Description: Malcolm and Simone have a fascinating discussion on the evolutionary origins and cultural purposes of music. They analyze how music builds in-group cohesion, signaling identity, glorifying values, and shaping emotions. From military marching songs to religious chanting to teenage subcultures, music plays a key role in cultural programming and bonding. But they argue overusing music can be indulgent and dulling. An insightful talk on the sociology and psychology of music!

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Speech is a very effective person to person communication device. It allows one person to communicate with one other person. Or one person to communicate with a large group of people. Music is different. Music is a many to many cultural communication device. And that's where music gets really interesting.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Simone.

Malcolm: I am excited for today's topic. It's actually based on a user comment because they were asking about music and culture and how cultures can use music to intergenerationally retain people, to augment people's. Brains and the way people relate to their environment, especially in the context of hearing that we are so anti art, anti music, right?

Malcolm: So this is one of those interesting things. Where I can say our culture does not do something [00:01:00] and may have led to perhaps even a genetic thing, but more broadly, I think cultures should do that thing and here's why. So first, a little background here. Calvinist culture traditionally is very antagonistic to music or art.

Malcolm: Or any sort of frivolous pleasure that was either not evocationist or not evocatist. A great example is Geneva banned music for almost a century when they were predominantly Calvinist. It was, so it wasn't all music. It was any music that was either not that used words. Or was that like explicitly spiritual, I think.

Malcolm: But it was mostly any music that used words. And, and I can understand that sentiment, actually, when I was a kid, I felt the same way. I remember when I was very young, telling my parents that any music was words, wasn't real music. What? Yeah, I, I'm trying to remember why I felt this [00:02:00] instinctually so strong.

Malcolm: I think it was because... I, I thought that music that utilized anything other than sound to manipulate an individual's emotional state was like cheating or relying on, on an externality that it shouldn't rely on as a vanity. I don't, it was very interesting, but, but what I would say.

Malcolm: And so historically we from, come from a cultural group that as one of its core motivations is this idea that positive and negative emotional states you know, most cultures, it's only positive emotional states you would, you would go after that are pursued for their own sake, whether it's from emotion comes from music or sexuality or anything like that are always evil.

Malcolm: Yeah. That actions should always be dedicated to what's efficacious. And so I understand why my culture did this. And one of the things we'll talk about in a different culture is cultures can go evolve with a person's [00:03:00] genetics. By that what I mean is individuals with a sociological profile that were like really into music would have left this Cultural system much faster than those who didn't and people living adjacent to these sort of cultural groups who naturally were uninterested in music, but have been much more likely to join these cultural groups.

Malcolm: And also the extent to which our cultural groups feel is I remember I did not get my first CD was music on it until I was 12 and I went to a store and what I bought. Was a single because it was the cheapest thing in the store. But it was this weird, like I put it on a thing to see what it was like.

Malcolm: Okay. Why, why do people listen to this? Why did they spend money on this? I did not understand now, but let's talk about why groups use music and the value of music. So, I

Simone: mean, I feel you know, you're missing the big thing. I mean, aside from the fact that music. can really give you this almost transcendent experience, [00:04:00] right?

Simone: When you're doing it, it really helps to create this group of cohesion, this shared moment, but that interestingly secular music to me is a really interesting form of worship that is practiced even when people lose their religion. And it's like a worship to their culture and it's a worship to this is who I am.

Simone: And it reminds you so and this is how music has been used for millennia, right? Like music has usually been used for, for worship and for practice. And it helps you like

Malcolm: why it does that,

Simone: right? Well, I mean, one, it binds you to a group too. It often includes lore or canon for your culture, right?

Simone: These are our characters. We, these are our values. This is what we're into. And it, what to me is so interesting is the way that. Post religion music still does that. Look at country music and it's like keyword stuffed with this is what I value. These are the people that matter to me. So it's like back roads, hard work.

Simone: I love my mom. I love my dad. I [00:05:00] love my kids.

