Or we could have a generation of amazing musicians, programmers, painters and social workers.
Have you read David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs? He talks about how a lot of the British music scene of the 60's and 70's was basically funded by social welfare programs. Broke kids having time to hone their craft.
But the "AI" of today can just copy and style, can make art faster than people.
I think that while we can say, art is art, people just like doing art, which I think is true for some people, there was also a major inventive to make good music in the 60s and 70s which will no longer be there if a machine can write an album in 20 seconds and steal your style almost instantaneously.
Maybe people will be using AI to make unimaginably good art and prosper from that, which I hope so but as it stands now, it's a very different situation to what happened in the past.
> He talks about how a lot of the British music scene of the 60's and 70's was basically funded by social welfare programs. Broke kids having time to hone their craft.
Just because somenthing happened organically/by chance in the past, doesn't automatically mean you can just replicate the same result today by forcing thse same policies from the 60's in the world of today. You might definitely get a completely different outcome.
We had something like that during the pandemic. Kids, or young adults, were blowing it all their easy money on crypto and $GME stonks which led to tonnes of get-rich-quick scammers and pyramid schemes, not making new music or art at home.
Also, the generation of The Baatles didn't have their brains fried by endless doom scroling on tiktok, social media and Fortnite. If they were bored at home with no job, they had little escapism so listening to other artists and creating their own competing content was the go-to, while today if you've got no job and are sitting bored at home there's million other hedonistic avenues of keeping yourself entertained that are much easier than having to pick up a guitar, learn to play it well and come up with meaningful lyrics.
Passionate artists and musicians will always find a way to create content they enjoy even if they'll still be broke as every generation before them. The Beatles of today are on twitch or youtube, creating content about the stuff their passionate about and getting funded via Patreon or other donations.
I have another anecdote to bring to the table. I'm from Eastern Europe and the best music, especailly hip-hop, that came out of my post-communist hellhole country was in the 90's when we had the worst possible economy, rampant inflation and crime, no jobs, no welfare, no money, no opportunities, nothing. But those times produced the best artists and football players(soccer for you guys). Now the economy and welfare is 100x better than back then, but the quality of art and music has gone down the toilet. Why is that? I think the new found prosperty brought with it a career focused culture and because now there's more and better things to do for money and entertainment than struggling with creating good music in a garage while broke.
So to me, it seems the most depressive economic periods produce the best art and music, and the abundant "easy times" produce the worst and least inspiring. It was similar to 50 Cent's "Get rich or die trying" or Eminem's "8 Mile", all these artist came from suffering of economic harship, not economic prosperity, but nobody sane in the head wants to bring back the hard times just so we could get better hip-hop and music.
NFTs were the new music and art, once you cared to look past your given Bored Apes. I also don't think that it's a coincidence that XR and AI hit their strides during that period. There are more examples.
And, note that the momentum-killer in all these cases was not organic, but institutions clawing back their riches - by hook, and certainly by crook, in many cases (I'm glad you mentioned GME). Return-to-office had every rational reason not to happen, and they forced it anyway.
If anyone is interested in this stuff, Justin Sledge is an excellent youtuber who covers esoterica like this in a scholarly fashion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJkft2lUMD0
I used to fall asleep listening to this guy. Not a slight on him, I mean I would put his channel on and listen for 30-45min before falling asleep; the Chopin piece in the intro/outro just gives it a vibe, peaceful, but mystical, and sort of eerie. And his voice. Hard to explain. Great channel though! Highly recommend if you're in an...esoteric mood.
I adore Justin Sledge, despite putting me to sleep quite a few times. If you want to learn a bit about the religious side of the esoteric (mysticism) I highly recommend Filip Holm https://www.youtube.com/@LetsTalkReligion
