Studio Sessions
Discussions about art and the creative process. New episodes every other week.
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Studio Sessions
52. The Homogenization Problem: Is Culture Losing Itself? PART 2
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Part two of two.
We explored the cultural tension between our fascination with the past and uncertainty about the future, using the metaphor of returning to an earlier video game save point when the current level feels impossible to beat. The conversation examined how platforms like YouTube are becoming flooded with AI-generated content, creating what we called a "cobra effect" where attempts to solve one problem create bigger ones. We discussed how the ease of content creation tools has led to an overwhelming amount of low-quality material that drowns out authentic voices.
Our discussion meandered through the broader cultural phenomenon of nostalgia - from movie soundtracks that transport us back to being fourteen, to our tendency to romanticize past eras while forgetting their difficulties. We questioned whether our comfort and technological convenience might be driving us to seek meaning in the past rather than face the blank page of an uncertain future. The conversation touched on how decentralized culture has fractured our collective stories and myths, leaving many people without a shared vision of progress. We concluded by exploring whether going backward might actually be necessary to move forward - returning to earlier save points in culture to gain fresh perspective on seemingly insurmountable challenges. -Ai
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Reflections
Speaker 1And it'd been a golden afternoon and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
Speaker 2If there was a scene from a movie that you played in this, like you've done a couple times in the past it would be the little button at the end of the Cable Guy.
Speaker 2Have you ever seen Cable Guy Jim Carrey? Jim Carrey, matthew Broderderick, directed by ben stiller. Um, and I don't think there's any spoilers here, but at the end the climax breaks the um, uh, the end, uh, the satellite dish, the dish that like beams cable to the places that get it into your homes and everybody's tv goes out. They're basically like do a uh a montage of everybody, like uh, watching cable flipping through the dial and it goes out and all of a sudden they go.
Speaker 2I, you know, I think, a couple households. I can't remember if it was like hey, babe, do you want to go for a walk? Yeah, picks up a book and starts reading. Like people return to, like a recognizable, satisfying soul-fulfilling life, human existence and so you talking about, like you know, did you?
YouTube's AI Content Dilemma
Speaker 2this is, hopefully this extends too much, I believe and I did not read this. I don't know 100 for sure if this was something I read because someone was trying to get views or if it's an actual thing but YouTube, I believe it's YouTube is going to not allow monetization or demonetize channels that are all AI-based, really, really, if they are AI voiceover, ai imagery and all that, and it's obviously just in just biological systems, like, if you introduce something to an environment, it, like, will eat itself into extinction, um, and not literally, but like dead internet theory?
Speaker 3almost possibly, but like you have enough like well, npcs or bots. Once it reaches 51, then it's just a slow. You might as well put the timer on until it eats itself.
Speaker 2Well, I think this is like if you give everyone the tools to make content cameras, microphones, all that then you give them ai and there is literally no barrier to just making slop. They're going to flood your platform with so much common denominator that all of the people that were there because of the value it once provided. Now it provides none. You just killed your platform.
Speaker 3That's the problem with yeah, I mean like message boards and like I mean there's, there's actually there are like well known examples of internet message boards where that was the issue. Oh, I know what it was. It slowly begins to eat itself. It's like I'd never want to you know the joke like I'd never want to be a part of a club that allows me as a member. Yeah, where it's like the only way to grow is to lower the standard.
Speaker 2Yep, it was something with a cobra. Cobra Like Ouroboros, like the city, the snake that eats itself. No, it was like the city had an issue with rats so they introduced cobras, but then I can't remember. That's a terrible idea.
Speaker 3It seems like uh cobra allegory.
Speaker 2I'm gonna have to find this, but anyway, yeah, the cobra effect. Is that what it is? Sorry, this is like a history where attempts to solve a problem end up making it worse. Yeah, yeah, it's this. It's this the cobra effect. And I forget the story behind behind. What it was interesting about a bounty regarding oh, they made a bounty for dangerous snakes. Right, they created a bounty system, so if you kill a cobra, you get X amount of dollars. Yeah, well then they went.
Speaker 3Well, we can make a shitload of money if we go out to the rainforest bring a bunch of cobras and keep flooding it with cobras then, we just keep killing them and making more money, and so that is the concern with youtube, is they?
Speaker 2if you make content and it gets views, you're gonna make money. So, and again, I don't know, this is for sure a thing, or if I read something that was bullshit, um, so that's not good on me, but I heard that they were going to demonetize ai based content. That'd be good, so that it doesn't ruin youtube, I would, would.
