Subway Diary

We build unreality: that is the sum of our culture. Maybe this is a new kind of Decadence, a technocratic decadence which has all of the flaws of the last Decadence — Fin-de-Siecle Europe — but none of the charms. Nothing matters in the sense that there are no consequences, no impacts that shake people out of their semi-pleasant, semi-awful stupor; the only consequence would be a disruption of the info-stream, but that isn’t happening anytime soon. Corporate trillions protect and nurture the info-stream while the biological fundamentals of life on Earth decay; the environment seems to suffer in proportion to the increase of information available to humans. Natural disasters, infectious diseases, the deaths of celebrities, the rise and fall of politicians all only serve as grist for our perpetual entertainment. Entertainment is how we ameliorate the suffering produced by our denaturalized, uprooted mode of life. We have no interest in being edified or challenged or stirred by real culture. The boundaries between advertising, journalism, and art have completely collapsed; creative work is judged by the quality of its marketing campaign, not its form and content. Creativity has commercial ends; commerce has artistic pretensions; no one has the integrity to draw boundaries anywhere.