Cultural Pendulum

[Invisible Man]

It could be my own nostalgia making me say this, or just wrong-headed thinking, but I suspect a lot of cultural forces swing back and forth on a ~30 year cycle. Start in ‘the modern era:’ the 1930s had strong proletarian movement that reacted to huge economic forces that also resulted in the market crash in 1929 (rise of the IWW, American Socialism, Federal Writers’ Project, WPA, &c). The 1960s saw a move away from strictly economic progressivism and went full-bore toward human/civil rights (again, created from long-standing pressures). The 1990s fomented a bunch of culture wars that we’re still playing out, and sowed seeds for a lot of controversial or politically contentious subjects and experiences we’re still working out (transgender/transhuman rights; the purpose and impact of data; national/personal security, &c). So each of these movements have effectively moved up the Maslovian pyramid – from the baseline economic to protection to humane treatment to the psychological to the collective wellness of individuals.

These decades function as cultural and ideological platforms for specific conversations. Our collective attention vacillates from one partisan view to another; this helps to explain the swing of the political pendulum, the strong reaction to ‘SJW types’—whose concern with the higher-order concerns of esteem and belonging infuriate those more focused on the baseline needs of their communities—and, to the point, where we get music that coheres into movements associated with a period. We’re always having these debates, but some emerge, perhaps in hindsight, as the clear issues of the moment.
All of this tension anchors music in these political conversations. This decade has been no less political than others, but cultural ephemera haven’t congealed around the conflicts. This seems strange, unless I’m right, and it’s more about gathering forces for a coherent response across a thirty-ish year cycle than it is about the prevalence of cultural grist for the musical mill. Every so often something comes along that makes the attempt—Dong Lover’s ‘This Is America,’ for example—but it doesn’t have enough help or critical mass to tip.

David Graeber has done some great writing on this. The basic thesis is that a citizenry with somewhat unencumbered by crushing work—one with some leisure time—is very dangerous to the interests of capital and finance. And it’s not just because of the time to think about things; it’s that the importance of job/work/security is eroded by the process of requiring people to do less. It’s one reason academics are often pigeonholed as leftists. Not because that’s their initial leaning, but because it’s their job to assess the structural function of X, and that their ‘logical and unbiased’ assessment leads them to a left-leaning result (or what looks leftist in the U.S.). The only other people fortunate enough to survive by thinking about stuff all day are the people tasked with turning that thinking into a profitable enactment of those same structures, and they have a deeply vested interest in keeping the whole thing moving along smoothly. Of the two ‘intellectual classes,’ I know which one I throw in with for precisely this reason.

Back to the history books: In the 1930s, this time came from massive unemployment. It was, of course, followed by an industrial boom that saved an economy in crisis (WWII). In the 1960s, from the rise of the class of administrators and bureaucrats coupled with increasing automation of menial tasks (followed again by military conflict and a conservative administration). In the 1990s, from a period of relative prosperity, stability, and technological advancement (followed by…).

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, or at least I’m pretty sure it isn’t. There don’t seem to be intelligent forces capable of conspiring, or of manipulating events on this scale. And none of it works out perfectly; it’s all very messy. This is more my take on a dialogue so cumbersome that each statement or reply plays out over decades.

Point is: I think we might be on the verge (or are already there) of another age where pop culture blossoms into something new, memorable, and deeply associated with the elements that give rise to it. My sense is that the next decade will look like a democratized, anarchic explosion somehow related to personal technologies. We still haven’t really seen the full capabilities of devices we all own and carry (i.e., there are more smartphones on earth than humans). The singularity is simultaneously both near and far, in other words.

This is dumb and unrigorous methodology for assessing a century of cultural change; this is ILF.

Ok bye

[jirodreamsofdank]

I'd say we've been stuck in a cultural (and political) moment since 1968 that's never been resolved. Each minor shift since then has been a response to the anger reactionaries felt at free love, civil rights, anti-war protests - up to and including people irrationally angry at the very idea of 'SJWs.' We've never managed to get past 'Nam and show no signs of doing so soon.

