Clamshell's weekly journal

[Shannon]

The most obvious cases are those forms of music that resonate most with the most powerful negative emotions: anger, frustration, hate, resentment and fear. The desire to be understood and feel as part of the group is powerful in humans, and is why we see much of the behavior we do concerning gangs. Humans are also powerfully (and sometimes hypnotically) affected by repetition and rhythmic sounds, and when you throw into this mix the generally lower education level of listeners to most of the negative lyrics, you get a potential problem. You also wouldn't see music being such an integral part of certain other aspects of American society if it was not such a powerful brainwashing tool.

Freedom of speech is a good thing, but as with all aspects of freedom, requires constant vigilance to prevent that same freedom from becoming the undoing of the whole. What we are seeing in United States society right now is the unraveling of the whole because of freedoms having been (and being) abused. And before this gets any closer to the edge of what is off limits to the topics of this forum, let's steer away from that edge some.