Damn, lot of fiery and valid critiques. Reinforces what I like to say the West's obsession with markets so much so that it has turned society into a market first with a society tacked on second. Fewer and fewer places are what they should be, societies with a market.
The part about the arts and music is very telling - turning it into brain chemistry analysis for what sounds will poke the brain the right way for short term engagement. Now everything is being designed for short-term engagement and no depth.
This goes into human relationships as it becomes harder and harder to find people that are capable of anything resembling sophisticated conversation. And AI Slop may be getting better, but reality is people's communication is also being brought down to AI Slop levels. AI Slop now competing with Human Slop. Which slop will win? What a time to be alive.
Was watching Tom Dillon (a comedian) on DOAC podcast, and he said something so true.... the whole influencer sphere around buying shit like recommending beauty products or wellness pills just needs to disappear and be replaced by AI. It's not because the AI is so great, it's what he said, these are the MOST boring and vapid people imaginable. These are the people the young generations aspires to be. The volunteering of self-lobotomization of the population and people turning into shells of "real" people. These folks, and those that look up to them, cannot and will not change anything in society for the better.
I was just thinking about a conversation I had with a co-worker from the former Soviet Union around 20-25 years ago, he said "a society or culture dies when it can no longer create beauty". I didn't really get what he was trying to explain to me at the time since I was fresh out of school and in full workaholic mode, but as I started understanding the arts better it started to click.
I'll stick to music since it's what I know best. I'm a child of the 80s which was the decade of rock excess, many parents of the day claimed it was the worst thing ever and it was held in the same regard as rap, electronica, and grunge in later decades. But even if you look at the big acts like Metallica or GnR you'll find many songs which have much deeper and more profound meanings, for instance,
One, Disposable Hero, and
Civil War are all anti-war songs which describe not only the horrors of war, but also how the government & CIA instigate conflicts so they can profit off it at our expense. Madonna's
Like a Prayer can be interpreted as how




-priests made children get on their knees and suck their cocks, it was an early warning for the scandals which would wrack the Catholic church. Dire Straight's
Money for Nothing, well, that's pretty self-evident. It was good music which also delivered warnings, messages, and said a lot about the society of the time. The music was alive & real.
What do we have today? Taylor Swift singing about her 64th breakup. And unless my daughter's lying to me, all of her music is basically about how she sucks at relationships. It's pure programmed crap, made solely to create an image and sell slop.
Which brings me to back to the beginning and also covers your point on human relationships. Could I have the same conversation today with a 22 year old kid that early 20s me had with the older Soviet co-worker? Even though I didn't get it at the time, I was able to listen, ask questions, and try to understand what he really means and why. He was trying to explain a concept which was completely new to me so I had no context to really understand it, it was an interesting idea which sounded reasonably logical but I'd never heard anything like that before. I don't even know how I can begin to have a conversation like this with most adults my age, never mind a fresh out of college kid. And the strange thing is, abstract conversations like this were quite common in my circle of friends when I was in my 20s. But then it just died around 10 years ago, and I can only talk about these things in real life with a very small group of close friends. Weird AF now that I think about it.