Profit Motive Media and Culture Collapse

Remember such famous books as “1984”, “Brave New World” and “Atlas Shrugged” that united in the shrill proclamation that Government control of the media would debase us all and cause the immediate collapse of Civilization. The books were very effective in making their point, as, nowadays, we are all almost entirely convinced that the only danger that could possibly address Culture and Civilization would have to come from the direction of Government.

Yet, if we were to seriously take a real hard look at the weight of influences on our Culture, then the role and influence of Government would be almost miniscule. The Government produces no books, no movies, no music, no television, and no news. All these influences come from entirely private sources – the Private Media.

Now, we could speculate on whether or not the Private Media may have some horrifyingly awful personal agenda and is intentionally laying the propaganda seeds that could facilitate some sort of take-over, or we could simply wonder whether our worst worry need only be regarding the effects that the Profit Motive could have on all of this. As they say in the movies, it may be nothing personal at all, but could be purely a matter of business.

Ordinarily when the Profit Motive is defended, we hear that it is all about people buying exactly what they want. What could be wrong with that? Producers are rewarded as high sales generate high profits. It is all perfectly just as they describe it. Yes, but that is only one end of it, that money is made from higher sales. But what they rarely brag about is that more money can also be made by selling a cheaper product at the same rate, that is, increasing Profits by cutting expenses and overhead costs. This is called increasing the Profit Margin, the differences between the cost of production and what is being charged to the Public.

Now, considering that everything in The Private Sphere is done entirely in view of the Profit Motive, while we could charitably assume that some concern is going toward providing us with a product that we truly desire and wish to pay for, still it is impossible not to acknowledge that all those dedicated businessmen would consider it as some kind of a crime of malfeasance against their Shareholders to not do everything possible to extract the last possible squeak of Profit from every deal they make. We have to assume that they are edging the Profit Margin against us. Would they intentionally and deliberately debase, cheapen, and even pervert our Culture to make a fast buck? Well, no, not perhaps consciously. But with their eyes only on the Money, it may be simply a matter of Culture obeying the laws of a kind of Gravity, whereby if it is not lifted up then it must inevitably fall. Well, continuously cutting back on the Quality of the various Medias in order to increase the Profit Margins on all the books, music, art, News, and Movies can certainly not be expected to be much of a wind beneath the Wings of our sagging Culture, can it?

Well, they tell us that Savings are always passed on, but really? Every newly published book costs about $25. CD’s cost $15. I haven’t bought a DVD yet, but I am willing to wager that a DVD of “Gone with the Wind” probably costs the same as “Stupid Comedy II”. Everywhere we look it appears that Prices are fixed, while the Producers are looking for two clear avenues for expanding their Profits – either selling more or producing the same amount but at a reduced expense. We can expect them to pursue both angles vigorously or they never went to Business School. Things get cheaper cheaper cheaper, not just in cost but in quality. It can almost be a definition of Modernity, a progressive cheapening of everything. The best example here is perhaps with architecture – the buildings that encompass us. Weren’t they all better a hundred years ago, with stone and style. Buildings are all just cheap boxes now. But really everything is in decline.

I wrote essays before about the decline of the Music Industry. Allow a short review – inside of a hundred years we went from the Highest and Most Ethereal Orchestra and Opera Music down through Big Bands, and then Swing Bands, to scraggly rock and roll bands to the point where we have no Bands at all anymore, but single individuals who replace Music with blathering profanities against a background of techno-rhythms -- Rap. The Producers’ costs are as minimal as conceivable, not to mention that almost no time and trouble is involved anymore in Production. Simply consider the amount of work it takes to assemble and coordinate the workings of a great orchestra, against the effort of finding some solitary young man in the Inner City willing to take pay in exchange for cussing in rhyme. Simply as a matter of Business, it was inevitable that there would be such a decline. Indeed, the same decline can be traced in every area where Culture was placed at the mercy of the Profit Margins.

