Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that escapes their conceptual framework threatening - because ideologists want a simple principle, or a few simple principles, by which all things may be judged. When I was a student, I lived with a hard-line dialectical materialist who said that Schubert was a typical petit bourgeois pessimist, whose music would die out once objective causes for pessimism ceased to exist. But I suspect that even he was not entirely happy with this formulation. . Theodore Dalrymple
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I am not sure about the ideology of the speaker or what exactly he means. I think maybe he is talking all the things that people do to make us feel better. When we are sad, they tell us that life is not worth living and that it is better to just give up. If you are feeling down they tell you it is not their fault that you are feeling down.

They say that it is just because you are depressed or have low self esteem. When I saw this I thought about the things my dad said when I was younger. He used to tell me that what made him happy was being around his family and friends.

He told me that if I ever needed anything I should ask my friends. He also told me that anything could be fixed if I just tried hard enough. If there were a problem someone had then instead of trying to fix it they would look for someone else to blame it on.

This would be like saying that music does not exist because it cannot be measured like an ideology like communism or capitalism could be measured by an ideology test. It says that what makes people happy is all over the place and it should depend on each person individually.

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More Quotes By Theodore Dalrymple
  1. To regret religion is to regret Western civilization.
  2. There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.
  3. Music escapes ideological characterization. Just as there are some social scientists who believe that what cannot be measured does not truly exist, and some psychologists used to believe that consciousness does not exist because it cannot be observed by instruments, so ideologists find anything that...
  4. Demonstrative proof is lacking, but if we thought only about those things about which such proof were available, our minds would be empty most of the time.
  5. [T]he scale of a man's evil is not entirely to be measured by its practical consequences. Men commit evil within the scope available to them.
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