I've been watching this conversation on and off over the last few days. It's a long-ass interview but there is so much golden food for thought in almost everything the guy says I had to stop and write some of my own thoughts on it. Delightfully, it's one of a very rare handful of optimistic things I've been exposed to in a very long time, while still acknowledging the mess we've gotten ourselves into as a society.

Stagnation

Our societies are becoming stagnant. The music industry is so stagnant that 60% of the output from the record label, Universal Studios, is in publishing, rather than recording. They are simply buying old music and taking profits from the legends and classics, while dropping any risk they might be exposed to by bringing on new artists that might be edgy or experimental with a chance of flopping.

Long ago were the days where record labels would physically go to gigs and hunt for talent with their own ears, find something promising and sign them up. You guys are on your own with things like Spotify.

That might sound like a good thing for an artist who has a business mindset, but then you have to compete with the AI music which is created by, for example, a single person using over 600 pseudonyms. How can he get away with it? It's encouraged!

Music has become so stagnant, the model so impersonal, that people don't follow artists anymore, but playlists:

Music to study to
Music to work out to
Music for a party
Music to sleep to
Music for anxiety

And so on. People just press play on the desired function of music, without ever taking a moment to know who on earth even wrote the music. Musicians are naturally fighting tooth and nail to get onto these playlists to become an unrecognizable, empty shell of what they once dreamt they would become.

This is safe. This is stagnant. This is a perfect environment for AI music to thrive without anyone even noticing. And the less spectacular and interesting the music becomes, the more likely people are to revert back to the classics and legends. Ka-Ching!

I'm sure you all recognise this does not exclusively apply to the music industry, but to everything around us.

Look at modern architecture. Everything from rectangle glass skyscrapers to street bollards, all made to be as inoffensive and safe as possible. The practical upshot of which is that everything looks utterly sterile. White, black and grey cars dominate, making up about 80% of all cars.

English telephone boxes have been degraded from an iconic, globally recognised piece of infrastructure, to a glass rectangle.

Abysmal.

But It doesn't have to be that way. Let's look at the typical cathedral and church throughout history (Credit). In the 800's, the belief was that God was coming in 200 years to take everybody away. The people therefore only built wooden cathedrals because, well, what was the point doing anything more?

In the 1200's, there was a mindset that the material world was basically garbage and evil, so their cathedral style was, undecorated utilitarianism. A baroque cathedral had quite the opposite approach, believing that all things nature can be used to represent God in all his glory, and their buildings certainly reflected that.

Gothic cathedrals represented how people felt light itself was divine, and so they built them exceptionally tall to fit giant stain-glass windows in. Byzantines felt they could communicate with God within their lifetime, and so they built a giant domes as an attempt to restore heaven itself.

Now, looking at modern churches across the US and you get these monstrosities in strip malls. What does that say about our society and beliefs? This is a clear reflection of our current state of stagnation. Even the religious among us believe that the physical world is fleeting, a mere distraction from the true beauty in the afterlife, so who needs a supranatural house of God?

Society grows great

when old men plant trees

in whose shade they shall never sit

The result of our current status quo is that of mass depression. Our focus on efficiency, neutrality and growth is prioritised over the wellbeing of the populace and its generations to come. Screw those guys - they don't even exist yet!

Culture is dying - there is no time for it. From bureaucratic bullshit and encouragement of corporate greed, to mass immigration and a misrepresentation of individualism by means of isolationism. Culture only gets in the way. do you want our GDP to drop? Do you??

The UK is still (for now) considered a wealthy nation, one of the richest in the world, because we measure such things based on GDP alone for some reason. And yet, the average Joe Bloggs' quality of life is substantially lower than people living in far, far poorer underdeveloped nations.

The happiness of people is not, and never was, built upon wealth, materialism and efficiency, nor are we made happier by being shielded from offence or being surrounded by 'diversity'.

The happiness and well-being of humans is only ever achieved by a sense of community, a sense of belonging. A sense of trust for the people around us, and that we are all part of something larger than ourselves, be it through the church of one's religion or the community of one's village. The below lifestyle is not conducive to the human spirit:

The fact that we listen to music out of function rather than love of an artist is one of way too many symptoms of a sick society. We've been captured by corporatism, there's no doubt about that.

But as the above conversation points out, it will turn around. There's typically a cycle of change of about 70 years and perhaps we are approaching the next cycle. As people get bored of the current consumerist model - having taken advantage of people's wallets by extorting us all for less and less value - they slow down their consumerism. Why buy another christmas special coffee for $9 from starbucks when it's just the same basic drink with a squeeze of sugarry syrup atop some cheap cream?

Thinking outside the box seems an extinct practice, and that's going to cost the corporate world dearly (It already is, Starbucks is recording record losses, as is Apple, having innovated nothing of interest in many years. Vision Pro? What's that?). Eventually, everything from coffee and record labels to urban planners and governments is going to have to sit down and figure out how to make people economically active again. And I'd bet money the only successful model will be about downsizing and enhancing community.

Listen to the heart and soul of humanity, and humanity will reward you with your precious money and GDP. Everybody wins!