Malcolm: That's our favorite type of music. We don't listen to much music, but we do prefer country music.

Simone: Yeah. But it is very religious, like in nature, right? It's like

Malcolm: it's secular, but let's talk about why that's the case. Okay. So if you talk about the evolutionary pressures that led to the development of speech versus the development of music, it's really interesting.

Malcolm: Speech is a very effective person to person communication device. It allows one person to communicate with one other person. Or one person to communicate with a large group of people. Music is different. Music is a many to many cultural communication device. And that's where music gets really interesting.

Malcolm: So there's some great studies that have been done on this, which show, for example people who joined various clubs within a school, if it was a music club, they felt friendship with that group and camaraderie with that group much faster than other clubs. That makes sense. What is interesting [00:06:00] is that they, they did not have a higher ceiling to the camaraderie they felt.

Malcolm: They just felt camaraderie faster. So if you, accelerant. It's an accelerant, right? And there was another one that had two groups of students that would do running and one would do it to like a march step, like music and the other group would do it without that. And the group that was doing it to the music felt much more bonded to each other.

Malcolm: And this is why, so you can look at Military traditions. So military traditions evolve to an extent where the military traditions that outcompete other military traditions on the battlefield end up being the military traditions that other people try to copy, right? So there are evolutionary pressures within military traditions.

Malcolm: And this is how military traditions found out to do things like the, I don't know, but I've been told, you know, when they're like running. Even though nobody ever told them to do this like they didn't understand psychologically what they were doing, but just the groups that ran to music seemed to [00:07:00] outcompete other groups.

Malcolm: And it was because of the acting social accelerant.

Simone: Well, then why? Okay. Why is music not used more in dating then? If that's how it works, if it builds cohesion faster? What do you

Malcolm: think nightclubs are? Oh, I guess. So to us, you and me, nightclubs are this perplexing, insane environment where we're like, why would you?

Malcolm: Go and look for a partner in an environment where you can't talk to somebody because you know, our cultural biases are so strong there that we see the idea of dancing with a stranger to music. It's like really gross. Like even when I was a kid, I'd go to nightclubs and I'd be like, I do not get what's going on here.

Malcolm: Yeah. For cultures that have this strong musical predilection, that's what's going on there. They're using music as a communication device within a dating ecosystem. So very good question with a very good answer. Another interesting way that music can change people is music can activate and things that are done to music can activate many of the same systems that are activated [00:08:00] with like hallucinogens.

Malcolm: And other so one of the things that we often talk about is humans did not evolve to feel profundity tied to actual profundity. So by that what I mean is nothing in our evolutionary environment caused people to accurately gauge the profundity of a thing to survive more than people who didn't, right?

Malcolm: And to actually have an emotional state. set associated with that. So our emotional subset that feels profundity is actually most commonly hijacked with drugs, typically hallucinogens. However like it can be induced to feel this. However, music. Group chanting and group stomping can also cause this effect.

Malcolm: And so, religions or cultural practices that are trying to force convert people get new members can induce this state of profundity, which can lead to somebody being more interested in joining a cultural group than they otherwise would have. And then. rituals. [00:09:00] Interesting. I mean, what are your thoughts on music?

Malcolm: I've talked a little too much in this one, so I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on this.

Simone: I mean, I'm, I'm more interested in the, in the ways that. Secular music is being used intentionally and non intentionally now and how it's being left behind. I mean, I even think about like campaign music and how people are so obsessed with how, you know, like which campaign songs they're using, what that communicates.

Simone: Maybe it's just really underrated how, how much music matters in terms of setting a tone about like your value. Let's,

Malcolm: let's, let's dig into what you were talking about there. Okay. What's going on with campaign music? So, when I was younger, there was this thing called MySpace, right? And you'd write a bunch of stuff about yourself on MySpace, but you'd also have a song that played automatically when somebody went to the page, and you might be able to list your favorite artists, you know?

