music is truly the opiate of the masses.
Why do you listen to music? Is it a crutch to get you through the day? When you go to a concert, what on earth do you get out of it? Do you feel "warm fuzzies" when you are walking out of the building? Maybe it makes you feel all happy inside. Well, the real world isn't like that. Music has no answer to the problem of evil. As long as you are a listener, you have no chance of fully participating in a rational discussion.
Ask a professional musician (professional shamster, more like) why he plays his kind of music instead of another and you'll never get a straight answer. What makes a clarinet better than a Japanese koto? Why play jazz instead of classical? "I like it more." "I'm more familiar with it." Non-answers. "They're about the same." Then why play music at all?
Musicians tell you they love their fans... then they sell the T-shirts and CDs at the door. Some even take donations-- as long as they can separate the marks from their money, their gig is a success. Music is nothing but an organized scam.
From the beginning of a child's life, her parents indoctrinate her to believe in a myth called "music". They force her to believe that certain arrangements of sounds is somehow more important than other ones. Never in the history of humankind has a more insidious waste of time and money been conspired. Start her on Baby Mozart; buy her "children's music" (the very name betraying the unethical, Orwellian scheme); raise her on piano and jazz, and buy her a Beatles CD on her 16th birthday. The most popular songs lie to you: "All you need is love." Others are simply nonsense: "Bye, bye Miss American Pie." Some songs have no lyrics at all! They do not even make an attempt at meaning. The veil is lifted; the stupidity of the whole exercise is transparent before everyone, and yet they continue listening as if brainwashed.
When I point this out to the thoughtless listeners, they tell me not to argue with something so "beautiful". Can't they see that they are wasting their time on mere noise, that rarely says anything akin to common sense? "Well, Shakespeare, he's in the alley / With his pointed shoes and his bells, / Speaking to some French girl, / Who says she knows me well." What on earth is that supposed to mean? Can anyone tell me? I'm guessing no.
Music plays in our schools, in malls, even in elevators. A rational man is surrounded by this flim-flam whereever he goes. It's impossible to escape from it. It even receives government funding! Why waste my taxpayer dollars to endorse a particular form of music, or music at all? We must separate music and state immediately.
Music is a product of primitive and backwards societies. Undeveloped cultures with little spare resources waste them on the manufacture of instruments and training of professional musicians, out of pure stupidity. In the Roman Empire, music began to be supplanted by more useful pursuits, but a musical obsession plunged Europe into a long Dark Ages. Entire schools of music were developed despite their lack of relevance to anything in the natural world whatsoever. Thankfully, as people become rational and scientific, of course, music naturally wanes in influence. Desperate performers may deny it but the eclipse of music is already upon us. I can only hope that one day, it will disappear altogether.
An answer to critics
- If music is so pointless, why do so many people listen and perform?
- It's a function of several things. First is the indoctrination as I have described above. Second, people are not born perfectly rational, but rather need to learn how to become mature and abandon their childish needs. We need to fix our school system to make sure bad influences like "music classes" are eliminated. Students should learn how to think for themselves and they will naturally abandon music.
Proof of the Musical Delusion
If you're not convinced yet, here's a magic trick that will show you exactly where you have erred.
Sing the following notes on a musical scale:
DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO
Now sing these eight syllables in monotone:
DO DO DO DO DO DO DO DO
Does the first sound like "music" to you and the second "non-musical"? This is the result of your indoctrination. In fact, in the world of science there is no difference between these two lines. They convey exactly eight syllables of information.
Here's the $100,000 challenge to the Musicals: Prove to me that the first string of letters requires more visual information to convey than the second.
If you can't prove it, you must accept the logical conclusion: what you call "music" is in fact meaningless!
You may be in a state of shock right now, but don't worry. With less time wasted on music, you can pursue more rational forms of human inquiry, such as science. Without music your life will really be in your own hands.
Some have asked me to prove that music does not have meaning. In fact, the burden of proof is on you. I reply with this: Imagine that if you tune your radio to 11.975 megahertz, you will eventually hear in the white noise the words "I'm a little teapot." While it's theoretically possible that the white noise at 11.975MHz could convey some information not found elsewhere, it's highly unlikely. Just like the meaning of music.
On the label "amusical"
The English language requires me to call myself "amusical", but I think such a term is unnecessary. Would you call yourself "a-leprechan-ous", or "a-Santa-ist"? No, because it's clear that these things are fairy tales. Well, music is a fairy tale for adults. We should call people who listen to it "ear-slaves", or better yet, "sheeple".