We Can Live Without Music

We can.  We don't need it.  Someone could swear off music and not be impacted economically – it wouldn't stop medicines from being invented or skyscrapers from being built or the crops coming in.  Planes would not fall from the sky.

It can be argued that music has caused suicides, homicides, anthem-inspired nationalism resulting in tragedy.  Musicians, too, are suspect, as they tend to be moody, temperamental, impulsive and frequently illogical.  This may explain why a great number – if not the majority – of the world's scientists are not musicians.

Music is divisive.  People feel strongly, occasionally violently, about one sort or another.  Minute distinctions are made between genres, sub-genres, specific time periods of sub-sub-genres. People argue passionately about this stuff.

But we do seem hard-wired, as humans, to create and respond to music.  It emerges from all cultures at all times.  It can reasonably be posited that this musical reflex is a defining characteristic of human experience.

Of course, the exact same thing can be said of religion.

We don't need it.  We could do away with it completely.  But I think we'd we'd be poorer for it, and it's against our nature.

So sit with the music of your religion.  Allow its rhythm to move you, its themes to inform you, its melodies to inspire you.  Dance to it.

Rocking your religion is among the most human of all things.