Malcolm: And people do that on Facebook still, to an extent, and stuff like that. What are you doing when you're listing those individuals? You are telling [00:10:00] people... This is who I am as an individual, you, other people, you have something that you associate with these artists, whether it's cultural things or character, you know, when somebody says.

Malcolm: I'm a Slipknot fan, or something like that, often. They're not saying I actually like the music of Slipknot, like they might. But, usually when somebody's saying that, what they're actually saying is, Here are character traits that I want to communicate to the people around me. When people are choosing campaign songs or music to play at campaign rallies, that's what they're doing.

Malcolm: They are conveying traits about them through bundled packages of beliefs about people who like X or Y that we have as a society.

Simone: So why do you think that teenagers feel the need to do this more? Is it just because they're much more socially like? I

Malcolm: think it's because they're less aware of who they are.

Malcolm: And so they're much more interested because they're so teenagers, what happens when you're a teenager, you [00:11:00] have just moved from the stage where your parents define who you are, to some extent, to you get to define who you are. And if you are dumb, sorry, I don't mean to say that about people who define themselves by music.

Malcolm: If you are, you know, less sophisticated in terms of how you think about yourself, great way to define yourself. Is from especially in a really glorifying way because music often Is glorifying to the individual that's listening to it, you could say you define yourself with the music you listen to.

Simone: So it's kind of like, being very lazy about how you define yourself and using someone who is a whole lot more poetic and eloquent than you to make your life seem and your identity seem more epic, thoughtful and profound than it really is.

Malcolm: And cohesive than it really is. Hmm. Mm. This is who I am.

Malcolm: I'm somebody who likes, I mean, and this is why I think when I was dating, you know, if somebody ever was like, oh, I really am into, you know, music and it wasn't like their own music, but other people's music, like if [00:12:00] somebody was really into their own music, I don't know, I, I would find that interesting like music that they were making.

Malcolm: But if it was other people's music, I was immediately like, oh, so like you don't have an identity, like your identity, so,

Simone: Okay, what also, though, about the, the phenomenon of the hot guy who plays guitar in high school? Yeah, so what's going on there? Is it just a social proof thing? Is, is it, is it the fact that he plays music that matters?

Simone: I mean, one thing is, first off, it's not like the guy who plays the oboe who gets all the women. It's the guy who plays the guitar. Is this a cultural

Malcolm: thing? What's going on? Well, I think that, that, that, that answers the question for you. It's not the music. That is turning on the women. It's that these are most often the guys in like a high school environment, like in high school, guys aren't making speeches that rooms of people are listening to often, right?

Malcolm: That's not a thing that's happening, at least in a cool way, like they might as like a science and they're talking to old people, but not like peers that a girl's going to respect. Right? But music, yeah, you can have a guy play music who's a teenager and a bunch of other cool teenage people [00:13:00] listening to that person playing music.

Malcolm: So what's happening there is a phenomenon you see, we've talked about it in other videos, which is when women see other women or men interested in a male their attraction rating for that male dramatically increases.

Simone: So the social proof effect, essentially,

Malcolm: it's the social proof effect. That's what you're seeing there.

Malcolm: And so. That being the case, if I was a guy who found some other way to communicate to cool people in mass within a high school context, I would probably get the same amount of people interested in me. And I did. And I did. So I know it works. I mean, I, I was captain of my debate team, right?

Malcolm: And I, in many environments would talk, you know, one to many within a high school environment. I also did a lot of speeches, like ran campaigns and stuff like that. And I did really well in terms of the, the, now this was interesting. My specialty was in high school. It was not the people in my high school, but the people in the surrounding town.

Malcolm: I think

Simone: you [00:14:00] completely ignored your own local market, right? When it came to Yeah, I just

Malcolm: completely ignored my own local market because my own local market required, and this is also really interesting about high school, playing the high school dominance hierarchy instead of just being the most attractive.

Malcolm: Person of the people that this person had, had engaged with which meant that I was playing a very different game and a much easier game to play in isolation. Yeah.

