I am reminded of an article that is of relevence here:
http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/music.html
RELIGION, HYPNOSIS, AND
MUSIC: AN EVOLUTIONARY
PERSPECTIVE
American Atheists info@ATHEISTS.ORG
by
Frank R. Zindler
The Probing
Mind, October, 1984
Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Means of
Natural Selection is
extraordinarily powerful in its ability
to explain details of the
world around us: Why do giraffes have long
necks? Why is the
kiwi flightless? Why do humans have an
appendix, five
fingers, erector muscles at the base of
each hair, and
rudimentary muscles with which to wiggle
the ears? Why are
certain butterflies brightly colored, and
why do birds sing?
Answers to these and to thousands of other
equally puzzling questions have,
from 1859 onward, formed a part of the
enduring legacy left by the great
British naturalist who by plowing under the
"Garden of Eden," completed the
work begun by Copernicus when he pulled
down the "heavenly firmament."
Although the scientific answers to these
and similar questions had been
familiar to me since high school days,
there were other questions which
appeared to me to be unanswerable in
Darwinian terms, questions which
required many years and much thought before
I could reconcile them with
Darwin's theory.
Take religion, for instance. If religion is
all a pack of lies - a muddle of myths
- why would natural selection allow
religion to survive? How could natural
selection allow behavior that has nothing
at all to do with the real world to
develop in the first place? Could Survival
of the Falsest be a corollary
derivable from Survival of the Fittest?
And then there is the puzzle of hypnosis.
Why are many people and some
animals hypnotizable? Where is the fitness
in being susceptible to hypnotic
suggestion and manipulation? After having
experimented with hypnosis for
many years, and after having performed a
great variety of experiments with
both humans and animals, I was shocked to
discover that hypnotizability is
not simply a "weakness" in the sense that a
person is lacking in physical or
mental strength. Many of the most brilliant
and physically fit persons I have
known have proven to be highly
hypnotizable, whereas certain psychotics
and mentally retarded individuals have
been, for all practical purposes,
unhypnotizable.
Without regard to race, sex, or IQ, three
out of every five people one meets
on the street are hypnotizable. Why would
such seeming vulnerability slip
through the screen of natural selection and
take up residence in the nervous
system of the most powerful animal the
planet has known?
My third evolutionary puzzle was music. Why
should humans have invented
music? While music and musical ability are
not in any obvious way harmful
(and, therefore, not characters likely to
be eliminated by Natural selection),
neither are these traits obviously useful
in the sense that they increase human
fitness for survival. Consequently, there
would appear to be no good reason
for them to have evolved.
Human music is not the equivalent of bird
song. It does not function as a
means of marking territory, and it is of
little more that marginal value in
attracting mates. No matter to what height
of esthetic triumph Beethoven
may transport us with his Ninth Symphony,
it is not easy to see any obvious
way in which fugues and four-part choruses
can have helped us climb the
great phylogenetic tree to reach our
present perch.
After pondering these three questions for
many years, I gradually came to
the realization that they were closely
interrelated. All three shared a common
explanation. All could be explained in
terms of what biologists call group
fitness.
Unlike individual fitness - that bundle of
qualities which affects the
survivability of individual plants or
animals - group fitness affects the
survivability of small or medium-sized
groups of closely related individuals.
Such groups often are little more than
greatly extended families, and they
tend to be genetically quite homogenous.
Whether we like it or not, there was a long
time ago when religion was
actually a "good" thing. That is to say,
religion increased group fitness. Let
me try to explain.
In the course of human evolution, the
accumulation of genetic mutations
proved to be too slow a process for the
shaping of the adaptive behaviors
needed to cope with environmental changes.
That is to say, instinct -
behavior largely determined by heredity -
was not good enough to give
primitive hominids the behavioral
repertoires needed in their increasingly
complex and confusing world. By means too
complicated to discuss here,
our ancestors all but abandoned the
instinct-driven behavior of their brutish
brethren and created, as its substitute,
culture.
By means of culture, very complex patterns
of behavior can be created.
