So, Neil Young, If Music Can't Change The World, Then Can Voting?

Neil Young Becomes A U.S. Citizen

Last week, Neil Young finally became a U.S. citizen after a delay due to "possible lack of GMC (Good Moral Character)".

Neil Young's primary desire to becoming a U.S. citizen was in order to "vote my conscious on Donald J. Trump".

So, can voting change the world, Neil?


Neil Young @ Berlin Film Festival - Feb. 2008
Photo by Markus Schreiber
At the Berlin Film Festival in Feb. 2008, Neil Young stated in response to an audience question, that music can no longer change the world. The comment was made after the screening of his film "CSNY: Deja Vu".

From the man whose song "Ohio" played a part in helping end the Vietnam war, the reaction was swift, huge and global. (See World Reaction to Neil Young's Statement "Music Can't Change World").

In 2008, many argued passionately that music can in fact change the world, while others argue that it never has and never will.

The worldwide reaction to Neil's response prompted him to make a highly unusual clarification about what it will really take to change the world with a post titled "A Song Alone":

"No one song can change the world. But that doesn't mean it's time to stop singing.

Somewhere on Earth a scientist is alone working. No one knows what he or she is thinking. The secret is just within reach. If I knew that answer I would be singing the song.

This is the age of innovation. Hope matters. But not hope alone. In the age of innovation, the people's fuel must be found. That is the biggest challenge. Who is up to the challenge? Who is searching today? All day. All night. Every hour that goes by. I know I am.

My friends write to me don't give up. I am not giving up. I know this is the time for change. But I know that it's not a song. Maybe it was. But it isn't now. It's an action, an accomplishment, a revelation, a new way. I am searching for the people's fuel. Will I find it? Yes. I think so. I don't know why I may have been chosen to help enable a discovery of this magnitude. I know I can only write a song about it when I find it. Until then I can write a song about the search or spend all my time looking. But a song alone will not change the world. Even so, I will keep on singing."

'When the aimless blade of science slashed the pearly gates'

"Living With War": Rock Music's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -
Neil Young Rocks on CNN

This whole reaction is similar to that when Neil commented that he made "Living With War" because today's musical generation wasn't which resulted in an open letter to Neil Young by musician Stephen Smith which in turn resulted in the Songs Of The Times web page.

Pete Townshend discussed Neil's quote that music can not change the world on this YouTube video and didn't necessarily disagree.



On August 7, 2008, in Helsinki, Finland, Neil Young debuted a new song called "Just Singing A Song Won't Change The World" in response to a the uproar he created. Others, nevertheless, haven't lost faith in the power of music, as Amy says:

"Perhaps it’s true that music and musicians don’t change the world the way they or we like to think they can. But individual people create change every day. Some by teaching, some by protesting, some by volunteering time or money. Sometimes a smile is all it takes to make the difference in another’s day. A song won’t change the world dramatically overnight, but it has to start somewhere, and musicians and their music can still do their part even if it’s not a revolution."

  What Would Neil Young Do?   A Battle Raged on the Open Page: Can You Change Your Mind?  Poster by Jeremy Deller   So, has the time when music could change the world passed? Is it time for science and physics and spirituality to make a difference in this world and to try to save the planet? And does voting matter any more than just singing a song? What gets us closer to our Gods? Music that motivates and inspires us? Or a politician asking for our vote? There are those that argue that mankind is suffering from problems that can not be solved politically -- only spiritually.

Creation of Eve

From The Metaphysics of Creation by Jay Dyer:

Without a tradition and a worldview to inform science, science is not a search for knowledge or truth, but a tool of power politics, enforced by the nastiest oligarchs to their own ends.

Science becomes scientism, the baseless ideology of a technocratic state with no other telos than the perpetuation of the technocratic corporate state itself. Might now makes right, because there is no truth, “truth” is simply made by the entity with the most “stuff,” whether material or virtual. The removal of telos from the world, and thus of the divine from the world, is the replacement with the Great Monadic Particle God of Flux, and his cultus, the fetish of the ever-new. Yet the ever-new that must constantly be churned out constantly denies eternal truth and permanence, and so negates itself nihilistically as irrelevant. Religion then degenerates according to this destructive scientistic spirit, becoming a mirror of the consumerist plastic society in which it dwells. Without a metaphysical basis, science is meaningless. If ultimate reality is irrational, man’s finitely-constructed subjective meaning is a drop in a vast ocean of universal meaninglessness.

Modern man and his scientism are ultimately doomed to nihilism, as the empty promises of scientific progress tell man his life pointless, and with it all of his science.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
The "Virginia Is For Lovers" Concert
Foreman Field @ Old Dominion University
Norfolk, Virginia - August 27, 1974

(Click photo to enlarge)

Back in the '60's and '70's, music was one of the few forms by which political messages could be communicated to a mass audience. Today in the age of instant smart phone communication, music can still has a role.

Music, as with all art, is not made in a vacuum. You can't separate life from the art. All art, no matter when it was made (and no matter how unwittingly) makes a political statement. And, as far as spirituality -- whose version of spirituality? So, for 'science and physics and spirituality' to make a difference in the world, it takes vision. To communicate that vision, it takes art. It's not the format (speech, music) or the platform (radio, internet) but the message, so keep speaking/singing out for the things you want to see changed.

It's not naive to think that music and art will change the world, Neil. It's naive to think we CAN'T.


Neil Young, Neil Young (2004) Life As A Neil Fan
Photo by Melanie Schiff

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