Simone: Yeah. Well, so what about I don't know how to put this, but like weirder or more esoteric music. I mean, do you think that like the, the more mature person who enjoys going to Baroque concerts is being just as social signaling?

Simone: about Baroque music as a teenager who goes to a popular music concert. Or do

Malcolm: you, you know, I feel this, I often criticize people when I think they're listening into classical music to try to look sophisticated.

Simone: Well, what about me though? Do you think, do you think I listened to, to Baroque music because [00:15:00] I, I think

Malcolm: music is able to manipulate an individual's emotional state.

Malcolm: And I think that some people, and this is my approved use of music and music as a tool for manipulating your emotional state, I think is very valuable. Now, obviously I would view that tool as completely indulgent if you're using it to modify your emotional state in a negative. Date. Yeah. So that you can feel extra sorry for yourself, which some people do.

Malcolm: I find that pretty indulgent,

Simone: but so so essentially doesn't break sad breakup songs when someone dumps you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Malcolm: yeah. But because they're just completely indulging in this negative emotional state, which is lowering the overall efficiency and efficacy. Sure. However, while we do not value like happiness, right.

Malcolm: I do believe that people are more efficient when they're happy. And so I do see the value of listening to music that can augment your, your level of happiness or create other emotional states. So

Simone: what I can say about that, just like really quick is in terms of at least music and focus the, the research is pretty mixed, but what I [00:16:00] have from like the gist of it after reading a bunch of them is if you like the music and you think that it will help you focus.

Simone: It will help you focus basically. So there is no like type of music that is like necessarily proven to help you focus. It's more if this is your focus music, it will help you. So just to that point.

Malcolm: Yeah. And this is where I think, you know, I was going to mention workout music, right? Which I think is very similar, right?

Malcolm: Some music can be used to augment your mental state into an environment where. You find something more fun than you would otherwise find it. So the point of workout music is for whatever reason, it modifies your mental experience of working out to make that experience more enjoyable than it is when you are not listening to workout music.

Malcolm: So,

Simone: so on that front I want to get what you do with music. Cause actually you are. For someone who doesn't, doesn't respect music that much, right? You are whenever doing something on your own, [00:17:00] doing a task that doesn't necessarily require a lot of focus. If you're unloading the car, you have an AMV playing and AMVs are anime music videos.

Simone: So this is not just music. It is music set to like remixed clips of anime shows or movies. So what are you doing there? What are you doing with your state and how do you choose what songs and, you know, like

Malcolm: what does this mean to you? Tasks and environments where I benefit from some level of mental dulling.

Malcolm: You know, whether that's alcohol or having music or an A and B on in the background or something like that. So are you

Simone: saying that music has the same effect as of like mentally dulling you? Like it just distracts you

Malcolm: a little. Well, so you know that I get my most productive work done often at 2 AM to, you know, 6 AM.

Malcolm: When you're

Simone: kind of half asleep, but

Malcolm: also not interrupted. Yeah, I try to wake up and be in that sort of half asleep state. I just am much more productive when my brain is not fully functioning. And I'm much less productive when my brain is on all cylinders. So I generally [00:18:00] try to do when I am, when I am doing something productive, but that is otherwise like mentally grinding, like going through emails, which is the majority of work I'm doing, or, you know, writing something that isn't fully mentally stimulating.

Malcolm: Trying to distract a part of my brain that might otherwise distract the rest of my brain with aberrant thoughts. Oh, why don't you go do this? Why don't you go do that? And when I was younger and I would take things like, you know, Ritalin or something like that to focus, right? I did not listen to music when I was working because it dulled my mind enough that I was able Work.

Malcolm: So that's why I relate to music in that way. Now we can talk a bit about the evolution of music because, but I think it's very interesting. I, in a previous video, I, I wanted do on this where I was showing that like a, a, if you play music for some birds that can speak, they'll start dancing very similar to the way that we start dancing, right?