They can be created to deal with infinitely
varied environmental challenges,
and they can be created quickly. Although
we may often bemoan the
seeming snail-pace at which our own culture
abandons what we now
consider maladaptive behaviors, there is no
doubt that cultural change is
many orders of magnitude faster than
genetic change.
Back to religion, How does religion fit
into all this talk about tribes and
culture? Quite simply. Religion in small
groups may be very effective in
increasing group cohesion. It may help to
mark the boundaries between
in-group and out-group, the line between us
and them. As Jerry Falwell and
the Ayatollah Khomeini have shown, religion
deftly applied can convert
individually weak little insects into a
mighty hoard of army ants. It can fuse
individual organisms into a sort of
Nietzchean super-organism.
At the tribal stage of human social
evolution, religion helped to create group
behaviors which enhanced the survival
potential of the in-group at the
expense of out-groups. Consider the dietary
taboos of the so-called Old
Testament.
We read in Deut. 14:21, "Ye shall not eat
of anything that dieth of itself:
Thou shalt give it unto the stranger that
is in thy gates, that he may eat it; or
thou mayest sell it unto an alien." Since a
animal dying by itself is likely to be
diseased, we shouldn't eat it. Give it -
better yet, sell it - to one of THEM.
With luck, there may soon be one less of
THEM, and our group will have
gained a numerical advantage of one more
unit!
This truly "old time religion" developed at
the end of the last Ice Age, when
the tribe was the largest human grouping
maintaining any degree of
coherence. The religion of the Old
Testament is a cultural fossil held over
from the Pleistocene Epoch, and it reflects
an atmosphere of intense
intergroup competition. Petrified like the
bones in a paleontologist's cabinet,
the greatest ideas of the Ice Age still can
be found on display between
Genesis and Malachi!
Humans are gregarious creatures. They and
their ancestors for a very long
time have been herd animals. Like all herd
animals, they must be sensitive to
the moves and signals of their fellow
flock-members. Just as a buffalo
defensive stampede would be useless if only
one animal stampeded, so too
our hominid ancestors had to be able to act
in concert against threats from
predators and other enemies. To do this,
they had to be able to perceive
and internalize the desires and motivations
of their fellows in the pack. Not
yet in possession of language to effect
such communication, our ancestors
had to be suggestible. In our ancestors, as
is generally the case with herd
animals today, the emotions and intentions
of the leaders of the herd were
communicated to the rest of the flock by
"body language," and by the power
of nonverbal suggestion.
Suggestion, whether verbal or not, is, of
course, the foundation of hypnosis.
Hypnotism had been the tool of shamans and
medicine men from the very
beginning. The ability to be hypnotized,
i.e. suggestibility, was part of our
heritage as gregarious animals. All the
priests had to do was harness it and,
therewith, harness the entire tribe at
once. Once hypnotized, the entire tribe
could be sent out to do battle as though it
were a super-organism, as if the
individuals were but individual cells in a
great body - sharing a common gene
pool and governed by a single head.
And battle they did - and still do. "And
the Lord said unto him, 'Surely I will
be with thee, and thou shalt smite the
Midianites as one man'." [Judges 6:16]
"Kill a commie for Christ!" "Impeach Earl
Warren!" "Stop that wicked
woman who has expelled our god from the
classrooms!"
If my readers think the term "hypnosis" can
be applied to religion only in the
metaphorical sense, they should hasten to
the nearest tabernacular,
faith-healing, full-gospel-assembly,
fire-baptized, holy-rolling revival
meeting. They will see hypnosis in action,
replete with people falling on the
ground, jerking and twitching and babbling.
They will be able to observe
how the contagion spreads from the leaders
to the followers. They will
observe the anesthetic power of hypnosis,
as real cripples - not just the shills
- throw down their crutches and prance
around to the tune of crunching
bone-joints.
Make no mistake about it. The hypnosis used
by preachers is real
hypnosis. The priests were the first to
control it, and to this day they and
their politician brethren are the most
skilled practitioners of the art.
