For all the news about support for dealing with COVID-19 and the associated pandemic happening, there’s been remarkably little about mental health support. That’s shocking considering:
The world is a lot more stressful and uncertain place now than it was just two months ago; and
There wasn’t nearly enough mental health services a few months ago.
People facing all kinds of new unknowns and uncertainties, with serious harm potentially at stake. People locked away for a few weeks at a time if they might have COVID-19, or just locked away in areas of extreme lock down. You don’t think people are going to need some mental health services in all this???
I hope someone is seriously planning for LOTS of additional mental health support to help people around the world get through all of this!
In the aftermath of the Newtown shooting tragedy, I am hearing and seeing a lot of social media about needing to provide more mental health support to stop incidents like that. Well, talk about a crazy argument, pun doubly intended! And I didn’t pun because I’m insensitive to those needing mental health. Rather, the argument of better mental health support for gun violence in America is that ludicrous!
I owe this post to a pro-gun friend who debated me on more gun control. His arguments and stats used, including the graph below, led me to do the degree of research I did to counter, which I used here. I didn’t convince him, which I didn’t expect to, but you can judge for yourself from what I present following. I thought it might be valuable for people to understand the flaws in many anti-gun control, if not pro-gun, arguments presented, coming from someone who does analysis of all sorts for a living.
I was shown the graph below with data showing why tighter gun control was not the solution to America’s gun problem with gun related deaths and incidents. What I, as a professional analyst, saw, instead, was the very reasons why America needs tighter gun control. I will also counter a bunch of other points brought up by gun lobbyists that doesn’t involve data, because it isn’t just about the data, of course. But let’s first look at one graph with lots of data.
The Occupy Movements around the world are constantly clamouring about how they represent 99% of the people. Yet, the math shows they don’t even have 1% support anywhere you look. Try this simple exercise.
Daniel J. Levitin wrote an absolutely brilliant book called The World in Six Songs, supported by a great website with the many music samples referenced, among other great related material.
My basic paraphrasing of the concept is this. All the songs in the world could be fit into at least one of six categories providing an evolutionary benefit to humanity, often ultimately tied to our social nature.
The book and website offer far more detailed interpretations, of course, but I will expand on my paraphrasing with each post and the associated topic.
In a series of posts, I will describe each of the six categories in brief, one at a time:
I will describe what the categories are about because they are not as limited in scope as the category names suggest. I will then supply one of my choices and ask all readers to do the same if they so wish. In the seventh post of the series, I will offer the chance to put the song choices all together so readers can read the entire set on one post. I do this because it would be a long post to describe all six categories at once, but to have all the answers in one place might be nice.
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This post focuses on Songs of Joy
July 30th add-on in italics, from Dan Levitin in a summary article
Joy songs are associated with celebration, moments that inspire people to sing, jump, dance and shout. It has been shown that singing releases oxytocin (the hormone released during orgasm), and music listening releases serotonin (a mood-regulating neurotransmitter commonly used in antidepressants). The positive effect of singing or listening to music has also been found to have a positive effect on the immune system, which creates an evolutionary advantage.
These songs celebrate something and reward us for actions that benefit our survival so we would do it again to further improved the odds. “Rewards” are in terms of brain chemicals like oxytocin and serotonin, we naturally release when we feel happy or having performed acts which make us happy. Rewards could also come in reductions of chemicals which do not make us happy, like cortisol and prolactin, which may lead to actions the reduce our chances of survival like violence, reduced physical growth, depression, etc. Additional action of celebration benefits us in a wide range of ways, from the seemingly trivial to the more internal and less visible, like:
Dancing, stretching, jumping or other natural movements to music which are good for our physical well-being;
True emotions, which arise out of benefiting our survival.
In a fascinating argument which I buy into, Daniel Levitin argues that emotions like jealousy are not “true” emotions. Rather, they are “adaptations” to adversity to minimize harm rather than directly benefiting our survival directly. They do not “reward” us in the sense of making us want to repeat actions over and over to benefit our survival. Daniel didn’t say the latter, stating nature does not build systems which defeats itself. However, in trying to keep things simple, that was my conclusion. No doubt, while there are insecure people jealous of everyone else for any number of reasons, most of us would readily admit we could do without jealousy in our lives if we could.
We possess the reward systems of joy today because those of us who enjoyed music of joy, like any of the other categories, were the ones who survived to successfully pass on the genes that allow us to enjoy such music.
As an additional point, Daniel Levitin did not address funny songs in his book. At least I didn’t find anything obvious. One could easily argue that they fall under songs of Friendship because laughing together promotes stronger relationship. I, for one, totally believe that as a major icebreaker to break cultural barriers, to me, is if you can learn to laugh at yourselves and then at each other. But even more, I believe in that anecdote that laughter is the best medicine, and as a result, laughing is good for survival and evolution. So if songs of Joy rewards us for things we should try to do more and more of, songs that makes us laugh should fall here.
Audio sample of songs from the Joy chapter in The World in Six Songs can be found on the website. No direct link was available, but click on the Songs menu option and appropriate page number range link carrying pages 83 to 110. Please note that not all songs are meant as samples of Joy songs. Some are just referenced material in the book text.
It is a joyful song, for sure, and one that definitely makes me want to get out of my seat and dance. I’m standing over the keyboard dancing right now as I’ve got the YouTube version playing to get the link for it! However, this is by no means a definitive choice for me. I can’t say songs of Joy are among the most prominent songs on my mind. I’ve got tons of them as it makes it easier to become happy that way, but in terms of distinctive favourites, none grabs me enough to say “yeah, that’s the one!”
Now, if you’re talking songs of Joy as in humour, my choice would be Nellie McKay‘s Clonie (partial lyrics). Good songs of humour are rare for me, but this one does the job well. I love a lot of her witty, funny and charming music, which I only discovered recently.
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What is your choice for Song of Joy?
Please leave it as a comment.
Lyrics and YouTube/audio link would greatly enhance your answer so readers can know more about your choice. They are not necessary, though, and not possible if no lyrics or version exist.
In a series of posts, I will describe each of the six categories in brief, one at a time:
Digital Citizen 