What is your opium?

@Magnus

Associating men with negativity and women with positivity gives men a bad rap.
I’d rather associate men with a different side of positivity, and negativity.
I, and I suspect many, tend to associate men with pride (I like myself, which can be (un)healthy, mind you, like all the feels) and anger/hate (I dislike you), and women with guilt/shame (I dislike myself) and love (I like you), giving men a more self>other attitude, and women a more other>self attitude, but of course both sexes are more than capable of experiencing both.
I associate men with courage, but also foolhardiness, and women with cowardice, but also caution.
Oddly I associate men with both happiness (things are pretty good), and despair (but they’re going to get worse), which gives them a conservative outlook, and women with sadness (things are pretty bad), and hope (but they’re going to get better), giving them a progressive outlook.

And all of these qualities have implications for the kinds of music men and women tend to create, and gravitate towards.

Satan is one of our negative male archetypes, and Jesus one of our positive ones.
They appear equally masculine, in that they both look strong, but Satan looks antisocial (the attacker), and Jesus social (the defender).
Men’s sociality manifests in their capacity to protect and provide (ensure survival), and their anti-sociality manifests in their capacity to destroy.
There are negative and positive female archetypes in the bible and elsewhere in popular culture, such as Eve, Lilith and Delilah on the left hand, and Ruth, Esther and the three Marys on the right.
Women’s sociality manifests in their capacity to give birth, and to nurture (ensure health and wellbeing), women’s anti-sociality manifests in their capacity to abort, and to deprive.

Disclaimer: even if it ought to go without saying on a philosophy forum, I just want to say I’m sure some of what passes for masculinity and femininity is socially constructed, as I’m sure some of it has a biological basis, it’s just often difficult to distinguish nature, from nurture, and of course there are exceptions, no two individuals are entirely alike, but a few exceptions don’t disprove the rule.

Try to think of (excessive) negativity as a type of excess that is most commonly associated with men.

Right. So what you’re saying is that excessive lack of fear (recklessness) is a type of vice that is typically found in men whereas excessive fear (cowardice) is a type of vice that is typically found in women. I wouldn’t disagree with that.

@Magnus

In a sense, both silence, and sound can be continuous, changeless, like if you hold your finger down on the same key, or intermittent, changeful, like if you tap the same key, or different keys.
But in another sense, the sense you mean, you’re right, in that sound itself is a stirring of air, is itself change.

So when taken to an extreme, masculinity is just noise, and femininity is just silence, for you?
Or masculinity is music (just right) on the verge of being noisy (too much), and femininity is music on the verge of being quiet (too little).
It seems to me there’s more going on than just that.

We do tend to associate masculinity with loud music, which is noisier, but we also associate it with low notes, which are quieter.
We do tend to associate femininity with quiet music, but we also associate it with high notes, which are noisier.

Additionally we associate masculinity with orchestral instruments such as: the cello, guitar, horn, oboe, sax, trumpet, harpsichord and organ, and femininity with the viola, violin, clarinet, flute, piccolo, Harp and piano.

We associate masculinity with rhythm and percussion, with angular, coarse changes in notes/tones, which is noisier, but also with less breadth and depth of notes/tones, which is quieter.
We associate femininity with melody and orchestra, with rounded, fine changes in notes/tones, which is quieter, but also with more breadth and depth of notes/tones, which is noisier.

Males also tend to intellectualize, and systematize music, which is neither here nor there, where as women tend to play and sing from the heart.
Males like to be more creative with music, producing new sounds and arrangements, which’s changeful, but they also compartmentalize more, which’s stagnant.

Overall, I think you’re being overly reductive and simplistic in your masculinity equals noise, change and femininity equals quiet, stagnation assessment.

Another thing, is male music faster, more energetic?
Perhaps females have evolved to be more lethargic because they’ve had to stay home, due to the demands of childbirth, but on the other hand, females talk a lot, comparatively, which probably has implications for music.