Speaker 3I mean YouTube has already gotten so yeah, Everything, every, I mean literally everything, and at this point I just go in with the expectation like this is going to be trashed in a couple of years, like literally every platform that I'm on. I'm just like this is going to like now. I even make the. I have the. I try to have the conscious thought before I adopt any platform of can I just do this better with like a pen and paper, right?
The Cobra Effect & Platform Decay
Speaker 3Yeah, Like is there just like, is there a better way to do this Cause like this is going to be shit in five years.
Speaker 2I just you know, and maybe it's not but and I'm like so hopeful that people that have a voice or something to say or a soul to the work that they want to make, that somehow there will be enough of that or they'll get so tired of all the crap that they're I just don't know if that happens on make their own stuff.
Speaker 2I don't know either it could be a different platform, it could be all some and that's the other thing. It could be like let's not make youtube the best version of it that I want. Yeah, let's go start our own thing, because fuck this place it's this place is dead, I think.
Speaker 3At this point, though, it's like I'm I'm tired of the. Let's go start our own thing, even like, because all of that just sinks into well, it's attract and extract.
Speaker 2You go, you start it with a mission. It's like, oh shit, it's something.
Speaker 3Now, this is now, let's extract that Now it's so hard to get the network effect because people are just like, oh no, this is the new thing, it's doing it better. It's like, no, they're not.
Speaker 2It's like don't bother me, don't waste my time, and we've seen that with social media platforms that have tried to create a better version. I don't know if clubhouse is the best example, but I feel like there have been. Well, look at photo sharing apps. Look at what's happening, right now with blue sky yeah like blue sky.
Speaker 3Jack dorsey started blue sky because of how, how co-opted twitter got right and it was like an antidote to and this was before he sold it. I believe um and um, like when I, when I say how bad twitter got this, that's not like a political statement, it's literally just Twitter got it. There were advertisers who were like, look, you're not allowed to show certain content. And then that created riffs. And then you start to like now the opposite of that is okay, you know, take some of those guide by guide rails off, and that's created its own new set of horseshit. And now just nobody, it's just like hard to use. And a lot of people still use it, but it's just hard to use.
Speaker 3And then Dorsey created blue sky is like an antidote to that. And then cause Twitter had gotten co-opted by its shareholders, right, and lost its. I mean, he's a very like decentralized, like kind of grand vision of the original vision of the internet kind of guy. And so it creates blue sky and then it gets co-opted by its shareholders and he leaves it and literally disowns it. Yep, and now the, the new management or what, have turned it into this thing and they're like this is Twitter, but better, and it's just the opposite political ideology of Twitter with all the same problems, and people don't recognize that. But it was supposed to be this new platform and they started with the mission of falling into the trap of. It's going to turn into shit eventually, the soulless tool of extraction like we. We're not learning any lessons and every new platform is just.
Speaker 2It promises to be all of these things and then it just falls into the same pit of mud, and if something does get made more from an artistic or soulful perspective, someone at some point co-ops it, and I'm sure there are examples of artists or things artists created, whether it was a business or a platform or whatever it was. That sort of like made it like it didn't fall. Bob Ross.
Speaker 3Yeah, bob Ross, you talk about Muzak or whatever. Big time Bob.
Speaker 2Ross. Yeah, throw on some Bob Ross.
Speaker 3Ken Burns. I was watching Ken Burns. I always watch Ken Burns. Ken Burns is, it feels like he didn't really get co-opted. I mean even like we sit here and complain about movies and about this and the content and all content is like this we're being hyperbolicolic. There's a lot of great stuff out there yes, I think both of us would agree 100 and part of me wonders is it just the amount of it that's different? There's a lot of it and so it's harder to find.
Speaker 2but yeah, I think. I think, especially on social YouTube shorts platforms, short form content platforms you've got to sort through a lot of noise. It's trying to find the Bruce Springsteen concert t-shirt in a warehouse with 40 million pieces of clothing. Yeah, versus, going to the vintage shop where the guy curated the whole collection. You know, going to the vintage shop where the guy curated the whole collection. It's in, you know, downtown Spokane, washington, and you can walk in and have your pick of pretty good choice of of those things. Yeah, um, and you're going to pay a price for it.
