The philosopher Allan Bloom didn't much care for the effect that music had on his students. He believed that they used music to counterfeit experience, in particular to fabricate joy. He said that music—rock music especially—reproduced in listeners the feelings of triumph that come from completing a great work of art or doing a heroic deed or making a conceptual breakthrough in science or philosophy—or even finding the true love of one's life. Students, Bloom said, found in rock music a way to fabricate those emotions, and then they often took the logical next step and asked themselves, implicitly, Why bother going further? Why should one actually do the deed and put in all the work leading up to it, when one can have the reward simply by putting on some music or showing up at a concert?
Bloom compared the Dionysian experience of rock music to the experience of drugs: He seems to have had hallucinogens in mind. After a heavy dose of LSD, in which the world becomes a wondrous…
Bloom compared the Dionysian experience of rock music to the experience of drugs: He seems to have had hallucinogens in mind. After a heavy dose of LSD, in which the world becomes a wondrous…