the reason for enjoying music

The inspiration for this post comes from an interesting question on Quora.com. I am only mentioning it here to give you an idea how to think "evolutionary psychology".

Does listening to music enhance our survival?
Does it help us pass on our genes to the next generation?
Does it help in avoiding immediate threats?

The answer to all 3 questions are No!

For the humans music is a form of expression and a way to communicate. It is an art. For birds its a mating ritual. Most species on earth has evolved a sense of hearing - they can listen to sounds and take an action; but they evolved for the purpose of keeping the individual alive.

For e.g. when we walk alone through a woody forest and we hear some rumbling in the bushes our first impulse is to get startled and flee. Suppose you are thirsty and stuck in a forest and you hear a stream of flowing water, you get a bit excited and advanced to the source of sound with the hope of quenching your thirst.

But what can we conclude about how our brain works from the above two scenarios?

The brain has so many rules already wired. They are only there to keep us ticking.

This "pre-wiring" is a very ubiquitous. It is present in almost every specie living today on earth. We can explain in terms of the need for a species or an individual in a specie to survive. But what about why we enjoy music? It is currently a very popular phenomenon. But we've just established that we can't explain it in terms of survival. Then why is it popular?

Not everything can be explained with the idea of survival. Sometimes certain behavior simply exist because such "rules" exist in our brains or in a more general sense in our living systems. And when the species attains some level of evolutionary stability or maturity they flaunt with it; they simply use these behaviors to maximize their chances of reproductive success. These behaviors are in a sense "naturally selected".

This does not mean people who play musical instruments are constantly on the lookout for partners. This does not mean that people who go to rock concerts or an opera are looking out for suitable partners to mate with. Some go to enjoy the art form. Some go to have a good time with friends. Of course some do go out for seeking partners to mate with. Some don't go. Some have even more vile intents. All of this simply says our species is increasingly selective for the better or worse. That's all.

Well, this is all I have today. But I hope you are at least a bit inspired to think evolution (if not evolutionary psychology). Happy figuring out life...

You can find interesting links related to this blog here

FAQs Post: Oct 2005 to Feb 2006

This FAQs Post is the first of its kind. It is intended to give you a general idea of what I usually write here. These kind of posts are for those people who are new to my blog. They can read these posts are then go ahead to read newer posts. It will help them understand things better.

This FAQs relates to posts posted between Oct 2005 & Jan 2006

Q1. What is the meaning of survival?

Survival means staying alive. It also refers to the acts of staying alive and keeping ourselves unhurt, and free from danger (threat to life).

Q2. What is the idea of survival about?

Basically it is about staying alive. It is probably a phenomenon which has kept us alive and kicking of centuries, even before human beings came to appear on the face of earth.

Q3. What is the significance of this idea?

Think about this idea of survival as a vital program - software for life. Now without this program living creatures would know how to escape from danger or protect themselves from it. This could result in their extinction. There could have been many species that lived and died on earth not knowing what danger is; some of them we might not even know. But luckily we (human beings) are alive, and so are other plants and animals too. This means this idea has had effect.

Q4. But why did survival become the rule of life?

Life was not equated to the idea of survival. The idea of survival was not something taken for granted. It means it is ridiculous to assume that life was this way in the beginning. By default life could have been anything (or any number of things). Over time some things die while other live/survive on to the next generation. This is exactly the principle of natural selection. Survival is a phenomenon that exists because of natural selection.

Q5. What is natural selection?

It was an idea propounded by Charles Darwin. He used it to explain why certain traits were popular in species and others were not. There could be variation in a specie based on characteristics of its geographical location.

For e.g. cactuses. They are found in the deserts as well as on some coastal regions (geographically different areas). The desert cactuses have longer thorns to help them protect themselves from herbivores that would otherwise feed on them. Plus they are comparatively thin with respect to their cousin. This feature allows for low surface area so that water loss due transpiration is minimized. If you look at their cousin down at the beach, they are small, plump, and have small thorns. The small thorns could be the result of not having to face enemies that their desert cousins would normally encounter.

Q6. What is fear?

In extreme life-threatening cases fear is a reaction which would urge us to escape to safety. (Commonly referred to as 'flight' in evolutionary terms). It is again a program that helped us survive all along. Without it all of us would have been extinct or, we would have never existed at all!

Q7. What is feminism?

Normally this is a political term that refers to support to women's right, freedom, welfare, etc. In biology or with reference to evolution and the idea of survival, it is actually about members of the a specie becoming more concerned of rearing the offspring to adulthood.

Most male species exhibited polygamy. They mated with other females to increase their likeness in the community. Another reason for polygamy can also be to create a large army to protect the whole herd. The birth apparatus in most mammalian female species are generally not capable of giving birth as frequently as males copulate. Gestation or pregnancy is so critical that any abnormality or stress could result in the female dying. If the females die the chance of the species to produce the next generation also decreases, which could ultimately lead to extinction.

Feminism is also responsible for the males taking an active part in child rearing and overall child development.

Altruism

You know this is actually an interesting subject!

You are probably wondering what am I talking about?

Yes, its the word called altruism from an evolutionary perspective.

But what is the connection? How will this add up?