Speaker 3Do you remember curated, like the, the guys who would literally curate I'm thinking like YouTube pre 2010, and there were actually channels that every day or every week, they would get three or four of the best videos on the internet. Yeah, could you imagine Like that concept just sounds insane. Today they were literally the vintage shop, though for like.
Speaker 2YouTube, yeah, and you would go into their channel.
Speaker 3That word, and then they would show you like three or four things that was super cool, that's right. Or they thought it was cool. Yeah, uh, employees, pics, you know, at the video rental store, all that stuff, that's your, that's your play with this.
Finding Good Content Amid the Noise
Speaker 2You just go back to making the pre-2010 videos of well, and I found four videos this week the hope is that some of the people that create that potential counterculture on youtube look to old YouTube to go. It's so cool.
Speaker 3Some of it's not even up there anymore, though, like I found that more and more old podcasts, old like pre 2014. Yeah, it's just hard to find now People they don't pay the server upkeep or it just gets completely buried. It's tough to find. Yeah, you still find like your occasional, like 15 year old videos.
Speaker 2Like they're always popping up in the algorithm. The internet archive. You can sometimes get stuff back then it's hard with video content.
Speaker 3It's just and like. That's part of the reason why everybody seems to have selective amnesia these days about what they remember, because literally our world, quote unquote only goes back like 10 years I know.
Speaker 2But what's interesting is, I feel like and I don't want to start a whole other thread because I know we're pretty late- we're at, we're at 120 do we keep?
Speaker 3going and splitting it into two parts, or do we just try to wrap it up pretty soon?
Speaker 2well, I was going to start talking about this idea and you can decide if you want to go down this. But this idea that, back to um, what we talked about with hauntology and all that there's, it's staring at the blank page of the future is so difficult, terrifying, uninspiring, whatever you want, intimidating, yeah, that we want to search through the bins of old shit, the bins of the past, to try to find something. You know, it's me. I go to the thrift store, I go to, um, uh, vintage markets, whatever. I mean, I just bought a jurassic park t-shirt. You know, it's like I'm so confused and blank about what's coming that I'm gonna just like, almost literally bury my head in the sand and just look through all the old shit to find the thing that's that. That that's cool, fun, inspiring, whatever. You know, and you know, I don't know if, like, the blank page of the future is like me sitting there going what's coming next or trying to make the thing that's coming next, whether it's through my channel artwork, photography, whatever or even just this idea that they're.
Speaker 2I mean, I do think progress is important, but like the idea that there has to be something coming next, yeah, is kind of uh and not even that something's coming next, but just sort of a like a feeling of where things are headed or that, like the design work or what you're doing is sort of I don't know future forward maybe, versus, give me this camcorder, give me these old clothes. I'm going to, I'm going to go through, I'm going to go through the bins of the past to to find the things that inspired and make what I'm making now. I'm working through this for the first time. It's just kind of had this thought actually on the drive over.
Speaker 3So if this is not, I think we're doing part one, point part two to be honest.
Speaker 2But there's just something fascinating to me about as a culture. It feels like and again I have sort of I'm paying attention to a sliver of the broader culture. You know, I'm in that world right now, both in the physical world and the digital world um, but there's just something fascinating to me about how much of a fascination there is with nostalgia. I mean, I just went and saw superman today. The theme from 1978 was in the movie. I saw jurassic park with the kids. You know there's all that.
Speaker 3And then there's I'm wearing old wranglers, an old bruce springsteen shirt, I'm messing around with old tech like if matt looks like he's scratching like crazy too yeah, I know I'm not he got attacked by a rabid gang of chiggers yeah, I did, uh, my mowed my yard on last week and these went crazy.
Speaker 2I just didn't want people being like, oh yeah, he's on, he's coked up coming down, buddy, you got a little, got a little, need a little bump there. Yeah, I, I've got chiggers, man, they're horrible.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's what you were exploring.
Speaker 2We're going backwards, Like you with the dumb phone, you know, and you were just talking about how Apple's never going to make the form factor of the iPhone SE or whatever which one you have, the smaller iPhone the iPhone Mini. It's just all about stuff from backward to me.
Speaker 3I still get excited about new things. I mean for sure. It's just there's an infinite archive of things that I can discover in the past.
