For most peoples in the Western world, certain pop songs seem to cross generations in their musical appeal, particularly when they have some special kind of musical hook. A good example of a song with a special musical hook is “Good Vibrations”, a song from the sixties that became extremely popular in many countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. The song was built around the electro-theremin, a hypnotic electronic instrument that formed the musical foundation of “Good Vibrations” and that sounds a little bit like the Hawaiian guitar only on steroids. The sounds created were exclusively defined discrete sounds with no admixture of flowing blendable continual sounds. It is as if the sounds would bounce off the surface of one’s mind without ever real penetrating it and leaving a meaningful imprint on it. On the other hand, the sounds were terrific in terms of temporarily shocking a person out of his numbness and temporarily pulling him out of his experiential vacuum. The sounds were popular, because they represented the melding of audio from an instrument that played with some vaguely familiar machine-like sounds which were, in turn, like an unconscious audio model for the robotized young people of modern society.
But, at the same time, such a melding of audio was increasingly disruptive for all the non-human creatures in the animal kingdom who would have had a much more difficult time accommodating themselves to the exceedingly unnatural sounds of the electro-theremin. As well as the electric guitar, the electric bass, the electric piano, the electric keyboard, etc. All the entertainment sounds of the humans that were so ungrounding for the non-human creatures. Along with all the abrasive machine sounds that were found throughout modern technological society.
Unlike humans, other creatures in the animal kingdom are focused on a totally different kind of vibration: certain kinds of natural vibrations that they pick up on from the ground. These natural vibrations are truly the good vibrations for these non-human creatures. They give these non-human creatures a kind of grounding where they live that humans are incapable of being receptive to. We simply don’t have the sensors that would enable us to pick up on these vibrations.
These natural vibrations make imprints on these non-human creatures, whether they be spiders or elephants. These vibrations act as a kind of natural stimulus and operate within the range of which a non-human creature is capable of receiving them without having to make any significant distortions in its sensors, the way we humans have been compelled to do in our adjustments to the stimuli emanating from modern technology. As a matter of fact, we can say that these non-human sensors have been developed over time in order to be capable of picking up on these natural vibrations.
Now the following is pure speculation, but it seems to me logical that somewhere and sometime in evolutionary history, one of the creatures that preceded humans in their evolutionary lineage lost their capacity to pick up the natural vibrations from the land on which they were living. Perhaps we can say that, in general, no organism is capable of receiving all the possible kinds of stimuli that are available in its field of experience and that if it did, it would be paralyzed by overstimulation and it couldn’t function properly. Natural vibrations give a non-human organism a solid grounding, because the stimulation from the vibrations gives the organism a sense of firm place. Nevertheless, the disadvantage of the natural vibrations is that they prevent the development of a dispassionate vacuum space inside the organism that would allow for the development of higher forms of thinking. Like a human brain that is capable of cognition. If an organism is in what is, in effect, a sea of natural vibrations, it is surrounded by flowing blendable continual stimuli that prevents it from developing a fully defined discrete sense of self. The first act that allows an organism to move towards developing higher cerebral activities is that which allows the organism to separate from its natural vibrations field of experience. Now here I am not talking about an organism that is advanced enough so that an emotional separation from its mother becomes a significant experiential act for it and leads to mental development. I am talking about a separation that probably took many millions of years and led to a total reconfiguration of the organism in the process.
Breaking away from the natural vibrations over time led to the raising of consciousness for the creatures that with time would fully evolve into humans. During this transition, the natural vibrations must have been increasingly perceived as a kind of background noise instead of as a comforting grounding. The higher that human consciousness was raised, the more irritating and uncomfortable were the natural vibrations experienced. Until finally the separation was complete, and the creatures that we designate as humans were totally out of range of the stimulus that acted as a grounding template for what was until that moment the entire animal kingdom.
Now I’m going to raise the speculation stakes even higher. Let us suppose that after many millions of years, the separation of humans from the natural vibrations has begun to have some terrible side effects, all of which are connected with numbness. As a result, some people are fighting the growing numbness, fighting the growing robotization by turning back the clock and becoming more animalistic. I think this is where we are now. Many people becoming like robots, many people becoming more like non-human animals. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it.
© 2024 Laurence Mesirow
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