You Are What You Hear...

Plato from "The School of Athens"

In Book III of Plato's Republic, Socrates and Glaucon discuss the role and content of musical compositions to be included in their fictional, utopian polis. The beginning of this topic involves them throwing out all bad or unhelpful forms of music in an effort to preserve those that will be good for the polis as a whole.

He correlates/compares particular modes of music with particular activities. For example, lamentations have a particular mode that imitates a sorrowful person. Other modes can be associated with drunkenness, idleness, and softness. Still others are associated with battle and courage. When confronting the question of why music selection is so important in the polis, Plato claims that "rhythm and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul more than anything else," and that the music will inform the souls of the city's people as much as an academic education can.

Plato also believes that music is instrumental in aiding people to determine "goodness". People very familiar with good forms of music (and poetry) will be able to "sense it acutely when something has been omitted from a thing and when it hasn't been finely crafted or finely made by nature." Essentially, that person will be better equipped to discern right from wrong, simply by having an education in good music. A harmony of soul will allow the person to reject those things that jeopardize that harmony.

Ok, wait, seriously? Does this mean we have to listen to Christian rock all the time or classical music? While I, personally, am a strong advocate for tuning in to classical music regularly, I do not think that's what we should be taking away from this point.

It's practically scientific fact that certain types of music affect our moods, and this makes perfect reasonable sense because we all have our happy playlists and our angry playlists, right? So this shouldn't be too crazy.

James Hetfield of Metallica; Exhibit A of Musical PTSD

However, prolonged exposure to a particular kind of music can have lasting effects. Similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), listening to a single genre can influence your nervous system and hormones in such a way that they create semi-permanent conditions, just like constant shelling and gunfire. For example, listening to only grunge and other forms of hard rock can acclimate your body's hormones to stressful levels, regardless of if you are listening to music at that moment or not. The music conditions your body to release hormones that induce stress and adrenaline into your system. If the exposure to this music is regular, then the stress hormone release is also regular until it becomes the norm, whether you are listening to the music or not.

So, now the question I always want to know the answer to: what would the virtuous man do? What music would the virtuous man listen to? Well, the answer is not as easy as pointing to one particular artist/band or even one particular genre. And it certainly is not found in listening to the 10 hour version of Trololo (I think that if you can make it through 10 hours of this, you'll be a master in the virtue of fortitude, but I'm sure your prudence would be sharply called into question). So where is it?

To be a good person, one must do good things, eat good food, have good friends, etc. No good man will desire to surround himself with evil because he only delights in good things and everything less than that is abhorrent to him in varying degrees. So if goodness is to permeate the virtuous man's life, this must also apply to listening to good music. Therefore, our next inquiry is to discover of what things good music consists.

I am not necessarily referring to the gospel group, Virtue,
(above) when I refer to "virtuous music"

Just as food contributes to the goodness of our bodily health, music contributes to the health of our mind. The saying, "you are what you eat," applies just as much to music as it does to food. If certain kinds of food create unhealthiness in your body, then you will become unhealthy. If certain kinds
of music create unhealthiness of the mind, as described above, then the mind will become unhealthy. We care about the health of mind and body because it is integral to the soundness of one's soul. Our minds and bodies enable us to live virtuous or vicious lifestyles, and those lifestyles inform our character and, ultimately, our souls. Just as a hammer without a sufficient grip on the handle is unwieldy and inept at performing its task, we too will be inept at living a properly good life if our bodies are disordered.

So if music is so important to the health of the soul, we probably should pay a lot of attention to what good music is, so as to properly nourish our souls. Good music consists of that which brings us to realize our human good, namely virtue. After agreeing in the above paragraph that music does have an effect on the soul, it stands to reason that it must have either a positive or negative effect. And since "the good" is the aim for all of our actions, why would we ever desire to listen to "bad" music? (Note: by "bad", I am not referring to poorly performed or untalented music; I am referring to music that deteriorates the mind and corrupts the soul)

Music informs our minds and souls, just as the rhythm of a drum cadence informs a marching army to march in step. In the case of the human soul, good music is going to be that which inspires virtue in the individual. It lifts man's heart and mind to higher things and inspires him to perform heroic feats in everyday life. In times of struggle, it must comfort and console him, but always encouraging him to keep his goals of character firmly fixed. Music moves the human heart, and for the man who aspires to virtue, it must always move him towards his goal of being the virtuous man.

Therefore, good music inspires and directs man's desires, will, and actions to the achievement of virtue, and therefore, this is the best kind of music.

And now, here's a small sample of music that inspires me personally to virtue!