Speaker 3And there's only a couple, like there's only a couple of new things that come out every year, like that are that are actually worth you know. Again, getting back to that, like how wonderful it is to be alive, and like not just overwhelming your experience with nonsense, like I think there's something to be said about like some things just take time, but also there is. There is like just in the quality of the certain things that I like, um, like films or um, like there there are great films that have come out this year and last year and the year before, and there are great books and there's like great music. There's like there's always an exception, but I can go back and find there's no such thing as new movies and old movies. There's just movies that I I've seen in, movies that I haven't.
Speaker 3Yeah, like that kind of that's the energy I can go back and discover all these things. And then there's also just you know, there's. We have a very hyper-focused culture where the only thing that's relevant or worth doing is the thing that is in vogue right now, and there's a lot of things that I enjoy doing that aren't in vogue right now. Right now, like you know, maybe, yeah, like you know, using a typewriter, handwriting something, or smoking a pipe or I don't know, like having a conversation with your buddy or like right I don't know like, and again everybody's got a different collection of interests.
Speaker 3But I think there's nothing wrong with looking back. We just happen to live in a generation where it is very easy to look back, and that's what I was Like you can go back and find all of this stuff and find all of this stuff. I mean, part of it is just, you know, we've really only been in the hyper-commercial America for 20 or 75 years.
Speaker 2Well, and then internet, internet America, internet, hyper-commercial America, where there's literally an online documentation of everything we've done since 1994. Yeah, looking back on the past fondly, you know you don't immediately recall all of the stress or frustration that you had when you went and saw jurassic park in 1993.
Speaker 3I also think people have co-opted the future to sell it to us like, think about tech, like how tech has kind of co-opted the idea of the future and constant progress and turned it into, like they co-opted this beautiful idea that is universal and that is this, you know, humanistic, has this humanistic core to it and the societal core to it, and they co-opted it and turned it into money, spend money on our products. Right, you got, the future is here, the future is coming. You know, we're building the future, we're creating the future. They, they've marketed, they turn it to slop right and so, yeah, the pendulum swings and people say fuck your idea of the future. I'm going back to this quote, unquote past, where I can pretend that this wasn't the case well, I think that's a little bit of a revolt.
Nostalgia vs. Future Uncertainty
Speaker 2Yeah, I think the thing that I was driving at, or wondering, is does our tendency to just sort of live fondly with our memories and the nostalgia of something and experience of time in our life, um, combined with the fact that the internet is there as literally like the bins at a thrift store that we can sift through to try to find things that are representative of something from our past, of, uh, a time in our life that, um was simpler, was less stressful, even though all of that was there at the time, we remember only the better parts of it. And it is that odd combination of this internet archive of the last 30 plus years combined with just a human tendency to look fondly toward the past, to love those moments of potent and powerful nostalgia when it comes up. I mean, I literally listened to the Superman theme in the Superman movie and I'm like this movie's fine, it's okay, Play that song Tears. You know like I get all emotional from it because it it makes me feel like I'm, you know, 14 again watching that movie and listening to that score, Like I'm, you know, 14 again watching that movie and listening to that score.
Speaker 2And you know, as far as the future goes, or the present, there's also a perceptionened up or shrinkflation, or cheap, shitty ingredients that scientifically replicate the old flavor for the most part but really aren't as good. So we just constantly are like remember when oranges used to taste good? Remember when a bag of Doritos was 24 ounces and you paid $2 for it and there was like a shit ton of cheese dust on every goddamn chip? Um, and so we're just like fixated on the past, because with hindsight you're just like it was better back then and that's an illusion to a certain extent, but you feel that way. Yeah, so that blank page. I don't know Like I, but you feel that way.
Speaker 3Yeah, so that blank page, I don't know Like. I feel like I would challenge that a little bit. I love old stuff but I don't feel like it was better in the past. Yeah. I mean, I think this is probably the best time to be alive.
Speaker 2I mean it's really People say that all the time.
Speaker 3right it's super easy to sit here and be like, oh, this is the best time to be alive. Well what about these three bad things?
Speaker 3It's like, yeah, I get it Like corporations have gotten like there are problems there, but at the same time, like a lot of the things that I enjoy, I'm like there's no other timeline where that's my life. It's just not possible and I'll sit and I'll complain about certain things or like, oh, this happened at work. I don't like that. And then I'm like your granddad literally fucking painted houses for his entire life.
Speaker 3Yeah, and it fucked him up like that was like his life yeah, breathing pain, fumes and to provide for scraping lead paint off of old houses and it's, it's like, oh man like what happened when this email got sent and I was upset for 13 minutes and then I watched YouTube videos. It's like I don't know, Like I just I do, like I don't know, I just I'm not, I'm not going to complain. Like I feel, like things are good.
