It Matters: Voice and Identity

Link to article here. I know it's from December so "current" is a bit of a stretch but it's still valid.

This article talks about how a study was done at Dartmouth testing the relationship between how the human brain perceives motion and how the brain perceives music. The cognitive receptors in the brain were the in the same area. They designed a program that connects an animation of a ball and the movement to specific note intervals and varying dissonance, and students adjusted the animation until they found a movement and sound that they associated with a certain emotion. They then took their test to Cambodia, and found that even halfway across the world their results were almost identical.

In class, we've talked a lot about personal voice: finding and establishing voice in our reading, our writing, our opinions. But what I feel we've failed to address is our voice as a collective whole. While I like being able to enrich our voice as an individual in the community, I think it's just as important to embrace a unified voice for our generation. We're a few years away from being adults, and what are we known for? Being the generation that says "like" too often, that can't go more than an hour without some sort of technological stimulation (guilty), the generation that is so ridiculously unhealthy our lifespan is less than that of our parents and grandparents. We are the next generation of innovators and leaders, and we have to adjust to this society that is in an era never been seen before. And yes, it's crucial that we have these individuals to promote ideas, but our generation as a whole needs to be able to unify.

Our educational environment pushes a lot of emphasis on math and science. STEM program! New innovators! Advancing our country! "What are you talking about? You'll use calculus every day for the rest of your life!" And while I don't disagree and don't intend on bashing math or sciences, I'm going to take a different opinion here and say other classes, in particular the arts, are just as important. Yes, I realize the importance of jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math in our society. I'm not saying we need more starving artists or really crappy autotuned musicians. I'm not even saying that we need more well fed artists and extremely talented musicians. But my point is that the arts give a foundation that these jobs would not be able to thrive without.

We see a lot of themes of identity and cultural identity in the literature we've read. From the short stories to Heart of Darkness to the beginning of Jane Eyre, we see strong personalities and identities being challenged intellectually and being enlightened and altered in different ways. So maybe that's what our society needs--a great big reality check. With arts, we learn different approaches to solving problems, different ways to stretch our minds, different ways to see our world, our culture, ourselves. As corny as it is, exposure to the arts gives people purpose, hope. This exposure might make a creative thinker who, without a foundation in skills from the arts, never would have been able to change society. Particularly in this case, we see two completely opposite cultures unified through the way they think about music. If our brains, despite whatever differences we might have, are the same universally when it comes to perception, think of how many new doors that creates for future generations. (Doors that wouldn't have been open if it weren't for music, mind you.) We can connect intellectually, innovatively, and creatively on a global level. So maybe, just maybe, this idea of a collective voice and collective identity may be exactly what our society needs to advance in the years to come.