Art is Dead

Exploring the decline of art in a capitalistic world.

How many of us here are writing in-between 9-5s? My guess is that they are miserable, unfulfilling jobs where you aren’t able to make ends meet. You also have no pension, you can’t afford a home, you doubt you’ll be able to retire. Hell, you might not even be able to afford an apartment without roommates. Or maybe you’re reading this, wanting to write, but you work multiple jobs and have kids to take care of. And if you don’t you still have chores, errands, and other obligations to go to, on top of the 40+ hours a week stuck at a shitty job that, despite the cries of “We’re FAMILY”, would replace you in a hot second. You could die and they’d post your position on Indeed before your body was cold.

The rise of Regan-era economics has decimated the middle class, in particular Millenials, who’s financial outlooks were doomed the second we went to college. One thing that isn’t talked about is the dumbing down of our art. The rise of “reality TV” like The Kardashians and Paris Hilton before them, the same old cookie-cutter sitcoms with the same tired laugh tracks. Movies are sequals or remakes. Marval, while enjoyable, has lost the plot. (With the exception of a few). Every “Adult Cartoon” is ugly and focuses on gross-out and shock humor. On and On.

Here is a song that really encapsulates that: (Yes, Bo can be problematic, but he does have a lot of good content)

Art is dead
So people think you're funny
How do you get those people's money?
Said art is dead
We're rolling in dough
While Carlin rolls in his grave
His grave, his grave

I heard this song when it came out, and it’s even more relevent. Even as an artist, you have handlers, trainers, PR, stylists, ETC. These people are designed to turn the artist into a product. Something to sell to the masses. Like everything, art has become another revenue stream for billionairs to buy more yatchts. They don’t give a fuck about art or the artist. The artist is there to fund their lifestyle.

This is a direct result of Capitalism.

It should be so much easier. Our technology can be used to create, and platforms like Substack actually give artists a shot (for now). Tiktok can be a cesspool, but there are artists, cosplayers, and short-form series like “The Lucky Griffin” (Which is excellent if you are a fan of fantasy) that really make something special. (*note: I haven’t checked Tiktok since the ban, so I am not sure what it’s like now)

But all of these things take time and energy. For many of us now, both of those things are in short supply. I know how hard it is to write after a long day staring at a computer, only to then stare at a computer some more to write. It’s hard to hold onto ideas when you’re going through the motions while your boss breaths down your neck. Or you get home from a double during Black Friday and just want to sleep.

And then there are the resources. Yes, you can find some great free resources, but those are becoming scarce. Everything now requires a subscription if you want any sort of advanced tools. Long gone or the days of Flash and other free programs. You can’t even get a scanner app for free. This laptop I am writing on constituted two months of my spouse scraping together whatever they could scrounge to get this for me, so I can have an easier time here. It was about $150-200 from a consignment shop. And if you’re doing the physical arts, or hobbies like model building, those cost money for supplies. Paint, clay, paper, and sketch books/journals cost money constantly because they are finite. And with our Dear Leader putting the squeeze on the markets with his stupid fucking tariff war, we’re going to see more and more people unable to make ends meet without working more and more hours. Between second and third jobs, and gig work like DoorDash, our lives will soon be consumed by nothing but serving our corporate overlords.

Art is one of the things that set us apart from other animals.

Art (This includes music, writing, painting, all of that) has been in our blood since we started to become more than animals. Some of these paintings are 40,000 years old. That is unfathomable.

Photo by Rabah Al Shammary on Unsplash

It doesn’t look like much, but what other animals take the initiatve to create art? Sure, you can give an elephent a paintbrush and have him paint, but he didn’t just decide one day to make art. And much like humans, our art evolved. With the art and then the evolution of language, our ancestors told tales to each other around the campfire. They also created jewelry, rituals, food, dance, and all of the other arts we see today. Art is our earliest form of expression, and each iteration built upon the last. We went from cave paintings to the Renaissance where the likes of Leonard Di Vince created flying machines and the Mona Lisa. Michaelangelo created the David statue.

Photo by Jianxiang Wu on Unsplash

And somewhere along the way we got lost. And by we, I mean society and our corporate robber barrons. Our leaders became consumed by greed, and have continued to use our technological advances as a means to print money. As our society began to grow and colesce into nations, our ruling class has been steadily creating a chokehold on the rest of the population. I’ve written before about civilization’s outpaced growth. We take one step forward and two steps back.