Speaker 3Like I want. I want to go to a different part of the world Okay, you can do that. I want to buy this thing? Okay. Well, we have this world marketplace on the internet where you can pretty much find anything you want. Oh, I want to completely unplug from everything yeah okay, well, do you, do you want to do that? Yeah, you can do that if you want. Yeah, like, do you want to live like it's, like it's, you know 1863?
Speaker 3you can do that yeah and you can be like, well, no, you can't. You. It's like, no, well, you could.
Speaker 2You just have to actually live like it was, like figure it out like there's, yeah, there's sacrifices, but for the most part, yeah, you could, you could do that and I wonder if some would argue that the ease of all of that obviously going back and living like it's 1880, it's easy to do, but once you're doing it, it's not an easy life, it's difficult. How easy things are, how much technology and companies and all that stuff have created tools that make life very easy to live Air conditioning, everything. That's crazy. And is that lack of discomfort in our lives part of something that informs us to look backward? And maybe, again, you have to kind of reach a certain point.
Speaker 2Although I don't know, I see a lot of young people that are just interested in old shit. Although I don't know, I see a lot of young people that are just interested in old shit. But are we too comfortable? And that's another factor in my perception of everybody having a higher interest in the past than I've ever recalled in my life. Maybe I'm paying attention in different ways. Obviously it's very subjective, but that's interesting.
Speaker 3Well, and it's like it's also how exciting is the future.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3I think there's a real issue with how exciting is the future, Like we talked last, last time we talked about or I guess a couple episodes ago we talked about like decentralized culture and just these ideas of. But when you lose decentralized, when you, when you go into decentralized culture, you, you lose a common cultural core. You also you lose a collective story. That's right. And when you lose collective experiences.
Speaker 2Collective experiences any of us are like that.
Speaker 3You can relate thing right and it really harms isolates yeah, it harms your sense of belonging right, and so, yeah, we can sit and talk, like, yeah, it's a really good thing that you know these things are fragmenting and like there's not two networks that control, right, all of the information flow and that people can be interested in the things that they're interested in. But then you also sit here and you say, okay, we're losing our myths, we're losing our stories, we're losing our common languages and our ability to empathize and things like that, and those are these issues that are popping up. But I think that is all kind of combining to create this scenario where the future is not that exciting, or maybe the future is not even imaginable to people like you've got people that are in so much you know, student loan, debt or whatever they they have no future right like there is no like, oh well, I'm gonna do this and this.
Speaker 3Like the future, the idea like there is no future, there is no past there's, and it's cliche, but it's like it really there is no future, there's no past. I'm just surviving the present right now. That's, that's all. And so these are just ideas, and when idea of the future, it's it. It, it builds on this, this, this like hope or this desire that you know there's going to be a some sort of like a linear progression from the state that you're in now right.
Speaker 3It's going to be a state change where you go from state one to state two and I think there's, yeah, there's, some people where it's like there've there've been decisions that have been made for them because of contemporary society that have kind of pulled that idea where they're the only state change that's imaginable is a negative right stage, like it's's linear in the wrong direction, and so when that happens, you don't have any conception of the future. The future is a lost idea to you. And then add that to the fact that, yeah, the future as a concept has been co-opted by. We're bringing you the future in our phone, our fucking internet, you the future, right, and our phone, or our you know fucking internet, is the future.
Speaker 2Google, five, yeah, these things these things that we're realizing keep us more isolated. Are the big things that we're seeing about the future. Yeah, you know, is AI is better faster. Internet is, uh, the vision. Apple vision pro Like Is better faster. Internet Is the Apple Vision Pro Like. Is any of this unifying us or giving us experiences together?
Speaker 3When the iPhone came out, like the future felt inevitable.
Speaker 3The future felt like it was this meteor hurtling through space and we were all just on it. And now the future feels like it's traffic, it's inconvenient. The future is annoying, yeah, and there there's a, there's a problem there. You're not going to escape this, this ontological idea of you know, moving like going back to the past. If that is our vision of the future, yeah, I think that's like that's the problem we need to solve. It's not who's going to reach super intelligence first, it's who's going to figure out how to reframe what it means to strive for a greater future. Right, that's what. That's the roadblock to society. It's not agi right now, yeah, but that's all you're gonna hear about. Agi and right, virtual reality and yeah stuff.
