Media affecting emotions? o:

[Bap]

So I was just wandering around on this other Christian forum place I go to when I see this thread talking about music. And I see someone's post, and they said it's okay to listen to music as long as it doesn't affect you emotionally.

And, well, this made me wonder. D: Isn't... that one of the like... main things that media does? It's... suppose to affect you emotionally and stuff, right? D: Like make you feel happy if it's a happy situation, make you sad if it's a sad situation, etc.

[I'm guessing when they say 'emotionally', they mean like... sad, I guess? D:] Solike, would it be bad to watch x show / read x book / listen to x song if it made you sad? Or... would it just be bad if... it drove you into some sort of horrible depression? D:

Like... there're a lot of shows / books / songs / etc, that have sad situations and stuff, right? Is it bad to feel sad? xD;

And... I dunno, I was just wondering about people's opinions. xD;

[Dante]

I have found that music, writing, imagery any creative output highly enhances our current emotions, some better then others. Music is particularly good at doing this for some reason as it appears that its' sole original purpose was social in origin, it brought people together into groups for common experiences of effervecence, this is even one of the theories behind the origins of animism and early religeon, as these individuals experienced a unified single emotion bought about by the social influence of their music it could be raised to the level of hypnotical influence or control as powerful as the use of drugs (but mind altering materials may have also been used to reach a higher "level" within these tribes).

Today, music still has the same effect on our emotions, whether it has increased in power is up for debate. In reality rock and roll is probobly no more emotional than classical music, but the popular ethos of society probobly socially influences us to think of rock and roll with greater emotional variation so we may act out this influence.

Are these things bad? That's a good question, but we certainly use the same effect discussed by social scientists to stir effervensence in our churches today. This is good in that it brings Christians closer together under our common God by use of music... but it is bad in that sometime churches aim to create songs that inspire effervence more than they speak the truth. Sometimes I pull myself out of the group just to listen and watch and notice that I don't always agree in totality with what the songs sing, but they are sung anyways... when I think about them later they are meant to create a feeling or an emotion, sometimes its for something as sad as to make the song rhyme. Rhyming by the way is a memoric device to help you learn, and has the effect of being magical since ancient times (which is generally why it is used in songs, e.g. God of wonders beyond our GALAXY, you are HOLY... I thought that he was right here in spirit within the church, what is he doing in ANDROMEDA... GET BACK HERE GOD WE DON'T NEED YOU IN ANDROMEDA WE NEED YOU HERE!) Of course, what songs you agree with and which ones you disagree with is a matter of personal interpetation and personal beliefs. But remember them in context to what they can do, when used properly they can bond powerful friendships and enhance our life with God, but like any knowledge if used for ill, like indulging your anger to the point that you break your friendships in a fit of rage that doesn't even truly represent you.

In the end, strip it of it's scientific perspective... science tends to make everything sound... dead. Its good enough just to understand its power, not the reasons behind them, this especially true because we don't really know why music, a mathematical variation in air-based presure waves produces powerful reactions in our emotions, the same can be said of art... or a taco bell grilled stuffed burrito... hold that thought, gotto go!

Pascal

[martinloyola]

St. Augustine once said about his experience of music in church (referencing the then "new" or "contemporary worship" music of CHANT) that was hard to combat his worldly self which thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of the music and emotions that it evoked from him, and transform that into focus on God and reason why he personally was there to worship God,
but this was not to say that experiencing the beauty of music and its effect on the emotions was evil, but that like most anything good that God gives us, in our gift of free will we can choose to place the music over God or our enjoying the music over God, it is an act of the will which requires no emotion, no physical action but can further enhance/detract from emotion/physcial being

[Bap]

Ahhh, I think I might've worded something wrong. xD; What I mean to ask is if it's bad to watch / read / listen to media and etc that makes / can make people... sad? @o@a [Edit: Like... secular stuff? o:]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. u_u;;;

[Azier the Swordsman]

Ahhh, I think I might've worded something wrong. xD]

Absolutely not. Unless you can find some verse in the Bible to back that claim up (you won't), there is indeed nothing wrong with media making you sad. If you cry at a sad secular movie, the only thing it might possibly mean is that you aren't cold hearted.

