How Music Cures Our Ills (And There Are Lots of Them)

"How Music Cures Our Ills (And There Are Lots of Them)" is the title given in If This Isn't Nice, What Is? to a commencement address given at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, Washington on April 17, 2004.

Summary

Showalter Hall, Eastern Washington University

Vonnegut says he was once so innocent as to believe the United States could become "humane and reasonable", a common dream of those who lived through the Great Depression and World War Two. He no longer believes that, knowing that absolute power corrupts absolutely and humans are "chimpanzees who get drunk on power". Saying this about America's leaders can hardly affect the morale of those fighting and dying in Iraq since their morale, like many of their bodies, are already destroyed by being treated "like toys a rich kid got for Christmas".

No matter how corrupt institutions of power become, music will still be wonderful. Vonnegut hopes his epitaph will be "the only proof he needed of the existence of God was music" and he has arranged Strauss to be played as the graduates depart so they can waltz, since humans are dancing animals. During the Vietnam War—which made billionaires out of millionaires just as the Iraq War is making trillionaires out of billionaires—the music kept getting better. Indochina wasn't restored to order until to locals finally kicked America out, and then as now, they refused to "fight like ladies and gentlemen" by being in uniform with heavy artillery. While there is beauty in Western classical music, African-Americans have graced the entire world with the blues, basis of all modern pop, jazz, rock, and hip hop. During slavery there was a higher suicide rate per capita among owners than slaves, who could play the blues as relief.

As a Humanist, Vonnegut reveres the teachings of Jesus, regardless of whether or not he was God. When he once asked his son Mark what life was about, he replied it was "to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is". This quote is almost as good as "do unto others as you would have them do unto them", which was actually said by Confucius who live five hundred years before Jesus. China, via Marco Polo, also introduced pasta and gunpowder to Europe at a time when neither hemisphere on Earth knew the other existed and before progress like the H-bomb and The Jerry Springer Show. Like all Humanists, Vonnegut loves science, which has taught us that once there was nothing and then a big bang happened that made everything.

Mel Gibson, 2007

Republicans seem to hate socialistic ideas like public schools, health insurance for all, and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Christians constantly demand that the Ten Commandments—which were conveyed by Moses—be displayed in public but never mentioned the Beatitudes, which wouldn't make much sense in the courtroom or the Pentagon. Part of the problem with the Constitution is "only nutcases want to be president". But no one sane would want to be a human, who are so untrustworthy and greedy, to the point that Vonnegut wishes he could be "a sea otter or a barn owl instead". Jesus himself was nailed alive to a wooden cross and put on display for entertainment, just like a recent movie made by Mel Gibson. Now with modernity, if we die horribly on television, at least we will have entertained. All great literature revolves around how terrible it is to be a human. But every single person was born into a world where there were already "crazy games going on", such as liberalism versus conservatism, which the media insists are the only two teams and everyone must be with one.

The American government has long waged a "war on drugs", but the two most abused, addictive, and destructive substances are completely legal. The first, alcohol, was used by President George W. Bush by his own admission from age 16 to 41, until he claimed to see Jesus. The United States now spreads democracy in the same way Europeans spread Christianity to Native Americans. Once when a Spaniard was about to burn a Native American at the stake, he offered a cross to kiss, saying it would grant the Native American access to heaven. He replied if there were Spaniards there, he certainly didn't want to go. Such ingratitude is now seen in the people of Baghdad. The American people have no real say in what their leaders do, especially now that money and the media have "disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution".

Vonnegut has no alcohol problems himself, although he is clearly addicted to cigarettes. Except for once smoking a joint with Jerry Garcia, which didn't seem to affect him in any way, he has avoid other illicit drugs. However, the biggest high of his life was when he got his driver's license, his car fueled "by the most addictive and destructive" drug of all: fossil fuels. Long before his birth, the world was already hopelessly addicted, destroying the natural environment in the process, and soon everyone will have to go cold turkey. Like crack babies born already hooked, all humans are now "fossil fuel babies". Like many addicts, humans now commit violent crimes to get a fix while they still can. Having aged, Vonnegut can no longer parallel park or deal with gravity very well, and is "a flaming neuter... as celibate as fifty percent of the heterosexual Roman Catholic clergy". Despite all the horribleness of the world, there are still some people who behave with decency and compassion. Such people are saints and maybe some of the graduates will be such. Although most people have Original Sin, a number of them also have Original Virtue.