How do they do it? there are many different
ways of inducing a hypnotic
state of consciousness, and generally the
fakirs use many methods
simultaneously. For neurochemical reasons
which are still not entirely clear,
fasting is a useful means of
preconditioning the nervous system to make it
more malleable and suggestible. Although
lowering of blood sugar probably
has much to do with it, it is likely that
hormone-like substances known as
endogenous opioids are also involved. As
the name implies, these chemicals
are internally produced opiate-like
substances which resemble morphine in
their action.
Although Karl Marx was speaking
metaphorically when he wrote that
"Religion is the opiate of the masses," his
words may prove to be literally
true as well. There is considerable
evidence that hypnosis and
"transcendental" meditation can increase
the production of certain of these
opioids by the brain. The hallucinations so
often accompanying religious
experiences may very well be a result of
opioid intoxication and verbal
suggestions implanted by the "guru" guiding
the religious "trip."
Another method of inducing hypnosis is long
repeated prayer. When
people pray for "a sign," they repeat over
and over what it is they want to
see or hear. Sooner or later, if their
nervous systems are even slightly
normal, they should be able to generate
vivid experiences fulfilling their
wishes. Only wealthy men who say god speaks
to them are frauds. Poor
people who say this are simply
self-deluded.
Although we are accustomed to think of
prayer as a type of cosmic begging,
it is likely that this type of prayer was a
late evolutionary development. The
original purpose of prayer, I believe, was
to induce trance and, thereby, to
effect hallucinatory communication with the
"spirit world."
Many faith-healing practitioners of
hypnosis induce trance-like receptiveness
in their prey by physically stunning them.
They "lay on hands." Starting with
their hands on the crown of the victim's
head, they utter their hypnotic
suggestions (i.e. "prayers") while
gradually moving their hands down the side
of the person's head. Finally, when their
hands are on the person's neck and
ears, they will suddenly put pressure on
the nerve-rich cavity behind the ear
and on the carotid sinus farther down the
neck. This stuns and disorients the
victim, and he or she becomes very
imprintable. The verbal suggestions of
the healer become implanted within as
little as two or three seconds.
Of course, this does not always work. If
the person being "healed" has a
weak cardiovascular system, or if the
"healer" presses on the carotid sinus
too long, cardiac arrest may result and god
cheats the evangelist out of the
poor bloke's money. At least one notorious
faith healer of our day has given
up the practice because of this
embarrassing and expensive side-effect. The
reader must realize, this method of
inducing hypnosis is extremely
dangerous, and no competent practitioner
will employ it. Only
religionists still flirt with it.
But there is a much safer way than
nerve-pinching to reduce the faithful to
submission: music. Carefully selected hymns
can be incredibly powerful
tools with which to induce trance. Perhaps
the most infamous of these
hymns is the one called Just As I Am. By
the time Billy Graham and his ilk
have brought the crowd to the point of
singing this war-horse, the resistance
of the audience has already been worn down
considerably. And by the time
that everyone locks arms and starts singing
"I come… I come," only a few
can resist the call to rush forth and shoot
up on Jesus.
The evolutionary roots of music can be seen
very clearly in such phenomena
as American Indian war dances and religious
chants. Music did not begin
with harmony and stringed instruments. It
began with rhythm, with
monotonously repeated, rhythmic words and
sounds. Drumming surely
represents the beginning of instrumental
music, and to this day the most
primitive forms of music emphasize drums.
So too, singing grew out of
chanting - the rhythmic repetition of magic
words and phrases.
How does music relate to evolutionary
fitness?
Consider the Indian war dance. The
drumming, chanting, and dancing
produce a sensory environment suitable for
the induction of hypnotic trance.
Once all the warriors are hypnotized, they
can act in concert (no pun
intended) to rush forth and wipe out the
genetic competition. They will not
know fear; they will not hesitate; and they
will give without hesitation their
last full measure to the enterprise.
Perhaps the most important part of all this
is that all will follow orders reflexively,
and there will be a minimum of
disorder. The competitive advantages of
such behavior are obvious.
