Society’s Perspective on Reality and Music

Society uses music to distract themselves and ignore the world around them. Students tend to plug in his or her headphones during class to cancel out the noise his or her classmates and or teacher is making, allowing to focus only on the task at hand, homework. Not only is it helpful to cancel out noise from our surroundings, music also helps cancel out the noise coming from our minds. People who work in construction, art, education, and even sometimes federal such as the post office, use music to distract themselves from his or her surroundings and makes time pass by quicker avoiding any sense of reality. In Sydney J. Harris’ “Blasting Music To Drown Out Reality”, music is expressed as mask for society. He expresses his own theory about people and his or her ignorance when it comes to music believing they listen to music to distract themselves, through an informal perspective. A man who hates modern music and believes people listen to music just to ignore everything and prevent them from thinking about reality instead of listening to the music to enjoy it. Harris uses metaphor and comparison to express the importance of having a sense of reality. People are listening to music for the entertainment and desire for the art created by it, however, they use it to drown everything around them out.

Society’s use of music has definitely changed over the years for the worst. People have lost the love for music because of its art and are only interested in cancelling out our surroundings. Sydney J. Harris not only explains this throughout the text but also uses metaphor to get his point across. His argument regarding people within society no longer listen to music for the art of it but “to drown out reality” is emphasized by the metaphor, “It is not in order to hear the music, but in order that the vacuum in his or her minds may be soothed by sound, so that silence does not force them into thinking about themselves or experiencing the real world of perception and sensation” . The use of “the vacuum in their minds” represents the emptiness or nothingness with society’s mind nowadays and enforces the idea that music has become an addiction to avoid reality. The tone of the text being condescending towards people only listening to music as a distraction argues that is disappointing and absurd. Referring to “silence” being the void people fill with music relates back to the “vacuum” statement to reinforce metaphor used within the sentence. The generation people live in today is represented throughout this text in a negative way expressing society has lost the importance of appreciating things for what they are and have become a way to avoid problems and reality.

Along with metaphor, Harris uses comparison to ensure his arguments are understood by the reader. The comparison throughout the text emphasizes the difference and similarities of what people’s purpose for music is and other addictions and or distractions from reality. Music has become a popular distraction within this generation and Harris compares to other substances, hobbies, and objects. To enforce the argument trying to be pursued, Harris explains, “This urge, almost a compulsion, to keep reality at arm’s length is nearly a pandemic in our society. It accounts not only for the incessant, frenetic music, but for the drugs, the booze, the sports mania, the television addiction, the intense preoccupation with trivia – all of which act as opiates, dulling any sense of reality” (Harris 8). People find anything they can to “dull any sense of reality” to avoid his or her surroundings and problems. Although music, drugs, alcohol, television, etc., are extremely different things, their use are similar within society. They are all used as a distraction from almost anything people do not want to deal with. The use of comparison between these things help emphasize the extreme reality of what people are doing to cancel out the thought of what is going on. The main argument of this text is relatable to people within this generation and our society, which makes it easier to understand and a more effective argument through the use of the literary devices in the piece of literature.

Distracting yourself from reality and ignoring the true purpose for music shows the change within society today. People have turned a positive thing such as the art of music into a completely different perspective and use for the object. Through Harris’ arguments and literary devices to support his arguments within the text explains how the importance of reality is lost and the art of music is no longer the reason of listening to it. Finding a way to cancel out the world around us, as well as our thoughts have become such an important task for people that it has being expressed as a negative approach to life represented by Sydney J. Harris’ “Blasting Music To Drown Out Reality”. Filling the void and avoiding reality has become society’s main focus. Creating music as a distraction has become a detrimental effect on people’s perspective of the world and reality. People within this generation need to understand the bigger picture of life and not ignore any sense of reality through distractions.