@Magnus

Ah, that’s a good point, negativity isn’t always bad, it can be deficient, excessive or moderate, depending on the situation, and what it calls for, same with positivity.
Still, I associate some positive feelings more with masculinity, and some negative feelings more with femininity.

Yes. The higher the frequency the more repetitive the sound is. Frequency is “the rate at which something occurs over a period of time”. But that’s still different from silence. Silence means no movement whatsoever. It means stillness. Sound means movement even if it is a highly repetitive movement.

Correct.

Yes. Low notes->masculinity association may or may not fit my model. If it does not fit the model, it may simply mean there are additional rules that my model does not cover. If it does fit the model, it’s probably because low notes means lower frequency which means less repetition.

Higher tones → higher frequency → more repetition → less noise.

Yes, it is.

Yes. So what’s going on here? Here’s a tentative explanation. Calmness is a feminine trait but in the case of men it is subordinated to reason which is a masculine thing. The goal is to think through things – to postpone judgment in order to produce a higher quality judgment. Thinking is an expensive process that requires quite a bit of energy. It’s generally accepted that it is easier to emotionally react, i.e. to make a lot of quick but lower quality judgments, than to think, i.e. to make a single high quality judgment. Reason operates on a large pool of data, intuition operates on a small pool of data (usually the immediate sensory data.) So when a man appears calm he’s in fact extremely active. It’s just that this activity is largely invisible. So what’s happening is this: feminine talkativity APPEARS to be more active than masculine silence but IN REALITY it is not.

While we may tend to associate men with pride and anger/hate, and women with guilt/shame and love, and men with courage/foolhardiness, and women with cowardice/caution, perhaps we tend to associate women with both sadness, and happiness, and men with, tragedy and comedy, or in other words, men are more willing/able to see the good in bad, and the bad in good, giving them a more cynical/skeptical bent, and women a more idealistic one.
Perhaps men’s emotions are more, nuanced, ambivalent, and this might reflect in men and women’s respective music.
They might also be more apathetic, again gearing their music towards rhythm, and women more passionate, inclining their music towards melody.

If happy music tends to sound more feminine, I think sad music does too.
A lot of underground rock explores more negative emotions.
For example, hard rock and heavy metal tend to explore anger/hate, and tends to be dominated by males, whereas goth explores sadness, and tends to be more inclusive of females.

@Magnus

Is there more repetition, and thus less change/noise?
It takes a high note a shorter amount of time to get back to where it started, but at each step along the way to getting back to where it started, it has changed more than a low note would have changed, so I don’t think there’s more, or less for that matter repetition, and thus less/more change/noise.
But there is more activity, so in conclusion high notes are equally repetitive, but more active than low notes and so, noisier/changier.

Men do more, women talk more, men think more, women feel more, so I’d say in this regard, when it comes to noise/change, they’re different, yet equal.

Overall tho, actually I think you’re probably right, masculinity is probably more active/noisy, overall, however, as I’ve attempted to point out, not in every single way, in a few ways at least, women are more active/noisy.

My opium is work

Magnus Anderson,

lol

Someone mentioned Enya, I love her music.Very ethereal.

But I love Dragonforce just as much if not MORE…not so much mellow, dream, simple… :evilfun:
It must appeal to my animus (Jung).

So perhaps some women…but you need to reach them when they are in their other “realms” so to speak. Our psyches are multi-faceted.

Why would you want to make us woman as flat as soda can get.

Yeah that was a pretty damn weird observation. I thought literally everyone of drinking age would know what girls do with hard music. When the hour of Dionysos strikes men generally are rather timid in comparison. Only the horned ones are up to the task of being amidst women at this hour.

Anyone tried opium?

No… never done hard drugs, but I do have a story on the matter of opium… I’ve posted it before, but that was eons ago now, so might as well post it again.

During a random conversation, on various worldly matters, I raised the topic of: if you were forced to take a narcotic which one would it be, and why?

I chose opium… because I think that it’s the least detriment to self, of the detrimental opioids. I have no idea if this is true or not, but from what I know of the opioid family, it would seem to be the case… to me.

