According to the proverbial phrase, “you are what you eat.”
I would amend the phrase to read “you are what you consume,” and broaden “consume” to not just the food and drink we feed our bodies, but the content we feed our minds and souls.
We live in a world of unparalleled availability of content. There is so much literature, music, video, and other forms of entertainment available that a person could never hope to go through it all even if he spent his entire life doing nothing else.
In such an environment, it is the individual’s responsibility to be as judicious and selective with the content he consumes as he is with his food.
After all, we also live in a time of unparalleled availability of food products. But a health-minded person does not fill his shopping cart with every box of highly-processed snack food he passes in the supermarket aisle.
Yet far too many men and women who are so rightfully precarious about what they drink and eat woefully exercise little deliberation as far as the nourishment of their soul.
Remember, the globalist-Marxist Establishment which controls the press, academia and big business and uses these institutions to try to destroy us also controls the entertainment industry — and wields it for the same purpose.
While much popular “entertainment” may appear to be harmless, you have to be aware that the establishment is very good at what it does. They have mastered the art of subtlety, and much of the mind-altering effect of entertainment is subliminal. Nevertheless, its influence on society over the course of time can’t be denied — just look at how much culture has changed in half a century.
And while most conservatives have come to recognize that Hollywood is the enemy — and have accordingly limited their consumption of mainstream films and television series — the power of music is a subject that has not received enough attention.
Music is a powerful force. Researchers have found that it affects the brain in ways similar to drugs. It can elevate or depress. Inspire or anger. It can bring people to tears and even become addicting.
Humans’ affinity for music is deeply ingrained. From the earliest times, humanity has used music for various purposes, from religious worship to celebration to courting to battle.
Music also historically had a built-in social aspect to it. For most of history, listening to music required people playing the music. Thus, music listening inherently meant there was a group setting of people playing instruments and singing while others enjoyed the music, either as an attentive audience or dancing or even participating by singing along.
Music recording, however, changed the nature of the medium completely. Just as the printing press took the communal aspect of literature (the average person in times past would enjoy literary works in the form of publicly performed plays and poetry recitals) and turned it into an individual experience via books, the ability to record music and listen to it at one’s leisure caused music to take on a personal emphasis.
This innovation also made music a billion-dollar industry. In the past, there was little money in music. Musicians, like most performance artists, were throughout history not seen as high status members of society. In fact, it was the opposite; the last thing a member of the aristocracy would want in the Middle Ages or Renaissance would be for his son or daughter to run off and marry a lowly traveling musician.
The great composers such as Mozart and Vivaldi were able to make a living from their music, not because their work generated huge profits on the market, but because they had the support of wealthy patrons who saw the cultural value in the masterful works these men were creating and thus financially supported them as a form of civic duty.
Now, of course, music is a lucrative product. And this is something no citizen should lose sight of. At the end of the day, most of what the mainstream music studios churn out is not art, but a manufactured product made to appeal to the lowest common denominator — not for the purpose of reaching greater heights of artistry, but to make as many sales as possible.
In other words, most popular music is the audio equivalent of McDonald’s. Sure, it’s cheap, easily accessible, and it tastes alright — but is it really good for you to consume it every day?
What would happen to your body living exclusively on a diet of McDonald’s? Now extrapolate that to what most people are doing to their minds and souls by constantly feeding themselves cheap manufactured music as opposed to nourishing themselves with true art.
This is why it’s so important for people, especially citizens in a republic, to listen to the great works of classical music.
For one, doing so gives one an appreciation for the greatness of the West’s cultural heritage. I would argue that classical music — with all its intricacy and beauty — is arguably the Western World’s greatest cultural contribution to the world (differentiating from scientific, political, and religious contributions). While other cultures have their fair share of great literature, architecture, and plastic arts that rival the West’s, no other culture has created music that matches western masters such as Bach, Beethoven, or Tchaikovsky.
In addition, listening to classical music is simply good for the soul. Contemplating the complexity in both the arrangements and the melodic structures allows the listener to tap into a higher state of feeling, thinking, and being in the same way that reading Shakespeare or Aristotle expands a reader’s ability to think in a way that reading a Garfield comic doesn’t.
Most popular music keeps the listener within the same limited range of thoughts and emotions — and most of these are negative. Pay attention to the lyrics and you realize that most songs on the radio revolve around petty themes such as getting even with an ex or leading a promiscuous life.
Because many of these themes are negative in nature, the listener is conditioned to constantly remain in a negative frame of mind — which flows into his behavioral patterns. Can you see how this plays into the establishment’s efforts to control the populace?
Classical music, on the other hand, often taps into something which most popular music doesn’t — it is inspiring and triumphant. Listening to Wagner and Mahler, one is elevated to a mental state of achievement, victory, glory, greatness, transcendence. Imagine the positive ways in which this kind of state influences one’s behavior.
Moreover, classical music is highly beneficial in that much of it is instrumental. This means that, unlike with songs, you don’t get the singer’s words planted into your mind. Instead, you get to form your own thoughts and mental images and give your own meaning to the music. In the same way that reading a book is a greater exercise in imagination than watching a movie, listening to instrumental music stimulates imagination and creativity in a way songs do not.
If we want to create a movement that restores our nation’s greatness, then we must embrace the immense wealth of artistic greatness our cultural heritage has to offer.