I once heard a story about one of my favorite authors, Raymond Chandler, one of the founding deities of American Tough Guy Detective Fiction, that he had gone broke in the Depression and was looking for a new means of making money, and while he had written for pleasure, decided to write for money. He considered writing Fine Literature but went to a bookstore and noticed that while he stood there nobody bothered to disturb the Fine Literature rack, already a few customers had made purchases from the Detective Crime section. In the interests of sating his hunger, he decided that the better business plan would be for himself to write detective fiction. Now, as an aside, Chandler wrote detective fiction much as though it were Fine Literature, but let us take my point to be that an otherwise fine man took a purely businesslike decision to take a Cultural Step Down simply in order to make more money. Multiply such decisions by a million and one gets a Cultural Collapse.

But this does raise the point as to whether people are indeed getting exactly what they want. Yes, they are. But we need to consider the perhaps sinister angle of this wanting in the General Public for lesser and lesser levels of quality. Remember, it took Music almost a full hundred years to achieve its utter collapse into primitive Rap, that is, where the money spending Public ‘wants’, that is prefers to buy Rap before all other genres and qualities of Music. Literature also did not fall in a moment. Decadence in Painting has not been straight down, but has been on a slope. What is happening is that Public Tastes can only be gradually debased, and only so much can be done with each Generation. Every child grows up seeing in his own home and schools the levels of appreciation shown to the various Arts, and he is given the kinds of exposure and education in these arts so that he can understand and then enjoy them. High Culture requires this kind of exposure and then is sustained by it.

Certainly there can be moments of Cultural Disaster, such as the French Revolution and the Great Depression, when the Class of Patrons for High Culture were greatly diminished or terrible distracted. When this happens we may have one or two Generations that are stifled in their Cultural Educations, and then the result is a general decline in Taste. When this happens then the Media Businessmen must see it as a huge opportunity as it is so much cheaper to please debased Tastes then the Best Tastes. No Businessman would ever fight against the lowering of Standards but would see it as an opportunity of expanding his Profit Margin.

Of course no businessman would wish to be seen exactly in the guise of pushing a cheaper product, but remember that Businessmen have virtually mastered the psychologies and sciences of Public Relations and Advertising. To facilitate the rollouts of cheaper debased cultural products they have several avenues open to them; they can attack the higher culture as elitist and snobbish, or associate High Culture with whatever Ethnic Group is currently in the least favor, or they can present the new Cultural Low Point as some important popular innovation or expression… a People Pride sort of thing.

I remember how the Jazz and then the Rock and Roll Culture used to ridicule anybody who still patronized the Orchestra and Fine Music Scene. Was this ridicule entirely genuine, that is, rooted in any true mean-spiritedness of teenage boys and young men, or was it engendered from some well considered and well placed Media indoctrinations. A Generation of young people who first see Movie Characters ridiculing high culture, and then there favorite TV characters ridiculing high culture, might eventually think it quite normal and even expected for themselves to ridicule the same high culture. Then, while this Generation still secretly understands High Culture perfectly well, and could even enjoy it in private, they have effectively been made ashamed to admit it, and could never buy anything in a store that could not pass Public Scrutiny which would decidedly frown upon anything of the old High Culture as being ‘square’, ‘un-hip’, ‘un-cool’. I am sure I am not the only person who remembers keeping certain records aside, so that when visitors looked over my collection I would not have to answer questions about my elitist and snobby tastes or whatever. So it is that Cultural Decline can be enforced by this kind of fear of social pressures. I wish I could entirely blame the businessmen for this, but suspect that the dynamics of Group Identity may have something to do with it, but, then again, I wonder to what extent businessmen have gone in deliberately packaging and marketing these various Group Identities. For instance, the Black Trench Coat Killers at Columbine High School… didn’t they buy their entire wardrobe down at the Gap right off the rack?

Oh, there is one more consideration concerning the decline of Culture, and that is that among the poorest and most uneducated classes there was never much culture to begin with. Now, generations ago, these poorest and most uneducated classes were simply ignored by the Businessmen, largely because the costs of any kind product was out of the range of such profound poverty. Well, books have been cheap for sometime now, but the lowest classes had trouble reading and illiteracy rates are still higher than they should be. But nowadays costs for most cultural products are at an unprecedented low. Indeed, nobody even bothers to pay anything for music anymore. Online piracy makes it effectively free.

