The Eternal Breakfast Debate in a New Place

[Serial_Apologist]

This realisation came as a bit of a ( slow motion) shock to me some while back.As a History student I should have known better I suppose. Not sure exactly when it started , but possibly triggered by the Iraq war.
One of the disappointing things about contemporary life is the generational warfare being waged by large sections of the media ( and I don’t mean just The Mail) the fallout from which may well include cultural impoverishment .

Advances in AI are going to be a further issue for the arts. If I was in charge, 6th form and Uni students would have compulsory lessons in, among other things, how to deal with cultural over- abundance. The change from music being expensive and hard to access to the current situation has happened far too quickly for comfort.

I see that a college professor has written a book on The Future as a Political Idea:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At2G-BI44jo

[Master Jacques]

I wonder whether it all goes in phases or cycles . We tend make the Enlightment assumption that everything constantly improves . It doesn’t. Cultures decline , libraries are burnt , cities are sacked. Then seemingly new things emerge , new talents, it’s just that there aren’t that many around at the moment. Even popular culture is in massive decline. Taylor Swift is massively less musically interesting than the Beatles.
. We live in a time of cultural abundance - everything available at the touch of a button - but with so much rubbish to sift through,

It certainly is cyclical, unless you prefer the Yeatsian image of the gyres, i.e. a repeating pattern that never quite comes full circle, as evoked at the end of Midsummer Marriage. And "progress" is indeed not always improvement: that assertion is one of the most harmful made by the prevailing, arrogant presentism.

Most of the arts are indeed moribund, within the declining West; and that itself might be a symptom, rather than a cause, of the equally strong decline in the quality of popular culture. Without a strong popular culture, there can be no "high art". In the UK we have precious little of either which speaks to us directly, with popular music (Beatles included) having been reliant on American models (and accents) since the mid-1950s. And despite the current political winds of change, there is no sign of our chronic cultural, transatlantic dependence ending anytime soon.

Aside from all that, your "touch of the button" is of course the root of the problem. We no longer have to make our own music, art - or even our dinner. And this diminishes us. Just as it has diminished Radio 3.