tone-deaf (-def') adj. not able to distinguish accurately differences in musical pitch --tone'deaf'ness n. (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language)
Let us say I know a person, a friend, who is totally tone- or tune deaf. Let me explain what I mean by this. Most of us, most human beings can enjoy music: symphonic, opera, popular, or even far out ethnic music, vocal and instrumental music. We can enjoy many kinds of music even if we may not be able to tell the fine points of difference between one philharmonic orchestra and another, or one famous singer and his or her greatest rival. On one end of a continuum many persons have perfect pitch and can enjoy the very best performances with a discriminating taste. A few individuals are extremely talented not only to hear but to make the best of song and instrumental music. My friend is on the other extreme of this continuum. Music, except for the simplest clear vocal childrens songs, is a complete jumble of unintelligible sound. Let me emphasize this friend has no hearing deficit, and no difficulty following the spoken word.
How then does my friend even know that such a thing as music exists? Quite obviously, because it is all around him, and everybody it seems spends lots of time listening. Something like 70 percent of non-advertising time on radio is devoted to the sounds of music of one kind or another. There is a multi-billion dollar industry churning out records, tapes, and performances. Individual musicians are celebrated on television and in print for their work. Biographies of composers from Bach to Zeller, and of performers from Abbado to Zappa are there for him to read. He is, in other words, left in no doubt he is missing something. Even though he is unable to make any sense of the music sounds, he is forced to accept that other people do.
Imagine humankind were constituted differently. Imagine all of us were as tone-deaf as my friend, and music makers and listeners existed in exceedingly small numbers. There would be no music industry, no public performances, no celebrated singers or instrumentalists. If rare enough, people with musical talent would have a difficult time finding and recognizing each other. The rest of us would consider them a small coterie, devoted to activities we could only consider unreal or nonsense. A group occupied with making senseless noises. Even within that small coterie, most people could not really properly follow the music, or hold a tune, or play an instrument. What is ordinary talent with us, the ability to play an instrument soso, might be the ability of one person in a million. What we would consider a good performer, would be born only once in a hundred or two hundred years.
In the situation described how would ordinary people know music really exists? Consider the enormous variation in musical talent which in fact exists, from my tone-deaf friend on one extreme to the most talented performer at the other. This variation would still exist, so that among the few music lovers, only one in a hundred could sing passably. But the ordinary member of the music coterie, someone who could not make music himself, would in most instances be the one trying to explain music to the ordinary tone-deaf mortal. Meanwhile all the members of the music coterie would exalt the capability of someone who has, by our present standards, merely a fair to good capability to play whatever instrument would exist in the absence of a music industry. Playing on a comb maybe. This person himself might brag about his talent, or might belittle it, saying something like: "You should have heard, so-and-so, a really great performer long ago and far away." The ordinary tone-deaf mortal would merely shake his head saying: "I can't hear what you are talking about, I don't think it really exists, you are deceiving yourselves."
Now consider psychic capacity as such very rare ability, with a wide variation of very few people with smaller and lesser capabilities. Imagine a truly able psychic is born only every century or two. Most people who claim psychic abilities really have none, or only the tiniest bit. Like musicians, they have off days, when nothing will go right. Average instrument players among us often refuse to play in public, thus like psychics they may be shy. Not every performance is good. Transferring thought by telepathy works only sometimes incompletely; viewing a remote scene may be jumbled. People who have no psychic abilities could only shake their heads and say: "You are deceiving yourselves." How could the psychic-deaf multitude be made to accept there really is such a thing?
This parable is meant to be provocative. Tell me how you can be sure psychic talents if very rare do not exist? (e-mail to: roder@uc.edu)
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