Notes on pregnancy music

I used to work with a small group of people. Most of them were young parents, so we often spent our free time talking about parenting. Raising kids of similar ages, we would share common questions and support each other by lending a sympathetic ear. But one of the members was rather strange; she would always bring her note to our sessions and ask what kind of music the other parents had their babies listen to during pregnancy. She would write down their answers and murmur, “I will definitely not play that music for my baby.”

Some people exhibit the tendency of demanding a clear and simple conclusion about a certain phenomenon. Once something is perceived to be the cause of a problem, they are quick to brand it as “inherently bad.” The women who carried her note falls into this category. She would refuse to listen to logic when there is clearly no direct causal relationship between pregnancy music and a child’s erratic behaviors.

In a battle, the winners are often remembered as eternal heroes, and losers go down in history as eternal losers. Such blind stigmatizations occur in the battles between militaries or weapons. During the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, the T-62 Syrian tanks were trounced by Centurion Israeli tanks when the Syrian tanks developed by the Soviet Union had stronger armor and more powerful 115mm guns. Was that because the T-62 is inherently inferior to Centurion? That is too hasty a conclusion. An array of variables was at play during that battle – tank driving skills, passengers’ capacity, topography, strategy, and commander.

Then they would ask about the motive behind defending the T-62. The question extends into an accusation if it is to defend the Soviet Union. Such stream of consciousness degrades one’s ability to think and analyze. Weapons analysis does not exist to put them in ranks; it is used to make precise calculations about the weapon’s military capacity during war, which can occur anytime, anywhere. Quantified speculations cannot serve as a barometer of their value; it consists in how much the weapons can contribute to an operation that the organization is aiming to accomplish. True speculations must be measured by value, free from blind quantifications. Unless we learn to lose our numbered prejudice, our society will find itself brimming with a bunch of young people with robotic skills, with true talents left unfound for good.