Cultural Critique of "Dissect" Music Podcast

Here is Dissect's mission statement:

https://dissectpodcast.com/about/

In a world creating and accessing more content than ever before, we’ve quickly become a scrolling culture, hurriedly swiping through this infinite swath of content that seems to replenish without end.
Dissect was created to counter this cultural shift.
Dissect picks one album per season and analyzes one song per episode measure by measure, word by word.

It's a noble endeavor, and Pimp a Butterfly is an excellent album to start with! But in a general sense, here is my critique:

It's funny how connoisseur culture favors this kind of stuff. i might be critical here: their message is to reverse the scroll-through culture that our hyperconsumerism has led to, but their remedy (feeding you the exhaustive list of facts about the song in order to truly capture it) suffers from an arguably similar cultural sickness. In the end we don't put on the headphones and close our eyes through an album anymore, we either scroll through feeds or reductively dissect the facts about a song in order to conquer it (see: success of rapgenius). Let's be cautious in how we frame our solution.

That being said, I'm definitely going to play the shit out of this because I'm a complete product of connoisseur culture. 

Opioid Epidemic Cultural Breakdown

i just read such a beautiful interview on NPR about opioids

the guy FUCKING laid it out

in an era where machines are threatening the dignity of the "working man"

he loses an aspect of meaning, but also religion is gone now too, so he can't fill the void with that either

oxycontin actually serves as an instant replacement for oxytocin, which is the neurotrans. released when you get social acknowledgement like sex, being rewarded for work, or partaking in communal spirituality

furthermore, technological age of screens encourages us to get "lost in our own worlds" at the screen rather than going out and interacting

so staying home in ur own world using oxycontin is a natural consequence of undignified labor + expired religions + screens

a couple of other things, 1. you can trace this correlation starting from the AIDS movement where patient autonomy was encouraged, aka fight for your treatment as a patient regardless of what doctor says, to now. This patient autonomy is part of why patients are so adamantly demanding these drugs.

2. this is hitting men much harder than women. part of this is because men have been traditionally getting their prestige and meaning from manual work, which is now gone, and also that being a man is sort of irrelevant in this social progressive period where the woman is being redefined in a fruitful way.

so all of this together just leads to people demanding drugs to ease pain, but then sinking into this world of meaninglessness and loneliness that can only be nurtured by oxycontin.

tldr: opoid epidemic is less of a physical/economic issue and much more of a spiritual, psychological, and existential issue.

you can also see this in the surge in weed and meditation in culture

people are desperately trying to fill this void

you can't just view humans as economic agents, they will lose meaning and destroy themselves

you need a system which views them as complex, psychological, emotional etc beings

we need a new religion etc

it was such a good interview, best one ive heard in a while, here is the original article:

https://medium.com/new-york-magazine/the-poison-we-pick-261d062e6938

7 mins

Charlie Chaplin speaks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WibmcsEGLKo&feature=related

This time is approaching...one can feel it.

Zizek on capitalism solving its own problems

He's just always killing it. Nice animation too.

http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/07/29/rsa-animate-tragedy-farce/

If these charities/consumer ethics simply delay the problem by giving the consumer a 'complete package,' (you can buy your new shoes WHILE purchasing away your guilt!) should we participate in them, temporarily saving a few cows/children here and there? Or should we rebel against them, by further spiraling into the morally reprehensible purchases, and showing capitalism that we are not simply consumers who can buy away our beliefs.

Or rather, is assuming that consumer behavior can advance a belief system at all just further spiraling into the grips of capitalism? We should continue purchasing as we do, playing apathetic to consumption, while seeking other means to solve the problem in the long-term (science, legality, etc).