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We could not reflect on the implications of science in music without examining the effect of science and technology on people. Although science can often help people, it also has negative effects. Even when people perceive the effects to be positive, many times science actually hurts people rather then helping them. A prime example of this is in Pleasant Valley Sunday. In this tune, the only thing that people are concerned about are their consumer goods, and making sure that those goods are better than those of their next door neighbors’. Everything is mass-manufactured and everything is all the same. Like these mass-manufactured lives, art can also be "manufactured." In Paperback Writer, we see how some literature isn’t the work of an author. It is the author’s work, folded, spindled and mutilated into something that the publisher thinks will make a great deal of money. This idea can also be observed in the music industry. Losing My Religion is a song about people forsaking religion and values in search of profit. Although this song is very critical of society, it also holds a lot of truth. When we leave behind our religion and values, it also affects people’s attitudes towards each other. In Live and Let Die, Paul McCartney tells us about a society in which you try to get ahead, and to hell with anyone else. Early in life, we learn to "live and let live," but as we become more involved in society, this motto becomes "live and let die" because we are so concerned about getting ahead. In this quest to keep ahead of the person breathing down our neck, we sometimes forget about the most important things in life. Cat’s In The Cradle details how a father prioritizes his career over his family life. As his child grows up, he is never able to spend time with him. Finally this vicious cycle comes full circle, and the son has his own career and can’t spend time with his father. Rocketman is another song with the same theme. However, Rocketman concentrates on the travel associated with the narrator’s career that keeps him away from his family. Someday Never Comes also has a similar theme, but it carries the idea a generation further. In this tune, a child who grew up in a Cat’s In The Cradle world becomes a father, and finds himself doing the same thing. Another result of the advancing scientific culture is that it creates jobs in technical fields while making other fields obsolete. This can be seen in songs such as Allentown, Café On The Corner, The Downeaster Alexa, and We Gotta Get Outta This Place. In Allentown, factory workers are put out of work when there are very few jobs around that only require a High School degree or less. In Café On The Corner, we see a farmer who is working as a bus boy at a café because he cannot make money at farming. In The Downeaster Alexa, a fisherman has trouble when the fishing territory is depleted, and when enviro-Nazis make laws that endanger his livelihood. Finally, We Gotta Get Outta This Place tells us about a man and his daughter living in a similar environment and dreaming of a better place to live. Signs and Livin’ On The Edge both deal with how people try to categorize each other. Signs shows us how, in the 1970’s, people thought that "long haired freaky people" were second class citizens. Livin’ On The Edge has basically the same theme, but from a 1990’s point of view. In addition, Signs tells about man’s efforts to confine and categorize nature. This idea of categorizing and confining nature also appears in The Last Resort and No Man’s Land. The Last Resort tells us of the migration west to "paradise" and the subsequent conversion of "paradise" into what the people left back home. No Man’s Land is in the same vein, but it also shows us what happens when the urban areas society built degrade. One looks at technology from a completely different perspective. It focus on the fatal effects of technology on one man. First, technology in the form of a Viet Cong landmine crippled him and turned him into a vegetable lying in a hospital bed, waiting to die. In that hospital bed, a different sort of technology, used by well meaning people, keeps him alive. This technology is also cruel, but in a different way. People can deal with this influx of technology in different ways. One way that is shown in Mother’s Little Helper is to turn to drugs to slow this fast paced life down to a normal speed. Another is to focus on the important things in life, and disregard those things that you feel are irrelevant, as in Wonderful World. While neither of these approaches is a very good solution, many people try one or both of them in efforts to cope with modern life. |