Cultural Pendulum
Posted: Fri Mar 22, 2019 12:17 pm
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
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
Dust off your drums! 