We are backsliding in such a way where we will go back to the Industrial Revolution, where the poor worked 16 hours seven days a week in dangerous factories. Childeren were regularly maimed because they, too, were forced to work or starve, combined with our rental society, where we will own nothing and like it. We’re already seeing this in states that are “allowing” children as young as 14 to work overnight on school days. You know, like those kids in a Dicken’s novel. Because fuck the poors and the ability to better themselves, right?

And this extends to adulthood and the “useless” degrees in social sciences and arts.

“Go into something that makes money.”

“It’s your fault you’re in debt because you got an BA in fine arts.”

“You deserve to be slinging burgers because you chose Creative Writing.”

“Why didn’t you study computer engineering?”

I know we’ve all heard this, either directly or in the comments section on r/conservative. Art is considered useless because it isn’t guarunteed to make money. What you want doesn’t matter, what you create doesn’t matter. All that matters is you “be a productive member of society”, which means working a shit job for shit pay from the time you’re a child til the day you die. (Which is the goal. They want to get rid of our social safety nets to create a new wage-slave population.) No time for leasure, no time for art, no time for family. All that exists is “The Grind”.

This is a big part of the decline in mental health

I came to a realization this week, as I was sitting around “working” during training. I felt kind of OK. (Not as good as how I would feel if we weren’t in the middle of a dictatorship, but better than I have been)

Instead of being a glorified copier, I am working on things that have meaning to me. I wrote an article, prepared a resource list, and now I am finishing up a second article. All of these individually would take me a week each. Instead, I am coming up on Friday with more stuff planned that I can execute. I even got some naps in and video games because ALL they expect us to do is sit there and watch people fumble through programs I already know on a system that takes 2 seconds to learn. The noticible change in my mental health is astounding.

As our society becomes even more entrenched in this vague notion of “Productivity” (which means working harder for scraps while the boss buys a Bugatti), our creative selves die a little every day. And who knows how many incredibly talented people have given up because they can’t afford the time? I say this from experience. I stopped writing for over 10 years as I struggled with working 16 hours at 2 jobs, and then moved to an office job at full time. I’m not the best by any means, but I went to college and put in the effort. And yet, it took over 10 years and randomly finding this site for me to create anything again.

This is such a detriment to our society. For an example, look at the “entertainment” in the movie Idiocracy. Shows like “Ow My Balls” is a thing people are obsessed with. While yes, sometimes stupid shit like that is funny, it’s not “art”, it’s spectacle. Art is the very essence of our humanity, and we need to fight not to lose it.

Do what you can to continue to create.

I will leave you with two scenes from the game series Mass Effect that really hits on the point of this newsletter:

This whole scene really hits home for where we are right now as a society. If you’re familiar with the series, you know exactly what scene this is, as it is a favorite among the community. But in short:

"Disrupts socio-technological balance. All scientific advancement due to intellegence overcoming, compensating, for limitations. Can't carry a load, so invent wheel. Can't catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates. Works other way too. Advancement before culture is ready. Disastrous."

Which is something I touched on in my pervious newsletter about our technology outpacing our humanity. This is basically what we are seeing now: cultural stagnation.

As we are forced to work longer hours for money (A thing we made up, by the way) that stretches less and less, we are seeing that (Especially here in the US) our culture is dumbing down further and further. We do see a lot of new mediums to create popping up, but it’s only a matter of time before enshitification on these new platforms begins. We can’t meet our basic needs, so how are we going to find time for something that doesn’t bring in money?

The combining of capitalism and artistic and science persuits is killing us. Even here, you see newsletters talking about “How you can game the algorithm” and “Make $10,000 a month”. Every hobby has been monotized. You play games? Start a Twitch Channel. You write? Substack. You make art or do photography? I’m sure there is a platform for you to monitize your work on. You play tabletop? Start a podcast.

We no longer do things for the joy of it. Everything is now a “Gig”. And that’s killing our culture. Much like the creatures talked about in this video, our culture is slowly slipping away. And we can’t let it. We cannot “replace our souls with tech”, so to speak. So, if you can, find time to create from your soul, not just for an audience. We need as many creative souls as we can to rebuild after this disaster.

-Ana the insurance demon