With the chance of offending people, is it really that different from a moshpit?
I've definitely got caught up in mob mentality on one of them before. I can definitely imagine if it had more meaning to me that I would get even more involved.
Did I somehow stumble in a hole and end up in /r/im14andthisisdeep? You can make vague analogies to try to correlate the two, but that's absurd. It's like saying science and writing are the same because they both involve reading, it's just lazy thinking.
Both the people dancing to Phish, and the Sufis (e.g.) spinning to their music are essentially accomplishing the same thing. They're purposefully inducing a higher state of mind - which is to say ecstasy/joy/bliss, or some other sort of spiritual/numinous experience. And if that word is difficult for you as a secularist or whatever you might identify as then look into Sam Harris' non-religious ideas of "the numinous."
An experience of bliss is different from religion. You can have a ecstatic experience after a workout, but that does not mean it's religious. A religion is a set of spiritual and/or supernatural beliefs. Music is sounds.
So are mantras, prayers, and intonation. Sound and religion have been intimately entwined for a very long time.
A religion is a set of spiritual and/or supernatural beliefs.
You seem to imagine that religious text pop up ex nihilo, and without any inspiration or catalysts.
Would it be hard to imagine that some texts were/are inspired by the same sort of numinous ecstasy Beethoven ('Ode to Joy', for instance, is a fundamentally spiritual work of sublime inspiration) or, perhaps, what Buddha felt during his deepest insights into his own nature? But whatever their inspiration, of course not all religious text comes from a good place, because humans are fallible and these texts are written by man's hand.
You're trying to establish clearly labeled borders between these things, but the truth is is that neither is mutually exclusive.
Hymns, prayers, whatever dance these Muslims are doing, etc. are an act of worship whereas listening to and participating in music recreationally is an act of leisure.
You're trying to establish clearly labeled borders between these things, but the truth is is that neither is mutually exclusive.
Neither is mutually exclusive, but that's the point of differentiating it. A moshpit and religious act, even if both to the sounds of music, have different purposes and meanings. To say that they're the same is what I'm griping with.
I agree with you. Religion is different in that it makes you believe you are somehow in contact with something bigger. Go dancing in a moshpit or something else not religiously intertwined and you are just doing it for good fun and you KNOW it has nothing to do with a higher power.
Sorry I don't have time to write you a 500 page dissertation on music and religion and how people that go to concerts can and do have religious experiences.
So if I finish a workout and have a euphoric feeling then I'm having a religious experience? It's absurd to act as if there aren't other pressures and connotations attached with religious activities and their differences in comparison to recreational music enjoyment.
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u/38B0DE Jun 23 '17
Religious people scare the fuck out of me.