I don’t like the thought of psychedelics either, as I prefer to let the natural chemicals in my brain do their job, of making me, me… natural highs and natural trips, and it’s free too.

As far as what I hear from opium experts, it is the hardest drug, in that it doesn’t really allow a way back.

The drug Id least happily do again is xtc, Ive done it twice and then found out I had actually gaps in my memory, no recollection of saying something I said only an hour before. And I had an all round disgusted feeling.
Thats drug is real trash.
Was at an MDMA party once which was the most sleazy, hypocritical shit ever. Never been so glad to step out of the door somewhere. I can still feel the frozen dew on my nostrils.

well i remember getting this stuff my circle of friends used to call ‘soapium’ or ‘red-rock’, and it was supposed to be fake opium (somehow)… but it still got you high, or low, rather. probably some cocktail designer drug cheaply modeled off opium… or maybe it was just opium with some major cut in it, i dunno. but as far as i know, i’ve never smoked what i knew was the real shit. this was in my late teens and twenties, when i began that long journey into desperate degeneracy.

Only time I had a taste of opium was when I was recuperating from a pretty serious beating I took when I had attacked a security guard where I had had a bit too much to drink and not just whiskey. The damage wasn’t done by the security guard but by people who took advantage of the situation. Anyway, so I was recuperating and the drummer of this song was able to hook me up with some real opium carrying prescription pills from his wife.

It was a mild dose, but I got it. Everything was impossibly crisp, I was impossibly calm, detached, there was no reason to ever get up and do anything at all, no pathos. Only crisp apperception and ultimate relaxation.

This is the sort of experience I know I should not be seeking out.

Funny you mention that… one of the party-guests had tried opium… somewhere East/in Asia, and she relayed that how she has never felt the same since… and it had happened years ago, so she felt definitely caught in that opium vortex you mention.

Lol… I get that/your perceptions, in those situations, when at parties and in clubs surrounded by most that are on something or other.

…what experiences do you think you should be seeking?

Years and years ago.

That would explain a lot then… :laughing:

8-[

Interesting to see that confirmed.
So apparently opium truly places oneself out of the system of ones instincts.
Likely, the only sensible way to go about an opium addiction is to become a writer.

Well this was a private, cozy get together of some 20 friends in an apartment rented for that occasion, where special high grade capsules of MDMA were distributed among the guests. So everyone was on the same drug and everyone was being intimate with each other. Some were having sex in bunk beds where others were sighing, hunched over a sooth-sayer telling peoples destinies in a deep meaningful voice, people were hugging for hours talking about their parents, and I was just struggling with the discrepancy between the extreme dopamine rush and the lack of any accomplishment to relate it to. Not a drug for people taking themselves seriously.

The difference is in involvement, engagement. The opium experience is essentially disengaged. I seek the opposite.

The “what”? Experiences, good or bad.

For example, a while back, as a result of really hitting rock-bottom i.e. I had no income and had run out of money, had no next-of-kin as well as an extreme lack of faith in the benefits system (which was reinforced during this period), I starved for 5 weeks. Literally. No food for 5 weeks. Eventually I contacted emergency services and was admitted to hospital where I stayed for 2 months. That was an experience I would not have missed for the world, especially the starving bit, unpleasant though it undoubtedly was. (All is well now, I might add.)

How does experience expand my mind? Well, experience confers wisdom. Therefore I am not taken in by people who make false claims about e.g. starvation, because I know what it is like. So I know perfectly well that those in power in this country i.e. politicians, who pass laws which are supposedly to benefit the poor have not the slightest idea what they are talking about. It fact, it makes me realise how cut-off from the daily reality of ordinary folks lives politicians actually are. So, wisdom accrued from experience includes the ability to assess people for myself. In fact, it gives me an unimagined degree of independence. Experience also keeps me grounded and in touch with the reality of life (as opposed to the fantasy versions espoused by e.g. politicians).