Dr. Dennis Cuddy -- Conditioning by Music, Part 2

CONDITIONING BY MUSIC
PART 2

By Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D.
July 27, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

With the undermining of Biblical values through music, it was therefore not surprising that the year after “Age of Aquarius” was released as a single in 1969, Perry Como in 1970 recorded “It’s Impossible” which became very popular despite its lyrics, “I would sell my very soul and not regret it.” Similarly, in 1977 Debbie Boone recorded the popular “You Light Up My Life,” with the lyrics, “It can’t be wrong when it feels so right,” intimating that how one feels about a female-male relationship is more important than whether it might otherwise (e.g., morally) be wrong.

In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, rock music was followed by “hard rock.” Writing about this in Crisis in Christian Music (2000), Dr. Jack Wheaton explained that “the repetitive, constant loud backbeat” of the drummer, “the pulsating (at an ear-splitting level), low-frequency vibrations, and the soaring, wailing, crying sounds of the amplified guitar trigger major subconscious emotional responses in the body, primarily stimulating aggressiveness, as well as providing increasing, but difficult to control, energy.” He further related that when this music triggers the listener’s fight-or-flight syndrome, “the body is actually getting ‘high’ on its own internally-produced drug (adrenaline), resulting in… an increased tendency to aggressive and anti-social behavior.”

According to Dr. David Noebel, this type of music has harmonic dissonance and melodic discord, which violate man’s natural body rhythms. And Dr. John Diamond, a New York City psychiatrist, some years ago studied beats of over 20,000 recordings and concluded “that a specific beat (‘stopped anapestic rhythm,’ which is contrary to our natural body beats and rhythms) found in over half of the top hits of any given week can actually weaken you…. It interferes with brain wave patterns causing mental stress.”

With the introduction of “hard rock” in the late 1960s, there was a change in American values. Popular songs like the Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb” and their later album cover for “Black and Blue” demeaned women. There was a corresponding dramatic rise in homicides and suicides from the late 1960s and through the 1970s in the U.S. In 1970, the popular movie “M.A.S.H” was released with the even more popular TV series beginning in 1972. The theme song for the movie and series is actually “Suicide Is Painless,” and elementary school children in the U.S. were taught both the music and lyrics, which inform students that “cheating is the only way to win, the game of life is lost anyway, and suicide is painless.”

Musical promotion of violence continued into the 1980s with groups like Guns N’ Roses formed in 1985. Its 1988 album “GN’R Lies” includes the lyrics “I used to love her but I had to kill her.” GN’R (known for its cursing) also has an album with a rape scene on it! The year after “GN’R Lies” was released, the Journal of the American Medical Association (September 22, 1989) contained a report titled “Adolescents and their Music” warning that teenagers’ fascination with heavy metal music may be associated with premarital sex, drug use and Satanic activities.

Given all of the above, it was not surprising that Tipper Gore in the January 8, 1990 Washington Post wrote: “A majority of children surveyed by a Rhode Island Rape Crisis Center thought rape was acceptable. In New York City, rape arrests of 13-year-old boys have increased 200% in the past two years.” A few months later in mid-July 1990, a landmark trial began in Reno, Nevada regarding the British heavy metal rock group Judas Priest (formed in 1969) allegedly having a subliminal message, “do it, do it,” on their album “Stained Glass,” which supposedly led to the suicides of two teens who chanted “do it, do it, do it,” before they shot themselves after hearing the album. One of the teens survived long enough to say it was as though the music controlled his actions, leaving him without a free will. He also remarked, “It was like a self-destruct that went off. We had been programmed.” Wilson Key, a Reno experimental psychologist and author of four volumes on subliminal messages, testified that the misspelled word “sucide” is hidden on the cover of the Judas Priest album. The ability to control someone’s “will” sounds like science fiction, but Dr. Robert Assagioli (who was a disciple of Luciferian occultist Alice Bailey), the founder of Pyschosynthesis, believed it is actually possible to train the “will.”

Through the 1990s as heavy metal rock music was affecting our youth, evidence mounted regarding its deleterious effects. Earlier research at Temple Bell College in Denver had already indicated rock music could even kill plants within a month. Then, in the August 10, 1997 Washington Times article “Heavy Metal Makes Killer Mice,” one reads about research by David Merrel. According to the article, Merrel reported that “it was like the music dulled their senses. It shows point blank that hard rock music has a negative effect all around. I had to cut my project short because the hard-rock mice killed each other. None of the classical mice did that at all!”

Through the 1990s and into the 21st century, violence in music continued. The headline in the May 18, 2009 Detroit News read: “Eminem is the hottest ticket in town.” This is even though the rap artist Eminem has sung about violence (e.g., murder, rape, etc.) against women.

Kimberly Smith in Music and Morals (2005) has explained that what is going on in music today is about “control.” Traditional music, including traditional Christian music, is characterized by self-control, but rock music, including “Christian rock,” causes a loss of self-control.

Music has been used to destroy our traditional Biblical values, conditioning us to abandon self-control over our emotional impulses. And often the conditioning mechanism isn’t obvious. Click on the highlighted phrase “hidden, sometimes illicit message” in the ABC News report, “Lewd Lyrics Hidden in Hit Songs” (March 24, 2009), and it leads you to “Drug Drenched Lyrics No Music to Parents’ Ears” by Carla Williams (ABC News Medical Unit). The news report quotes “Coke and rum; got weed on the ton,” and says “So chime the lyrics of one of rapper 50 cents top singles in 2005. And such provocative messages, including those about alcohol and drugs, may well constitute a dominant theme in popular music.” The report then indicated that Brian Primach at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Prof. Lisa Merlo in the Division of Addiction Medicine at the University of Florida “agreed that these messages have potential to sway behaviors in younger listeners.” The report revealed that 77% of rap music songs mentioned the use of illicit substances and 37% of country music songs studied made such references.

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These types of popular songs help destroy the moral values of our nation. And once our moral values are destroyed, we will then descend into chaos and ruin just like all past civilizations that lost their moral bearings.

Dennis Laurence Cuddy, historian and political analyst, received a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (major in American History, minor in political science). Dr. Cuddy has taught at the university level, has been a political and economic risk analyst for an international consulting firm, and has been a Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education.

Cuddy has also testified before members of Congress on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dr. Cuddy has authored or edited twenty books and booklets, and has written hundreds of articles appearing in newspapers around the nation, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and USA Today. He has been a guest on numerous radio talk shows in various parts of the country, such as ABC Radio in New York City, and he has also been a guest on the national television programs USA Today and CBS's Nightwatch.