Malcolm: They, they clearly, really enjoy it and jive was it. [00:19:00] And then I realized I couldn't put any of those videos in 'cause they all had popular songs playing. So you just have to. YouTube them yourself. But what we can see is that in a pre speech animal that has a lot of mental processing dedicated to vocalizations you are going to have the ability to essentially massage that part of its brain in the same way you might massage somebody with like your fingertips and your hands, where like you are subtly touching like a large portion of them in a way.

Malcolm: That creates like a pleasant stimulation and then specific historic religious groups began to utilize this for many to many communication and group bonding rituals, which are obviously a thing of utility. And so evolution being a cheap programmer, as we always say, evolution is a cheap programmer, basically hijacked this system and said, okay, yeah, let's cause people to create these quick emotional bonds through this system.

Malcolm: How evolution, because the [00:20:00] groups of humans that were able to create these faster bonds when undergoing this mini to mini communication ceremony or, or types of ceremonies ended up out competing likely, you know, martially and, and in other ways other groups of humans.

Simone: That checks out. Yeah. Well, so, okay.

Simone: What about the future of music? How do you think it could be used weaponized? I mean, there's also the weaponization of music, right? Like music has been used in like Guantanamo Bay to quote unquote, like torture people. Right. So how do you think that for better or for good or for evil music should or can be used in the future?

Simone: Well,

Malcolm: so I think the really sad thing is the way music is weaponized. Best can happen organically within a cultural group and that music can be used to completely destroy the value system of a cultural group. So I'm not going to name names here, but you know, we were talking about country music.

Malcolm: Country music, I think, is, is actually really reinforcing for the [00:21:00] cultural groups that listen to it. If you look at the themes of country music, it's typically you know, I really respect and love my wife.

Simone: Hard work, family values, and appreciating what you have, which is not

Malcolm: a lot. Yeah. And when it's, and when it's negative, it's typically you cheated on me.

Malcolm: So I fucked up your car or killed you or you know, you abused your wife. And so your wife killed you. You know, those are like the more negative country music themes. However. They still, at the end, portray a positive value, which is don't, you know, f**k around and find out, right? However when I look at other music clusters and the value systems that they portray to, and this is a cross, I'm not like talking about just one group, right?

Malcolm: They often are really toxic,

Simone: Yeah, like either, either super materialistic, super focused on very unsustainable relationship formats. [00:22:00] Like even when I think about and not to like hate on Taylor Swift songs, but like when I hear a lot of her songs, which I enjoy like listening to in a certain mood, like I'm like, Oh man, this is.

Simone: This is encouraging a really toxic relationship. Whatcha doing? Whatcha thinking

Malcolm: of, I can't, I can't model what you're thinking of here 'cause I don't know the

Simone: song. I, I don't know the names of her songs. I just hear the, the lyrics of just you know, we're, we're dangerous or bad for each other, you know, but we're gonna do it anyway.

Simone: Or and, you know, also just like other really fun, playful songs or like I love Katy Perry songs. A lot of them are just more about like partying and stuff, which, you know, Yeah.

Malcolm: Okay. So let's take it up here because that's, that's a music that's not going to get us in trouble. Like a song like what's the song where she's talking about being Japanese y or whatever, or

Simone: this is how we do. Oh, that's my... Yeah, this is how we do.

Malcolm: This is how we do, right? I mean, what's the, what's the song teaching people to value? Partying all day, being so irresponsible.

Simone: This one goes to the kids out late at the club and it's Tuesday. Yeah. This is the ones who are playing for bottle service with your rent money.

Simone: I love that song, but yeah, like not [00:23:00]

Malcolm: the best. Very engaging song in that I think it emotionally uplifts your mood. But if you're like, it is, it is a cultural toxin in terms of the value system that is glorified in that music. And so these sort of musical, I don't know what you can call them musical bombs or musical toxins can be induced into a cultural group and used to keep that cultural group you know, mentally addled in an adversarial relationship with like police, for example in all sorts of negative things.

