Fantasy Culture and the Flight from Reality
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This week I’m rejoined by Jonathan Taplin, author of The End of Reality: How 4 Billionaires Are Selling a Fantasy Future of the Metaverse, Mars, and Crypto, to discuss the ways in which popular culture may be leading the public down a dark road. Mr. Taplin has previously been on the show to talk about his career in the entertainment business, from tour manager for Bob Dylan to producer of early Martin Scorsese classics Means Streets and The Last Waltz to his early efforts to introduce video streaming, so he knows a thing or two about the ways in which politics is downstream from culture. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to share it with a friend!
Fantasy Culture and the Flight from Reality
I think Jonathan’s quote from Camus reminds us that we have gotten into the habit of misusing the word “art”: ART is work of the imagination, not just a congealed agglomeration of pixels from other stuff! The technique of re-sorting pixels may yet be used to produce ART but I’m guessing it is going to require serious application of human imagination to create something truly novel, indeed even rebellious. Norte Dame and Brunelleschi’s dome simply should not have worked but there they stand. And we still read Shakespeare and Dickenson and Eliot and e.e. cummings. I can’t even get auto-correct to let me use that last poet’s preferred capitalization without fighting with it for 6 full minutes; whatever makes me think that its progeny and even its more sophisticated AI cousins will be able to produce novel greatness? If that fundamental question requires I retain faith in some transcendent “creativity,” I’m grateful for it. I’ll take Scorsese over the Gourmet Detective any day!😁
Thanks for another great episode, Sonny.