Speaker 2The beast games well, season two and if that's the case, is it again? We're being driven in that direction because we buy more shit when we're in that state. This is, I hate, how negative.
Speaker 3This is like I feel like we've been on like a two hour. Just fuck, mr beast, and fuck fuck this and fuck this shit. I just yeah, I don't I don't like being this negative, because I I think you can listen to this and leave it with a very what do we do right? And it's like and well, I don't know the answer. I don't necessarily think it's a negative thing, I think it's just about mapping.
Speaker 2It's sort of like let's get a greater awareness of what's going on around us, so that it either validates our instincts for what we are doing or what we want to do, or it helps us change direction drastically slightly. Whatever it is to navigate the of what, what it is that's out there and asking questions. Why does it seem like part of the monoculture right now that I am experiencing and think of many others are seems very rooted and steeped in nostalgia and and going quote unquote backwards, uh, from getting off the internet, staying away from some of these technological advancements, getting more quote unquote primitive.
Video Game Save Points & Cultural Reset
Speaker 3I hate to use this, this analogy, but it's almost like. It's almost like like did you ever play when I was a kid? And I played some of these games? Sometimes you'd get a game that was really difficult, and do you remember save points? Yes, absolutely when you would save it, and then you'd create the file and it'd be like like uh, point 3.0, dot, whatever, um oh yeah so did you ever get to a place in a game where you got far enough in the game that you just couldn't beat that level?
Speaker 3yeah, and you said, all right, fuck this, and so you go back to an earlier save point.
Speaker 2Screw around, yeah, and just fuck around because it's fun. That's a great analogy.
Speaker 3Yeah, because I know what this is, whereas I'm going to have a little bit of fun. I'm going to have more fun re-experiencing this than the frustration and hopelessness that I'm getting from this.
Speaker 2Tapping back into the positive experience I had, even if there was obstacles to overcome and some difficulty, it didn't. It wasn't impossible. You know, and I deem this impossible and I you know I know it's a techie analogy, but well, sometimes, you know, I'd be like look, if I'm gonna beat this level, I'm not gonna go online and look up how to do it Right. You know, I'm not going to basically cheat Like. I should be able to figure this out.
Speaker 3Um, and you know, maybe any time away from it, and then I'll figure it out, but yeah, and a lot of times what would happen and maybe hopefully, the analogy extends this far, because this is, this is a beautiful, positive tie in is, a lot of times what would happen is you'd play through and get back to that point and you'd have a new context or a new fresh eyes, fresh eyes yeah, and you'd go right through it.
Speaker 2Yeah, you'd be like yeah, so obvious so maybe that's where we are.
Speaker 3Maybe we have to go back to go forward could be something.
Speaker 2Yeah, we gotta, we gotta go back to that earlier save point, fuck around for a 10 years or so here with some fresh eyes to come back and be like yeah, I mean I think that summarizes not to make this about me, um, but it summarizes tapping into these things from the past on my channel, because I'm like I'm kind of dissatisfied with where it is, where I think it's going. I'm gonna go fuck around with all this old shit and like go out in the real world and like hang out with people and meet people and all these new people in my life. From doing it now I've got a better idea of what to do. I kind of know what. I know what. I got my head around what I'm doing.
Speaker 2I'm still gonna fuck around with this stuff a little bit, but yeah, this is all gonna be better and I know, yeah, I see it now. Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's fair to say. So are we as a culture sort of consciously, subconsciously, making those choices? Cause we don't see it, we got to go to that earlier save point.
Speaker 3Yeah, fucking, just climb that mess around for a little bit.
Speaker 2Jump, jump, some turtles like some turtles find those that shit behind the waterfall or whatever. And then come back and do it a little differently. Yeah, yeah, I like that. Yeah, the video game save point.
Speaker 3I mean, yeah, it just feels like it could be. Yeah, we're at.
Speaker 2I wonder if there's instances in the past where people feel like they did that like yeah, oh, I'm sure that I'm big this, there's no way this is a new experience.
Speaker 3Some of the well I mean the classic midlife crisis is to me the perfect example.
Speaker 2Yeah, you know, like, especially like. Uh, you know 40 year old males acquiring things or doing things. You know, um that pick up where they had left off when things went on a different path, or you know whatever you know certainly have made jokes about the things I've done in the last few years as part of a midlife crisis. I think you know, I think it's more of. I only have you know. I only have so much time left when I was doing stuff.