Thus, music evolved as a means of inducing
hypnotic trance. Hypnotic
susceptibility, although older than the
human species itself, was elaborated
by natural selection as a means of
increasing intragroup cohesion and as a
means of producing highly ordered,
efficient competitive behavior at the
intergroup level. As cultural transmission
of learned behavior replaced
genetic transmission of instinctive
behavior, religion emerged as the system
deciding the ends for which hypnosis would
be applied. The actual mythical
content of the individual religions
probably did not make much difference:
Zeus and Yahweh and Baal are all imaginary,
and there is no obvious reason
to recommend one over another. However the
structure of the cultural
organizations behind the various deities
was of great importance. It is
obvious that the wizards who pulled the
strings in the temple of Yahweh had
a much more effective way of running the
land of Oz than did those who hid
behind the curtains in the temples of Zeus
and Baal!
Approaching the end of our story, we see
that religion, hypnosis, and music
are intimately and unexpectedly
interrelated in their evolutionary origins. The
three originated together, and all three
were critically important factors in
making us the creatures we are today. All
three are "natural" phenomena,
and can be reconciled with the theory of
evolution as we understand it
today.
We must remember, however, that things are
not automatically to be
adjudged good or desirable simply because
they are "natural." To do so is
to fall into the "natural law" fallacy so
dear to the Catholic Church. To say
that something is "natural" implies nothing
more than "that's the way things
are at the moment." It does not say we have
to keep things that way. In
many cases we are free to decide to travel
"unnatural," newly created paths.
Religion is like the human appendix:
although it was functional in our distant
ancestors, it is of no use today. Just as
the appendix today is a focus of
physical disease, so too religion today is
a focus of social disease. Although
religion was a force accelerating human
evolution during the Ice Ages, it is
now an atavism of negative value.
Religion still promotes tribal divisions,
even though we must recognize that
all "tribes" must henceforth work together
for a common cause or all shall
surely perish together. No single tribe
will survive unless all tribes survive.
The divisions created by religions must be
eliminated.
The disappearance of religion will be as
great a tragedy as the
disappearance of smallpox. We will all
survive its passing without difficulty
and without tears.
But what of music and hypnosis? are they
also atavisms? Are they now
tainted because of their former religious
associations? I think not.
Music clearly has emerged from its
religious cradle and has transported us
all to a realm of human emotion and
esthetic fulfillment more "heavenly" than
any heaven imagined by the creators of that
celestial hunk of real estate!
Music has been set free of its fetters. It
may now soar with the human
intellect into any esthetic empyrean that
intellect may choose to create. The
finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony can
help us to feel more intensely the
universal brotherhood of mankind as we
hurtle along on the cosmic journey
of this spaceship we call earth.
And what of hypnosis? Is it only a tool of
unethical control? Must it be
forsworn because Hitler and Jim Jones used
it?
Unlike the case concerning music, the
answer to this question is not quite as
easy to formulate. We cannot deny that even
today hypnotic suggestion can
be used for evil purposes. But to be
forewarned is to be fore-armed. We
must always keep in mind that as
suggestible creatures we are potentially
vulnerable to manipulation by unscrupulous
persons. But we should not
forget that many of the features that most
deeply define our humanity derive
from the same neuronal circuitry that makes
us suggestible.
For what are sympathy and empathy, if not
elaborations of our
suggestibility? Because we are suggestible,
because our emotions are
contagious, we can walk into the funeral of
a total stranger and quickly feel
the same sense of grief and loss as the
mourners. We can also see a strange
child take its first steps in a public park
and feel the same excitement and
exhilaration as do its parents.
Because we are suggestible, we can feel
sympathy. Because we can feel the
same pains as our fellow beings, we will
not be uncaring of their plight. We
will avoid causing pain in others because
our suggestible natures make
possible the reflection of that pain back
upon us. We are happiest when
making others happy, and we do not need
mythic systems to make us do
good and eschew evil: our nervous systems
are hard-wired by evolution to
help us do that.
Because our individual happiness is so
sensitive to the emotional milieu in
which we find ourselves, enlightened
self-interest is all we need. With that
we shall create an ethical system more true
to our natures. We shall strive to
cast off the irrelevant totems and taboos
of our religious past, that we may
emerge into a satisfying new world of
ethical fulfillment.
Let us not pray.
__________________________________________________
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