I began wondering about patriotism. To me patriotism is the act of sacrificing life for the welfare of the nation or a group. This idea of patriotism is usually linked to human beings. Because you can cite numerous examples of people actually sacrificing their life for their country or nation. But this is also quite true in the animal kingdom too. Imagine a pack of wolves defending their territory from a bear that has strayed into their LoC. [Line of control] ;)

But then the very idea of patriotism is against the laws of survival. Evey individual is prompted to live and increase its chances of survival. This is something selfish but it is vital. This notion is hinted in the phrase survival of the fittest. Because its those who compete and succeed thats wins the race. But how does this idea support the phenomenon of patriotism?

The answer is altruism.

First of all you should differentiate the use of words patriotism and altruism. Patriotism is almost always commonly used by man in the context of politics. Therefore I believe it will confuse some people. To avoid this ambiguity I chose to use a more scientifically sounding word - altruism.

Even my understanding of this concept is incomplete. It seems there were a lot of revisions into the idea. People have used statistics to come up with proofs that are vincible. I have not quite followed that trail of thought. In fact I popped a question relating to this at Yahoo answers and received links to web pages that dealt with this subject.

However, to begin with, it is an idea better understood from a 'gene expansion' standpoint, rather than from an individual's survival standpoint. It is the gene that is trying to favour its selection by maximizing its trait. This is what I understand of it at present. However if you are interested in research check out the following links:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/
my yahoo answers question

Feminism and survival

I have nothing to my proof, but I still believe life is about survival. (At least partially). It is not that I don't care what folks at biology-online.org think; they have dispelled it as philosophy instead of science. Hell, I don't know what is for sure, but I believe that there is a brighter side to it. Perhaps one day in the future there will be scientific explanation that agrees with this insane idea of mine.

It has been quite a while I was infatuated with this thought of life. There was one time I used to think about feminism. My idea of feminism was rather subjective (while talking about survival). The modern definition or a dictionary definition goes on to saying something related to supporting women's rights or movements. It is something like allowing women to do what average men do (like for e.g. working late until night and returning home). In the context of survival, it has something to do with men involving themselves in the affair of child rearing.

Why should the father ever take care of his child? Again, a little knowledge of how primitive simian societies survived long ago would help. But for a mention, a man would live relatively much better if he had one child to take care of and support until it has grown up; too many children (from more than one female) are hard to keep. And in the former case, the child itself receives proper development. This is a cause that supports survival, hence ok.

Most males of other species and in primitive humans were known to be polygamous. They mated with more than one female and had many offspring. But what was the catch? All the offspring were not given equal privilege when it came to growing up. This resulted in some not surviving. There is another theory that all the offspring united and killed the father; this ultimately lead to something but I don't know what. I guess most males, the clever ones, started realising the importance of bringing up offspring from one female. Thus grew societies and higher organizations. Today, males have gone monogamous; or technically relatively less polygamous

It is difficult to actually point out how the idea of survival can be identified here. But really I hope you understood what I am about to say next:

Feminism is somehow related to survival.

Survival of the species and survival of the self

I assume my earlier discourse of love was rather interesting, or at least thought provoking. Now there are two things I’d like to call attention to: survival of the self/individual, and survival of the species.

If you ask me what the relevance of fear is, there is no direct answer. However, I can speculate that it somehow supports the survival of an individual. Yes, fear creates panic, which in turn gives us a sudden impulse to escape a situation of danger or threat to survival. It does not make sense if you extend this to a group which has many members in it. It fails to make sense there.

Now if you ask me how love is relevant to an individual, there is again no direct answer. However, it indirectly supports it's survival by surviving the species. How is this so? Well, it is actually a complicated process. Now imagine there is one predator that cannot be defeated by an individual alone. However, this predator can be defeated if it had to confront an army. No love, can imply cannibalism is a common phenomenon. Once that is true then how do you make an army if you keep consuming your soldiers the minute they are born…? No army means, not enough of defence to resist that predator. End result is that that individual can die due to predator attack.

Love and fear – together they make little sense. But with the idea of survival they seem to agree, but on different terms. In spite of this difference I see them both as constructs to survival, because they are elements or entities that aid in further survival in a way.

People don't often die...

The title is not meant to be ironic or sarcastic. Every second someone or the other dies around the world for some reason. If you look at the title with this perspective you might feel it is kind of negative, but it is not. It is actually something interesting. Look at it from another angle.

Have you ever heard of any living species committing mass suicide?

Well, lemming rats are known to die in unison; they are reported to simply jump into the ocean. But even that has a reason:

Humans have actually observed this phenomenon so long ago and it has been handed down to many generations as a legend: The Pied Piper of Hamelin. But people might be more familiar with this tv commercial which is based on that legend:

The point is its rare to see any species commit suicide in large numbers. However, if you have heard of such a case, I bet it is infrequent and, the numbers of individuals who die form an insignificant percentage of the whole population. You probably would have heard of the phrase "survival of the fittest"; this whole post revolves around one word in that - "survival".

The question you should be asking is why are we designed to survive?

For human beings although death is an inevitable part of life, no one lives life thinking they will die the next day. But a less observed fact is that our body is a fortress in itself to a degree. There are so many mechanisms which are kind of pre-wired without which our "survival" would have otherwise a challenge in an evolutionary sense. Humans have come a long way on the road of evolution...each turn has had its impacts as a result of which we are alive today. It may be misleading to believe it was merely because of "those impacts", but the inevitable fact is we still survive today.

I'll leave you to figure out the answer to the question I've opened. After all that is the point of this whole blog...

Last updated: 19th March 2013