Speaker 2Earlier I felt like I had all the time in the world. That perception is now shrunk, so I don't see what's going to happen. I'm really going to tap into this stuff from the past to figure it out and that looks like a midlife crisis and you know, in a sense it is.
Speaker 2you know, we've talked about that before, though that that shift in your perception of time from how you perceive of it when you're in your mid twenties into your thirties, and then, if you know, marriage, kids, all these adult things, the things that you saw your parents do, come in and then you're like I don't really have like 15 years left to like really do serious work. Yeah, especially like as an employee or something.
Speaker 3Oh no, I mean it really hits when shit like. I mean I go buy a Corvette, I'm gonna you know, and I can totally relate to that, what really killed me is looking at old photos of my dad. Yeah right and thinking, oh my God, this was like I haven't been around for that long. Right, he was my age in these photos and then I was a thing, and now he's gone.
Speaker 3Yeah, and then you really start like that many years, shit, that's right, this is and then that's obviously not even like taking into account that we could walk out of here and some shit could happen or any like anything could happen at any time, and you know why I don't. I'm not, I don't think you should be afraid of that. It does kind of yeah, right yeah, you're like. You know, what do I actually like? Does a corvette sound fun? Right, fuck it, let's get the corvette. Let's go like yep, I'm only gonna get to do this one time for all. I know.
Speaker 3That's right, like who knows send you know it could be the greatest thing, like you might, you know who knows? Reincarnate a different soul, who knows? Like nobody can answer that, but what I can answer right now is like a corvette sounds kind of fun. Yeah, let's fucking send it, because why not, not? And I know like I want to do X, y and Z with my life.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Okay, who cares Like, do it then or don't?
Speaker 2And it's a known quantity. I know if I go get that thing or do that thing, go to that place. I w? I, I lived in the past. Whatever it is, I can, I can, with some certainty, know what to expect and what to feel, whereas, all right, I can see what's ahead. I have an idea of what I should do. I have no idea what it's going to be like or how it's going to turn out. Let's go do this thing. That's a little bit more of a known quantity. Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting, and I I wonder if that stuff intensifies as culture decentralizes and monoculture dissolves well, we have to.
Speaker 3I started reading um jung's red book and I don't know how much you know about it, but it's like, I guess, if I had to give a description based on what I know so far, it's like his journey into the depth. Like they say, when you look off into the darkness you either lose yourself or find yourself, and it's kind of him, him dealing with that Like. I'm going to like stare into the depths of my soul and try to um like and the depths of like meaninglessness, and I'm going to try to pull meaning out of it Right, right Right.
Speaker 3Like I'm either going to lose myself in the meaninglessness or and I mean, as I I've just started it like last night you literally couldn't have been yeah um, and I've been really obsessed with like myths and like like the inferno, or like um paradise lost, or yeah, I've been reading like, uh, the the king james bible, just like going through different like stories and myths and journeys and things like that and you and I talk about or yeah, I've been reading like, uh, the the king james bible, just like going through different like stories and myths and journeys and things like that, and you and I talk about you all the time and I've been um reading that more this year and you know, aside from the video game, like I think there's a very real thing where culture has, like we're trying to figure out what the move, how to move forward from post-modern existence.
Speaker 3Yeah, and you know, I I talked a lot about david foster wallace in the past and I like he had a really he has this idea of like this new sincerity and, um, you see that in his works and especially developed even further in his later works like how do you deal with this? Just like meaninglessness and like how do you contend with that? And, okay, like if everything's ironic, then irony means nothing and it's just the world is cold and dark and empty, and so I, that's the. These are the questions that we need to figure out as, as a society yeah and you know it's.
Speaker 3It's jung staring into the meaningless and like can you find meaning? Can you create a new like? We almost have to have some kind of a collective story. We're just meant to.
Finding Meaning in a Fragmented World
Speaker 3It's how we're programmed, I think and that and that's and so it's like does it have to be co-opted by an institution? No, but that doesn't mean we don't need the collective. The power of a collective story or a collective identity or something like. You know, two of the camps is what brought the downfall of the Roman Empire, the most powerful empire in the history of the world up until today. I mean, yes, there's institutional corruption and all of these things, but it was the idea of Christianity, that kind of like Paul and Paul's disciples, and this idea and I'm not talking about the institution of christianity right I'm talking about the idea that divinity was available to all humans.