[martinloyola]

God has created this world and sanctified it with Jesus' blood
it is our duty then (note: duty not just privalege) to let God sanctify *all* creation through us,
God created everything and everything was intended for His glory and our use (stewardship)
this means that we are called to be "little Christs" and bring God's saving redemption to all the world, People are the primary focus here, but Jesus' authority didn't end with people, it was with nature (calming of the storm, feeding the five thousand, changing water to wine and so on)
but the gospel affects *all* creation, not just human beings, God's kingdom is over all and in all , so yes, even secular media which are sad, sorrowful or tearful can be used for our benefit and God's greater glory, if that isn't the result of watching the movie (benefit and glory) then either satan is using his lies, or the individual watching is not watching with God by their side, in their hearts and minds

[GhostontheNet]

To say "The music is ok so long as it doesn't affect your emotions" is the epitome of stupidity because a good deal of the entire point of music is to pull your emotions in a certain direction. The real question is, "Does this music and the way it pulls my emotions and my thoughts help me to be a better person?" I have to say that in my little Gothic and Industrial internet radio station this has very much been an overriding concern of mine.

[Technomancer]

So I was just wandering around on this other Christian forum place I go to when I see this thread talking about music. And I see someone's post, and they said it's okay to listen to music as long as it doesn't affect you emotionally.

What an awful thought. I can only believe that the idea that music and art should not affect us emotionally can only deaden us to the world around us. How else should we express those thoughts and hopes and sorrows that we cannot put words to?

Art and faith construct the City of God in the midst of that of man. Music and faith united in fruitful symbiosis lead man in his long search for inner peace. Far from abandoning him to an ephermeral divertissement, they call him evermore to surpass himself, to recognize the One who is the source of every Beauty and who gives meaning to the world: on this earth a small piece of Paradise.

Cardinal Poupard
President of the Pontifical Council for Culture

In the end, strip it of it's scientific perspective... science tends to make everything sound... dead

I would vehemently disagree. How can one not think in awe about the vastness of space, or the intricacy of an individual cell, or the vast ages that separate us from the ones who left us the marks of their passage at Laetoli.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?

[GhostontheNet]

What an awful thought. I can only believe that the idea that music and art should not affect us emotionally can only deaden us to the world around us. How else should we express those thoughts and hopes and sorrows that we cannot put words to?

It reminds me of the days when I was taking Cultural Anthropology in which we pretty much learned that art is like a different kind of necessity for life, appearing in every culture from foragers to global industrial societies. If one took a strictly materialist view of life and existence, this emerges as something of an enigma - why should we so profoundly need to etch on objects and etch in sound the stuff of life? The poets speak of art as evidence for the soul, while the philosophers who haven't sold out to materialism speak of the evidence for the soul from the qualia of experience, that is to say that living can actually be like something, "what it is like".

I would vehemently disagree. How can one not think in awe about the vastness of space, or the intricacy of an individual cell, or the vast ages that separate us from the ones who left us the marks of their passage at Laetoli.

That really tends to depend on which of the sciences you talk to. To a great extent, the classic anti-science comments from figures like William Blake who said "Art is the tree of life, science is the tree of death" stem from the increasing materialistic tendencies in the aftermath of the enlightenment in which God remained really detatched from the world and then just floated off entirely. After all, if one takes a strictly materialistic view of the world, we can think of ourselves as a bunch of chemical bags running around with no one to hear us scream as we suffer in a world of entropy. It seems like with every passing year the position of the naturalists becomes increasingly more and more terrible with the passing of time. Where once you had Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schoppenhauer with their extremely low views of life and the mind, they seem positively humanizing when compared to the mental reductionists, analytical behaviorists, and eliminative materialists who believe there is not in fact a such thing as the mind, or alternately the evolutionary psychologists who give everything abominable about man justification and reduce everything good about man to selfishness (which is in fact the basic good anyway) make them look positively humanizing. It is somewhat fortunate a lot of today's naturalists aren't interacting with the other fields of their fronts that would wipe out the things that bring them consolation. A lot of it is the way you look at things. I recall one atheist who said that when he looks out to the the universe, he doesn't see grand majesty of it all, but rather a vast waste.

[Radical Dreamer]

Absolutely not. Unless you can find some verse in the Bible to back that claim up (you won't), there is indeed nothing wrong with media making you sad. If you cry at a sad secular movie, the only thing it might possibly mean is that you aren't cold hearted.

I completely agree. Unless you let that sadness or media take over your life and become more important to you than God is, then there is nothing wrong with listening to secular music.

I recently had a similar situation speaking to a person on another forum. This person believed that rock was straight from the pit of Hell (be it Christian rock or not), and any kind of music other than hymns was twisting "God's original plan for music." This person even thought that listening to instrumental music was "un-Christian." However, I firmly believe that the arrangement of musical notes on a page and the instrument used in order to turn those blots of ink into soundwaves cannot be inherently evil; it's only the lyrics that can make music unedifying to the listener.


My two cents. XD

[HisaishiFan]

"There's nothing that makes Buddy and me happier than a really sad song."
Julie Miller

Universal United House of Prayer

[Heart of Sword]

Geez, the BIBLE makes me sad sometimes, why shouldn't music...