Malcolm: That, you know, just organically evolved. So when we talk about where music is the most toxic, it's actually music that just organically evolves and that the only thing you can really do to fight that is, is if you're within the cultural group and you're just like. Hey, I put you, you, you, you're not going to be able to change society as a whole, but you can, within your family say, we don't listen to [00:24:00] music like this,

Simone: right?

Simone: There are many like conservative Christian cultures, which are like, Oh, we don't listen to that. That's the devil's music or see, I don't mean I'm just modeling a really bad caricature here,

Malcolm: yes. But the devil's music, when people are like, oh, that's the devil's music. We might look at that as like backwards and a weird thing to say, but people say it because it matters.

Malcolm: Yeah. And as a final point on music. This was actually a chapter that we ended up deleting from our book to an extent. But basically we say that, that groups that really know, like conservative groups that really seem to engage in fun parties seem to have higher fertility rates than their neighbors, which don't seem to engage in fun parties.

Malcolm: And a great example here would be. Jews conservative Jewish groups seem to have some of the most quote unquote fun parties where we look at the cultural groups that I think I feel more instinctual kinship with the Anabaptist cultural groups, you know, Amish and Mennonites, you know, when I look at their [00:25:00] parties, it's stuff like let's build a house and all the wives will go and make food for us that we'll get to eat and then we'll lift the barn and carry the barn.

Malcolm: And I see that, I go, that looks like a good time.

Malcolm: But actually, and this is just like a personal thing. Like I am not passing a societal judgment. I am almost like instinctually repelled when I see some of these like Jewish people. Parties where I can tell everyone is having like a lot of fun, but I just noticed like the people touching other people without asking And it's hot

Simone: Sweaty and

Malcolm: like it probably smells bad in like they're not talking like they're not engaging with ideas. They're there. They're Having fun for fun's sake. And I think that this is where something comes to where I can say, I think that those events help their culture outcompete other cultures, but this is also why, and this should be another video we should probably do, that people begin to almost genetically specialize for their [00:26:00] cultural group.

Malcolm: And we get what we call like an evolutionary vortex where the group draws people in. Who would thrive in a group like that and kicks people out who wouldn't thrive in a group like that and just me This sort of music party environment is something that when I look at it I'm just like, Oh my God, the floor is probably sticky.

Malcolm: And people are touching me without asking me first. Oh my God, when somebody tried to kiss me. No, no. Yeah. No, but you you I mean, Simone, would you say you feel the same way? Like when you see these videos? Or?

Simone: Oh, totally. Yeah. Like the only way I would be remotely okay. Like mentally with the situations in the moment is if I'm so sloshed, I'm probably blackout drunk.

Simone: If we're being totally

Malcolm: honest. Oh God. And what if somebody tried to hug you? No, it's a brotherly hug. It's I don't care if it's a sexual hug or not get your hands off me. I want a five foot bubble [00:27:00] of personal space and you can stay out of it. Okay. And I want silence. I want to think I went to one concert in my entire life.

Malcolm: And the only, it was, it was BlizzCon. So I went to BlizzCon and they had a Foo Fighters play. So that's my conference. It was actually a video game. It was a video game conference. And they had a band come, but I got to see the concert experience and it was miserable. It was loud. It was painful. My only takeaway is if I ever go to a concert again, I'm going to need earplugs.

Malcolm: I, I do not, it did not look to me like people were like jumping up and down, but having fun in this kind of totally mindless way that I just cannot mentally

Simone: engage with. Nope. Nope. Nope. Just no, but yeah, Hey, I'm, I'm glad that I'm married to someone who does not drag me to concerts. Thank you very much,

Malcolm: Malcolm.

Malcolm: Well, I'm assortative meeting here, right? This could even be seen as behavioral isolation, [00:28:00] people like you and me, we find each other in our weird and no music environments where most people are not looking for partners. And a, we can say our, our. Final point on music is it is probably the optimum cultural group probably uses music.

Malcolm: That is not our cultural.

Simone: So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Yes. I love you, Malcolm.

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