Speaker 3Right, just that concept. There was nothing that there was no. Oh well, this person was born in a certain right group, so he is more predisposed, yeah, yeah and and that concept brought down our empire. Yeah, oh, and with enough time, like that was just an idea. Well, the democratization of divinity, right. And then, yeah, exactly, and um, I was thinking about this and like, like America was the next great, like the democratization of freedom and liberty.
Speaker 2Liberty pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 3And yeah, and you can be like oh well, you could totally be like well, the church has caused more problems. It's like, that's an institution, right. You could be like well, the United States is, that's an institution, right. The ideas, though, are like and we need that like next, iterate. Now, the thing that we're contending with is just this meaninglessness.
Speaker 2Meaninglessness. But then I go back to the century of the self, and is it just the hyper-individualization, hyper-self-focused hyper-self-interest that it's?
Speaker 3it's just we are tying this together, so this is unplanned, but like self-reliance, like well, so yeah, like this has been on the table since we started. I didn't know where you're going to go here and I've been content Like yes, I think there is like a, a self-interested like just like I'm gonna.
Speaker 2There's a negative, I'm gonna extract the resources from existence that allow me to do what I need to get done but I I almost think that's like.
Speaker 3That is like that century of the self idea. Is this like self-reliance, or like the idea of like the individuality of the person being divine or next to divine, or genius, or whatever is closer to the idea of you know Jesus Christ, or the idea of America? Right. And then the century of the self is the institution that corrupted that idea, right, right.
Speaker 2Like I don't think it's that, said, hey, there's a real opportunity here. Yes, like I don't think I don't think that said, hey, there's a real opportunity here. Yes, we can take everything that's going on and we can make a shitload of money. It's it's like is the the answer? Gain a shitload of power.
Speaker 2The answer might be there, like it could be there, yeah, that the answer to this meaninglessness could be in that, in the idea idea of the self it just has been and maybe it's in the decentralization and the and the, the the deconsolidation of those institutions of power.
Speaker 3Once you can no longer co-opt it, then it's just.
Speaker 2If we feel, you know, as the meaningless is the source of sort of a powerlessness.
Speaker 3I'm going to, I'm going to give you this.
Speaker 2A lack of self-reliance. Like, yeah, I can buy my groceries and get my car washed and I can watch Netflix, but what can I do beyond that?
Speaker 3Self-reliance goes beyond the idea of like you think. Self-reliance in terms of like relying on yourself for like a physical thing.
Speaker 2I think of it as not depending on external things to thrive.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, I mean like just a couple, like I won't read all in, I'm going to give this to you because I've got several copies and then maybe we just this would be a great season three opener, maybe, sure, but like just a couple of these, uh, to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you and your private heart is true for all men, that is genius, um, uh, familiar as the voice of the mind, as is to each. The highest merit we ascribe to Moses, plato and Milton is that they set not books and traditions and spoke not what men, but what they thought. In every work of genius, we recognize our own, rejected thoughts Say that.
Speaker 2second one again just real quick.
Speaker 3Is that they set at not books and tradition and spoke not what men, but what they thought.
Speaker 2And that's where earlier we talked about homogenization. It's. I'm not going to toe the line and just sort of fall into rank. I have my own thing to say here and I'm going to go against what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 3Well, and you go back to the 70s. I think about this a lot. We were at a bar in key west last year and I was just like man. This place was probably a completely different vibe of a place before, because when we were there everybody was just on their cell phones I was like what is this place like? When that didn't exist, like everybody was just their own personality. They'd been dicking around in the keys for some people 40 years, some people a couple of days, and they're just all meeting at this place.
Speaker 2Um yeah, and we've lost that ideas and what if, and yeah, like staring at the blank page and figuring it out.
Speaker 3Listen to this. This is a good one too. There's so many, I mean. I literally think this whole thing would be highlighted if I could. But else tomorrow a stranger will say, with masterly good sense, precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another. You're just like yep tell me what to think um lost one your angle's down well then, I'll just give this to you. We can discuss this at a different time. A little teaser for season three.
Speaker 3Yeah, I don't know, man, We've gone all around in a circle, but I do think it's easy to think. Maybe it's a pleasant idea to think that you have to go back to go forward.
Speaker 1Yeah, it had been a golden afternoon and I remember having the familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer free audio post-production.
