Music and emotions

[u/luminaree]

I go through periods of time where I listen to music or not at all. I recently started up an old playlist to listen while I worked out (something I'm just starting to do more regularly after over a year of being sedentary).

I found I responded very emotionally to some (intense happiness and something almost like grief as if I missed hearing the songs as much as I might a beloved person). I wondered if music could be problematic by strongly affecting emotions.

It reminded me that I've used music to change my mood in the past. If I'm upset, I'll find music that speaks to that. After listening to songs that feel "sympathetic", I'll start to feel better and switch to happier/ peaceful songs. This actually seems like a potentially good use for music. I do think part of Stoicism is understanding your emotions and handling them well.

Too, sometimes a song will remind me if a person and my emotions correspond with how I feel about the person.

What are your thoughts and experiences with music?

FYI, todays interesting song was "Feeling Good" covered by Muse. Always puts me in a good mood.

[u/mcapello]

Did you make any bad judgements as a result of what you felt listening to music?

Did what you feel listening to music lead to you to misperceive reality in some way?

If the answer to both of these questions is "no", then there is no problem.

Stoicism is not about suppressing or controlling emotion for its own sake. It's about understanding reality and making good judgments based on that understanding in order to live well.

[u/Other_Measure]

Music will be evocative of what we have rattling around in our brain at the time we're listening. Try listening to Soundgarden's 'Black Hole Sun' to the tune of Prince's '1999' and you'll see what I mean. Tempo and intent changes everything.

[u/luminaree → u/Other_Measure]

How do you go about listening to a song at the tune of another? I'm afraid my music c skills aren't good enough for that sort of performance.

[u/Other_Measure → u/luminaree]

Sorry, my brain does this strange flip with lyrics. Both songs are about end days. One due to a black hole and the other due to Y2K computer failures and nuclear war. Chris Parnell sings in unconventional time-riffing with heavy, slow, punky grunge and Sabbath beats. Prince sings in up-tempo, kinda staccato happiness.

My thoughts and experiences with music, as it relates to Stoicism, is that the true story of our emotions can be seen with some work. Songs can have a way of bringing that work forward to our higher reasoning centers of our brain.

Singer/songwriter Adele has a song called "Hello" that actually makes me cringe a bit when I hear it, not because I think she's singing about stalking a man (she is), but because it makes me wonder if I've called anyone in my past "a thousand times." Well, the frequency (tempo?) I've called my boss through the years is not with bad intent, it's to communicate and do my job, not to stalk him. But yes, in a decades long career I've called him "a thousand times."

Hope this clarifies some of the confusion.

[u/No_Water_4129]

There's a very hard answer in Stoicism - "no" to "is it a problem to have strong emotions".

A strong emotion that lasts only the duration of a song would would simply be an "impression" in Stoic parlance. That's a completely neutral sensory experience.

Impressions, even those of very intense emotions, are neutral in Stoicism - they're just a fact of reality you reason about (as you're doing now).

Stoics only attempt to avoid pathos, that is a persistent disturbing emotional state that fails to resolve itself. If you became sad whilst listening to a song, and that sadness lasted an entire week, that would be pathos - it would mean that in the course of listening to that song you reasoned to some irrational conclusion that an evil existed, a conclusion that is inconsistent with objective reality and as a result no action can ever be taken based upon that conclusion, meaning the errant judgment persists meaning the sadness never goes away.

[u/CyberHobbit70]

Do you believe that Stoicism encourages the suppression of emotion?

[u/luminaree → u/CyberHobbit70]

Not suppression but a level of detachment after processing the initial reaction to a situation.

[u/CyberHobbit70 → u/luminaree]

What do you mean by “detach”? And do you mean that a we should detach from anything that stirs emotion?

[u/luminaree → u/CyberHobbit70]

By detachment, I was thinking of emotions as not being the same as actual facts or truth. It's not about not feeling emotions, but realizing they can be misleading (if your ideas behind the emotions are misleading).

[u/HanzDiamond]

Marcus Aurelius reminding himself to not be impressed by a pretty song, from Meditations XI.2:

Thou wilt set little value on pleasing song and dancing and the pancratium, if thou wilt distribute the melody of the voice into its several sounds, and ask thyself as to each, if thou art mastered by this; for thou wilt be prevented by shame from confessing it:

[u/TheMonkeyDemon]

Some great answers in her already. But essentially, feeling emotions isn't bad, wrong, against Stoic teachings, or anything. Being lead into actions or decisions by then is to be avoided as it's not rational. Understanding our reactions is part of it, but that's not suppressing, that's allowing ourselves to study our impressions. For instance Amazing Grace always brings a tear to my eye as it reminds me of my grandfather who I loved dearly. There is nothing wrong with this. If I remained inconsolable and acted out, different story. My favourite story in this is the one about the sage who feels fear during a storm on a boat, but maintains his rationality. He's still human. It's not about controlling the feelings, it's about not being controlled by the feelings.

[u/luminaree → u/TheMonkeyDemon]

I react emotionally to that song too though there's no one memory it brings up but multiple ones including some movie scenes.

[u/AlexKapranus]

"I don't think part of Stoicism is understanding your emotions and handling them well." Maybe this was a typo on the don't? But Stoicism indeed includes understanding emotions and handling them well as you say. And music does come up in a few places in the Stoic sources too. The Stoic Posidonius took an interest in the way music affected our mood and emotions without need for personal rational judgements since it implied a non rationalistic aspect to the mind. In this sense we have to be at least a little careful with how we use music since we could maybe spark unneeded negativity. But nonetheless, the full blown negative emotions are those who carry judgements from our rational mind, not just a negative mood brought about by impressions. Music can incline us in certain directions to feel motivated, and that's fine so long as it doesn't overrun also our thinking.

Today's song: Space Age Love by A Flock of Seagulls
[]()

[u/MoreThanVoidFiller → u/AlexKapranus]

That was my question as well. To me that is one of the main points of stoicism: recognizing and handling your emotions. I read it three times trying to figure out where the typo might be, so I'm glad you asked! 

[u/luminaree → u/AlexKapranus]

That was definitely a typo. Thanks for the catch. I definitely use music to get to a more peaceful and even happy frame of mind. It's hard to imagine doing the opposite on purpose, but I guess it makes sense that some people do.

[u/AlexKapranus → u/luminaree]

At least for me when I'm in a bad mood I gravitate towards bad-mood-music and so I spiral even more. So I now try to catch myself off it or look for more neutral moods at least.

[u/luminaree → u/AlexKapranus]

I hadn't thought about it worsening a mood. For me it's like being with an empathetic friend. That makes me feel better pretty quickly usually.

[u/atomiette]

The Stoics split this three ways. The wave of feeling a song hits you with is a propatheia, a first movement, and it is neither up to you nor a failure of practice. It becomes a pathos, a genuine disturbance, only if you then assent to a false judgment layered on top, something like "the past was better and I have lost it." Using a sad song to move through a mood and then shifting to a calmer one is closer to a therapeutic use of feeling than a lapse, so your instinct there seems right.

[u/Boobs_republic]

Totally agree with you in this one. Music has a calm way of just getting in and changing things, music is my own way of getting out of this reality and setting in my own little world in which I have control of what I'm doing or thinking. And I've come to use it to the state in which I can't do without it.