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| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I'm quite drunk, so bear with my delivery of this point, but...
I was discussing this with the good ship Sykonee earlier, and my theory was basically that we live in an increasing post-modern society, where irony and self-awareness are built into our attitudes, and modern culture is increasingly built out of references to the past. Furthermore, we live in an era where satellite television, the Internet and the "global village" allow young people to see a simulacrum of the wider world at a younger and younger age, which in turns breeds a cynicism towards that world. Kids today are immersed in the adult world earlier and earlier, and they've seen it all by the time they're 18, or at least an edited 24 hour news update of it all.
Basically, what I'm rambling towards is a collective loss of innocence. There is no such thing as a sheltered life anymore, and our childhoods have been plugged into the collective consciousness at a frighteningly young age. Nostalgia normally takes 30-40 years of in-the-moment existence to accumulate. Now, people are so bombarded with information that they're ready to look back at an idealised past by the age of 18.
And that is important. The dislocation of our spirituality to an idealised past is false. Listen to me: Detroit techno, the TB-303 and that terrible 808 cowbell are not something to be yearned for. You're missing the point. They were all part of a futurist movement, an optimistic move towards a utopian destination for mankind, facilitated by the machine.
I know I'm sounding more and more like nefardec every sentence I type, but set aside my personal bias and feel the ideology. Hardware synths and vintage electronic music was about the future. We're living in that future. To idealise hardware is to betray the very point it existed for. As soon as dance music looked back with glistening eyes at Detroit, Chicago and the Second Summer Of Love we destroyed everything those people sequenced and programmed for, just as bands like Oasis destroy the rebellious spirit of rock by adhering to "good time, old fashioned rock 'n roll values". Idealising hardware is a betrayal. If Phuture were dead, they would want you to dance on their collective grave.
We're living in a generation with no identity, a generation that romanticises and idealises a spiritual past that existed only inside our collective imagination. We're at risk of never living, of only yearning for a falsified era of existence we could never grasp, and wasting away in that eternally futile venture.
Fuck that. Our future is being written right now, and the very least I can do is drunkenly call us to arms. |
I used to dedicate hours to downloading porn from Kazaa and that one that had the lady bug as its systray icon. To think that kids can just browse to www.xhamster.com (NSFW!) and watch whatever they want. It just makes me sick. Young people should have to earn their porn.
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