I have a rather more dystopian view of the near future - we've replaced the mediation of film studios, network TV, record labels with a veneer of self-publishing/Youtube/bandcamp that should point to a blossoming of culture... but the power (and wealth) is concentrated more heavily with a small group of companies (Google, Amazon/AWS) and the devices that give you access (user or publisher) to those services are highly invasive. We've completely set aside the regulation of monopolies (media and tech).

There are 7.5 billion people in the world, there will always be interesting stuff on the margins, but the possibility of mass culture penetration for anything not easily commodified is largely hopeless.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/
On a longer timeline, I'm placing bets on exterminism being the rule of the day.

[JonnyAngle]

[Invisible Man]

I appreciate the article and the sentiment. Apocalyptic writing has existed for as long as there has been writing (and probably before), so I’m a little skeptical of that outcome. Based on what, jiro?

[jirodreamsofdank]

I appreciate the article and the sentiment. Apocalyptic writing has existed for as long as there has been writing (and probably before), so I’m a little skeptical of that outcome. Based on what, jiro?

It's not apocalyptic, though. Though I will say this sentiment bugs me when I hear it - "oh there've been millenarian sects since we could conceive of millennia" - the difference between now and then is that never before the modern era has the capability existed to essentially wipe out humanity. People waiting for 1000AD didn't have nukes. All empires fall, I'm not betting on disarmament of the US, Russia and China before one falls cataclysmically.

As to why I'm betting on exterminism? Simple - climate change. We're past the tipping point, shit's only going to get realer from here. We've already had a preview with refugees in Europe.
The developed world has maintained its standard of living on the backs of the global poor - when those poor come knocking at the door because they're starving, do we expect them to be greeted with kindness or guns?

On a smaller, less horrifying scale, in the US we're into the fourth decade of stagnant wages and a declining middle class while capital has increasingly concentrated among the hyper-wealthy. We have just enough bread and circuses (again, dependent on the global poor's production) to help us not notice. 25-year olds without rich parents can't afford to pay rent but a $500 65-inch flatscreen assuages some of the bitterness. Now, courtesy of climate change, food prices start to rise/the southwest enters a decades-long drought while the auto loan bubble bursts/the student loan bubble bursts, automation starts to hit the remaining 'safe' white-collar jobs.

There is little reason to believe that things get better from here - there isn't going to be some magic tech solution to climate change, there's zero sign that our billionaire overlords want to share the pie via UBI or something similar.

[dubkitty]

i saw an interesting take on what we might call esoteric Marxism or post-Marxism recently (n.b. i am not a Marxist because i believe he misunderestimated human's tropism towards selfishness) where the writer posited that if the powers that be (hereafter, "TPTB") in the 20th century ruled by means of Debord's society of the spectacle, the 21st century TPTB rule by anxiety, by keeping everybody so worried and weary that they can't find it in themselves to do anything. i'm not convinced that spectacle has lost it's effectiveness, but it's an interesting idea that may perhaps explain part of the maddening passivity on Americans in the face of recent realities. they're having marches hundreds of thousands strong all over the world, but the only thing the masses will hit the streets here (other than black people protesting murder-by-cop) is for a sports championship.

[dubkitty]

i wrote a paper back in high school--well, actually i wrote an outline which my piano player then wrote for me (i was a lazy boi)--on the cyclical nature of US culture based on the ebb and flow of trends in popular music. i rather like the old quote about history always repeating, first as tragedy and then as farce.

[Chankgeez]

Maslovian pyramid

That's the name of our new band! Dust off your drums!

[fcknoise]

I appreciate this post. I constantly swing back and forth between thinking there is an extinction level event happening soon or that we will somewhat peacefully find ourselves in a position where states are adequately equipped to deal with climate change, economic inequalities and automization. I don't see that being possible within a free market system unless heavily regulated and internationally safeguarded but I could be wrong.

[oldangelmidnight]

I'm not sure that 100 years is really a significant enough time period to pull a meaningful pattern. It does seem like culture and technology have been in some kind of feedback cycle during that time, though.
I'm curious about how climate change is going to impact all this. If we've only got ten years to get our shit together, I'm not optimistic. If I'm lucky enough to live out my natural life, I'd guess it'll be total chaos at the end.

[Snufkino]

Your mum's a Cultural Pendulum.

[Achtane]

I'm glad that I won't be around for the post-apocalypse.