Why We Like Music

The cover story from the last issue of "The Economist" for 2008 discusses theories as to why and how music has become so important to the human species. Three ideas are discussed:

1. Music evolved as a way to attract a mate.
2. Music evolved as a way for groups of humans to establish social bonds.
3. The ability to make music was an "accident" and didn't come from evolutionary pressure. Once it was "discovered", though, it became important for a variety of functions including attracting a mate and establishing social bonds.

Natural selection is a creative tinkerer in its ability to fashion new uses for existing traits. For that reason, I think that the creation of music by humans probably can't be explained as simply as these three. The truth about why music is so important to our species probably involves some accidents, some sexual selection, some social selection, and perhaps even other selective mechanisms that we haven't yet considered.

This article and the ideas presented in it are fascinating, though. And they provide a great example of how elegantly the theory of evolution explains even those aspects of our existence that we typically take for granted.

Resolutions

Have you made any resolutions for 2009? I have to admit that I was going to cop out and not make any this year. Why should I? They usually only last a couple of weeks and then I'm off whatever wagon it was and feeling guilty. So as I went through the whole eat less/exercise more/drink less/pray more list of ideas, I kind of started to wonder what the point was.

But instead of giving up entirely, I'm going to try a different approach. Instead of making a list of resolutions, I'm only going to pick one thing. One change that I want to make. And I'm going to focus on that one thing for 100 days. That's it. One specific change for a specific amount of time. At the end of 100 days, I'll pick something else to focus on for the next 100 days. That's it.

As for what it is that I'm going to "resolve" for the first 100 days of 2009...I'm not really inclined to share that. But I can tell you that there are 2 days down and 98 to go!