“A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture: the desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, was tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” -Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
I use the quote above to illustrate not necessarily what happened to one culture in particular. Instead, I use it to refer to the phenomenon that occurs when maladaptive cultures fall through the cracks due to unanticipated changes in environments.
What happens, for instance, to a generation of children raised on video games, social networking, Wii, and garage band who clung to these forms of media and entertainment under the “desperate assumption” that their environments would stay the same and that these forms of media would have relevance for future decades? Prosperous economic circumstances, of course, may be ephemeral, and the cultural productions of these circumstances, consequently, have that same ephemeral quality.
I learned this morning from a story on NPR about NEATS in England who cannot find a job in this economy despite their degrees at prestigious colleges. A NEET, is someone who is Not in Education, Employment, or Training. The NPR story focus on one particular NEET, who, despite her education at King’s College in fashion and design, could not find work anywhere.
Through this example, I do not wish to imply or suggest that fashion or multimedia entertainment are merely fads of sorts that no longer support a large enough market for up and coming professionals. (Though, they may change, in time, according to our abilities to access the natural resources that give us energy to produce these aspects of our culture, I don’t think they are “here today, gone tomorrow”). The point of the example and the early discussion of Thompson’s quote serves to illustrate the phenomena that occurs when resources in an environment no longer support the cultures that begot them.
The end result. The “mystic fallacy” that “some force was tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”
One response, and you could bounce this off of not only DJ Spooky’s writings on remix, but also on blogosphere theorists like Cory Doctorow, is that the evidence you cite isn’t necessarily the evidence that we need.
Music, fashion, etc. — they’re part of an emerging literacy, but they can’t always find their place in a literacy- and commodity-based marketplace.
In that sense, your claim almost reads backwards: it’s not that the available resources aren’t supporting the culture; it’s that the culture hasn’t found a recognizable shape in a world dominated by the logics of the old media.