5 reasons why current culture is great
Don't be down. There's never been a better time to be entertained
Culture is doomed, so they say.
Things are falling apart and we’ve reached some type of stagnation point where the only thing “new” anyone is discovering, are 19 year-olds watching Friends and Lost.
I keep reading articles like this one about how things are in constant decline, entertainment and life-wise.
However by many metrics, it’s never been a better time to be alive.
Global life expectancy increased from 25-30 years (pre-1800s) to 73 years today (78 in the U.S., 85 in Hong Kong).
Child mortality fell from 40-50% in Europe (18th century) to 4% globally.
Average income rose from $2/day (pre-1800s) to $35/day globally (inflation-adjusted).
Absolute poverty dropped from 90% (early 19th century) to less than 10% today.
Literacy increased from 10% (1820) to over 90%.
There are lots of problems, but (gentle poke) there have always been problems, and human flourishing (overall!) is at an all-time high.
Kinda crazy, because that’s the opposite of what we’re used to seeing and hearing.
But is it the same for entertainment and culture? What do I like about culture right now?
That said, I’m not usually what one would describe as “glass half full.”
My glasses aren’t usually rose-tinted, in fact they’re quite smudgy and I’m more likely to point out a gray day than a sunny one.
So in an attempt to be an optimist, here are some things I like about culture right now.
And by culture I mean like creative output/entertainment, that sort of thing.
1. Podcasts are good
I don’t know what people expected from podcasts, like Serial was the second coming of Law and Order or something, but in general, podcasts haven’t always been like that. Instead, they’ve been conversations with people that are fairly interesting talking about subjects that are interesting to me and you.
25 years ago, this sounds insane to hear people talk on the radio this much indepth about something you also enjoy, from a remove.
What a nice benefit. We don’t have to listen to talk radio now, we can pick our particular type of talk radio. Sure, sure, i know all about political filter bubbles, but I also enjoy my particular NBA talk show filter, where I can subscribe to like 5 of them and be satisfied. Then I’ll flip over to indie music or this Christian hardcore/punk rock podcast or this sports / media one.
You can listen to people nearby or far away, of the same gender as you, whatever. You have more than only this guy in the morning or afternoon:
2. TV shows are better than they’ve ever been and there’s more of them
We’re done with peak TV, which is probably a good thing, and yes we can still watch Friends or Seinfeld episodes whenver we want, the whole catalog of The Simpsons and then we get a bunch of new things like every week. We have a problem of excess quality, not a decline in overall quality.
There are so many good shows! Whether that be Shogun or The Bear or even another season of Survivor.
Please try (like I did a few months ago) to go back and watch Dallas or Moonlighting and you’ll see what I mean.
3. Live TV is better than it’s ever been
I’m tired of the hemming, the hawing, the bemoaning over the lack of monoculture or how no one watches the same shows at the same time anymore.
People watched the same things at the same time because there was nothing else to watch.
What I like is now how I can get watch my Tampa Bay Rays, every game if I want, all the way up in New York City. Yes, with the MLB TV app.
I can do the same with the Memphis Grizzles and the NBA TV app. I can follow my team all the time, plus all the teams I used to only read about (except for local blackouts). This is a huge benefit.
For football, you can watch more games now than you could in the 90s or early 2000s. That’s all I have to say about that, because this is the only American Football that I like.
4. I can take chances on bands and music I never would have dared listen to before
I just purchased some tapes for my children and one of them was Eagle Eye Cherry because I thought it was funny to buy them this tape.
He has one hit song “Save Tonight” (more than 500 million plays!) and one minor hit song and the rest are trash (my humble opinion—or maybe not memorable is the more kind way to put it).
But consider the price of this cassette tape when it came out in the early or mid-90s. Like $10.98. That’s $26 in today’s money.
Instead, I can listen to a potential modern-day Eagle Eye Cherry (time will tell!) and decide if I like the rest of the album or not, while only shelling out money for a Spotify subscription that lets me listen to so many things.
And I was paying around the same amount for 1 album per month anyway.
Talking about the artists not getting paid? Has it ever occurred to anyone that maybe the artists were getting paid too much?
That being an Eagle Eye Cherry singer/songwriter shouldn’t necessarily be that lucrative? Yeah maybe a nice middle class living, but perhaps the ROCKSTAR STATUS was a bit overdone. Maybe this shouldn’t have been a job or career that vaulted so many young men (and some, but fewer) women to rich status.
So now, I’d like to argue, things have properly evened out. You have your crazy outliers (hello Taylor) but then maybe middle class bands are okay. Perhaps it shouldn’t have the literal rain of money that was before.
Excuse the long preamble to say this: I can now listen to more bands and music than I ever would have previously.
I’ve been to more conerts than the average person, not the most, but also not a small number, mainly because I’ve been to a bunch of 100-person or less shows in high school and college and those were fun, because I liked these bands and then they would bring other bands with them and I would get exposed to their music.
Now the discovery process is different — I listen to the bands before I see them and then I make the decision, instead of sleeping through bad punk rock bands (yes, I’ve done this, I’m very good at sleeping).
5. I can choose between printed and digital books? This is magical
When I was a kid, I lived in a semi-rural area. I could see the house next to me and across the street, each lot was an acre or two acres. So there were families nearby, but not near as many people as where I’ve lived since. We had a car and it took like 25 minutes to get to “town.”
But one of the things I didn’t quite understand was that in the summertime (and maybe during the school year? I’m not sure I was at school), a bookmobile would bring books to our house.
Here’s the website for that library system in Shreveport, Louisiana, we didn’t meet any of the conditions it describes there, but the bookmobile came anyway.
It was a very nice C-class RV, nicely air-conditioned and there were books for kids and adults in there and it was magical, like 500 books just pulled up into my driveway.
My sister and I would wait around the appointed time and then run out there and it would give it’s big sigh of settling, lowering itself and then the steps would slide out and the librarian/bus driver (maybe it was 2 different people?) would open the door for us and then I could get some Beverly Cleary or RL Stine and my mom could get Danielle Steele.
Fun times with the bookmobile, it was a highlight.
Ladies and gentleman, everyday is now a bookmobile day.
Of course now I’m in a sorta-book saturated city, but I still have to walk somewhere.
That is unless I open my Kindle app and then you know my fingers do the walking to that Amazon bookmobile and I can select from all the books.
(Hey, I know Amazon is such a drag, and look at all these choices, life is awful).
And don’t tell my Nashville librarian friend Emily that I still have my Nashville library card, so if something isn’t available on the New York Public Library in print or digital, I’ll SURF THE WEB over to Nashville(?) and then see if they have it available.
Again, my bookmobile kid-self couldn’t imagine such a world.
I’ll stop there…
There’s a lot I didn’t get to, but this is a good place to stop.
These are things I appreciate about culture right now.
Sure things “aren’t the way they used to be” but if they were, people would complain about that too.
I mentioned some variation of “more choices” in this piece, and yes those have brought its own set of consequences.
I’m not downplaying the paralysis analysis that comes with choice, it’s only that sometimes we forget how amazing that choice is, and it’s easy to glom onto all its faults.
Okay, talk soon.
Keep going-
Josh Spilker
Well argued! Even as I wring my hands about art, I've lowered the setting after reading this.
I am thrilled at the range of what I can find via streaming, especially European dramas and mysteries like Salamander, but also shows or movies I've already seen but have forgotten enough to be surprised by, like House of Cards. Yes, it can be time-consuming to troll through and find what you want, but there is so much there.