Quote:
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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
The "feverish obnsession with novelty" describes our entire culture, our entire society, from young to old, I was not just talking about teens and music.
ZEITGEIST PEOPLE!
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I think this is largely true. Although equally, I think it's safe to say that this had led to a backlash of people that savour types of culture which explicitely reject it. This could itself be thought of along the lines of novelty: the novelty of tradition and certainty in a world of glitter and transience, which can be safely indulged in for a period before returning to the lighter relief of the new-for-new's sake.
Atari said in a much earlier post that people of a certain generation, which he dubbed 'generation sucks', no longer have the critical faculties required to properly evaluate
any culture. And here I think is the
real problem.
Whatever is put in front of such people, whatever its inherent value, the outcome will be that it merely becomes an empty sensation (or at best a pointlessly subjective one) simply because the audience lack the tools of proper engagement. Such a thing happened to me on another thread when Glice posted up a series of different versions of the same pieces of music. While I could tell the difference, I didn't have the education to properly say which was superior. Of course, some would say that there is no 'better' version: that it's simply what you prefer. But that approach leads to the kind of populist fascism that dominates so much culture day. Of
course certain versions were superior. I could've argued against the common orthodoxy which makes some consider certain pieces over others but, again, my lack of knowledge regarding classical music prohibited me from doing that too.
What i'm saying here is that a quest for novelty is a basic symptom of an embracing of relative values. The whole 'if
you like it, then
fine' syndrome, which allows someone to say that they believe Tarantino to be a better film-maker than, say, Godard. The correct response to this should be, you are absolutely wrong, but instead they're usually reassured by the aforementioned mantra of 'if
you like it, then
fine'. Because ultimately a quest for significance in the banal will lead only to a series of banal experiences, it is no wonder that people skip quickly from one thing to another. The fact that when they finally do come up against something of true value they won't be able to recognise it, and will probably just reduce it to the same level as that which they flirted with earlier, is the real cultural crisis of our time.