Part of the problem is "The way we are now." Active listening is time
consuming, and who has time?  Most people wouldn't even understand the
concept; music has become candy for the ears.  I am lucky that I started
listening to everything when I was a kid, so I can tune in and tune out
at will after 60 years.  I don't hear the rubbish coming from the ceiling
in the shopping mall where I work, but I can put on CDs at home and a
juicy bit will reach out and grab me by the neck while I'm doing something
else.  Not many people can do that, and there will be fewer in future
as junk music/noise becomes even more ubiquitous everywhere (if that's
possible).

An anti-music-in-public-places organization called Pipe Down was making
some progress in Britain a decade ago, but it would never work in the
USA.  If the British are too polite, we Americans are too rude.  Suggest
to a shopping mall or a supermarket that they turn the "music" off and
they'll just look at you like you're crazy.  At the same time that some
Americans believe that playing Mozart at babies makes them smarter, it
will not occur to them that playing garbage at everybody all the time
makes them stupider.

Donald Clarke

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