Welcome to the weekend!
We made it to October and the weather finally shifting to something seasonal, so let's really get into something eerie for the spooky season. Once again, we're going to go into today's creative climate, a horror unto itself.
Much has been said and written about how terrible the education system has been for fostering creativity and imagination, but in the end it's still not enough for the simple reason that it's frankly not good enough. We are all hungry for more.
This isn't just about the US, either, but a worldwide phenomenon of machinery designed to turn both the individual and the collective into a machine meant to churn out whatever the top of the chain desires. This mentality has turned all mainstream entertainment into pure swill bailed together by tired 20th century tropes and franchises meant to educate the ignorant masses into worldviews and behaviors that might have felt fresh 100 years ago but are clearly outdated today. We've gone over that before, so there's no sense rehashing it. Artificiality has always been valued over creativity.
As the above video shows, the system itself is not designed to stir the imagination, no matter how many TV shows or movies you see or remember that told you how important "Creativity" was, in the end it was never about that. It was only ever pretty words meant to boost the ego and coax all potential creatives to follow the same path to deliver the same Content. And looking at the modern climate today, it feels like a joke from a '90s animated sitcom. That is because it is.
And that was made in the '90s. Nothing has improved since then, but clearly it was an issue even back then. In Current Year, the film industry now is on its last legs.
So how do we create a system that incentivizes creativity over slop? Humanity over artificialness? Excitement over formula? How do we overhaul the 20th century machinery that has ground to a stop here in the 21st?
Many complain about how the AI explosion fosters an environment of lowest common denominator storytelling to churn out product, but the truth of the matter is the industry has been incentivizing it themselves over decades now. The above video from the '90s highlights the mentality as it already existed back then, and it's much worse today.
The problem has always been the artificialness has been baked into the education artists receive themselves. One cannot explore outside the socially acceptable ideologies of today. One cannot look beyond the genres the mainstream has decided are all that is, even as their stores empty and their sales crater. One cannot experiment because safety is incentivized and mass produced to blot out anything else coming up.
As the below thread shows, the issue with artificiality is not the lowering of the bar, that is already on the floor and has been for decades. The problem has always been that the education system has always desired it end there. Blaming AI for it is missing the forest for the trees. The system was always going to lead here, and it is the root of all this.
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The biggest problem with all of this is that there is no easy solution. There is no switch one can flip to making everything better. In order to even begin to fix if requires an honest reflection and reassessment of a lot of bad ideas that have come since the industrial revolution kicked into high gear and became a religion for materialists. We simply aren't there anymore, no one thinks that way or believes it, and yet we float on rehashing it to diminishing returns. Now there are no returns at all.
We know the education system does not produce creative people. It also does not produce writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, or critics. Yes, people go into these schools and come out in those professions, but next to none are actually made into those things from what they learn. Kids are instead turned into automatons and widgets for the crumbling machine, meant fulfill roles no audience wants and job positions that are quickly fading away. It is detached from reality, and we all know it.
So why are we still operating in this way?
As I said, blaming AI at this juncture is stopping well short of the problem. Even if it went away tomorrow, it wouldn't stop how the audience has been trained to Consume Content and expect beltline product pumped out indefinitely. That isn't going away. All this AI stuff is simply doing exactly what those in charge want. (Which is why they are already using it without saying anything at all, and audiences will eventually accept it. Anything to keep the flood of Product going forever.)
The only way out is reorienting of systems and thought processes. The 20th century is done, as been said countless times, so why are we still clinging to it? What advantage do we have clinging to dying systems and ideas that have proven to be dead ends?
We don't train creatives. Arguments could be made that we never have, but we certainly do not do it today. We have Content Creators, not artists or creatives. All we want is nothing and everything at the same time, and that is why we have no need to educate or train anyone. And that is how you get today's dead culture. Nothing is being made: it's being produced.
We require a re-enchantment of the world, a detachment of cynicism, subversion, and emptiness. The only way to get that is to admit where we are now was a mistake and won't lead anywhere else. We have to move on.
Let's not worry too much about a dead past, but work to build a living future. It's going to happen eventually so there's no sense wasting time. We can start today.
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