[Dixielandjazz] The Mozart Effect

[Charles Suhor]

Eloquently said, Burt. I'd extrapolate in two ways...

Your citing of an Oriental anecdote seems just right insofar as the 
psychology of Buddhism is geared specifically towards transcending 
one's conditioning--one's "schemata"--and holding one's beliefs and 
tastes lightly--without "belief perseverance." The free-floating 
openness to experience of a Buddha-mind is different from skepticism, 
or from any frozen stance. One can become a connoisseur of awareness 
itself, learning and revising your learning freely while not becoming 
attached to what's learned. As the song says, nice work if you and get 
it.

The debate over the Mozart effect seems to be on a much smaller canvas, 
probing not whether people can learn to enjoy Mozart but whether, when 
exposed to his music, effects occur in the brain than enhance learning.

Charlie Suhor


On Jun 4, 2005, at 12:46 PM, Burt Wilson wrote:

> Dear Charles--
>     Regarding the effect of music on the individual, Psychological 
> research
> has proven that as we experience life we develop a "schema," or theory
> about the world in which we live, based on our perceptions of various
> stimuli. Throughout this life-long process, we mentally 
> institutionalize
> this "schema" in our mind by a process psychologists call "belief
> perseverance." This becomes our "belief system" or “mind set” and it 
> exerts
> quite an extraordinary control over the drama of our daily life,
> continually directing our thoughts into comfortable, well-worn ruts.
>      The influence of a well-managed belief system on our daily life 
> is so
> strong and subtle we hardly ever realize we are in its clutches. 
> Because it
> would be too confusing and disorienting for us to have to constantly 
> change
> our entrenched view of things, we go to great lengths to maintain a
> cognitive status quo. Thus we involuntarily develop a system of 
> automatic
> responses which psychologists call "availability-mediated influences" 
> which
> is a fancy way of saying we tend to deal with the world only in terms 
> of
> that which is familiar to us. In time, we come to nurture this 
> condition
> because it provides us with a convenient psychological crutch in 
> helping us
> feel comfortable with who we are and how we relate to the world around 
> us.
> Since our sense of "place" in the world directly affects our emotional
> happiness, we thus tend to program ourselves to consciously re-create 
> that
> which pleases us. This is especially true of music.
>      How many of us "learn" a new style of music? The act of learning 
> is
> called connoisseurship--to consciously aquire a taste for something 
> new as
> opposed to all that is contained in the statement "I don't know art, 
> but I
> know what I like!" Towards this end, there is a famous Chinese story 
> that
> goes: "The great Chinese lutist Po-Ya, upon the death of his friend,
> Chgi-tze, laid down his lute and never played again because, he said, 
> there
> was no one to understand his music."
>
> Long live music and music lovers!
>
> Burt