What we have is a paradoxical reversal of the influences of Rich and Poor. Centuries ago only the Rich could pay for Culture, and they were very demanding about the standards they set for. It was very expensive and they insisted they got what they paid for. But now that every book, record, CD and whatnot is being sold at the same low prices, the multitudinous numbers of the Poor and Uneducated wield a huge advantage over the so very few educated and cultured customers that pay the same price as anybody else. It does make me wonder that the Rich don’t once more decide to patronize the best artists as they had before, irregardless of the illiterate and uncouth masses, but I suspect that the Cultural Propaganda that debased the Masses had overshot the target and that the Modern Rich are as ignorant and boorish as any street punk. I could even guess that in the finest Ivy League Universities, the young men and women are practicing Rap and their hip-hop dancing, that is, when they are not reading Hemingway. It had taken Europe, France in particular, a thousand years to ascend to some level of Culture. Unfortunately a great deal of Culture was murdered in the Revolutions. Culture came to America but obviously never took deep root, not in any field as far as I can see. The Masons who took over, New World and Old, after the heads rolled never pretended to be anything more than simply bourgeois and allowed the Money Dealers to dictate Culture to them, letting Art Dealers set Prices and Tastes, listening to Hemingway when he declared that stupidity of expression was all that literature would ever need in our brave new world, and listening to self appointed Music Critics talk up cheapness instead of relying on high bred Tastes that had taken generations to develop. Mozart and Beethoven were paid only when they pleased, and their success probably has as much to do with the developed Tastes of their Age as any personal talents of their own. They were understood – that is the remarkable thing about it all. For instance, we can only guess what kind of garbage Mozart or Beethoven would now have to resort to in order to be successful on the modern scene. Nothing great today would even be understood. They would hoot them off the stage, wouldn’t they? Or maybe I do not give Beethoven or Mozart enough credit, as perhaps they might be especially good at finding words that rhyme with ‘bitch’ and … ‘truck’ and could be wonderful at pleasing the modern audience. But it still remains that it would all just be perfect crap.

Anyway, Culture and Taste need to take a progressive climb, with generation after generation coming to higher levels of understanding and appreciation. It’s not something that money can buy, or even wants to buy. Sometimes Big Money is just coarser and more vulgar because it can afford to be.

Well, now that we know that Culture is in a sure decline, should anything be done? We have Private Individuals who are making all of the Cultural Decisions in Society based on no further understanding than the ease and convenience with which they can make the fastest money. It may be that tastes are being deliberately debased which would be the worst and most vicious exploitation of people. And not only are the arts affected, but morality and ethics as well. For instance, I went to the movies this weekend and saw not just one but several movies that cast slacker degenerate characters in the lead roles, probably so that the slacker degenerate Generate could go the movies and be able to feel good about their worthless derelict selves. Oh, and then there is Hollywood casting more fat people simply because so many people are obese nowadays… it is all makes for so very unhealthy an example, but Hollywood wants its sick and disgusting audience to feel at home.

Every Western Capitalist Society is caught deep in the grips of this decadence and irreversible Collapse. China is appalled by it and is making efforts to draw some kind of line in the drifting sands, but while they are encouraging more and more the same Profit Motive that had corrupted the West, they will see the same kind of decline in their own Cultural and Moral Views. Islam, while it has its own problems with the infighting between tribes and sects, can’t help but to see the spread of Western Decadence as a huge problem. And the West pretends to be surprised that Islam does not want its daughters to be just as slutty as Madonna, or its young men to spend all their lives chasing speed-freak strip-dancers in Clubs owned by the worst scumbags imaginable, where the worst people make the most money. The West argues that Freedom’s Vices must be taken with its Virtues, but somehow the Vices seem so much more in evidence.

Honestly, I don’t think anything can be done. Civilizations collapsed before. The Decisions of Private Wealth are almost always against the Common Good, and in the late phases of Civilization too much power is always in the hands of Private Wealth. Never before in History has a Civilization in its late phase been able to rally behind its Government enough to take power back from Private Wealth and assert some responsible and well considered controls in order to back the return of Culture and Education. As I said at the preface of this Essay, we are now too broadly and deeply conditioned into always always always seeing the Government as our enemy, so that it becomes almost impossible to consider even for a moment that Government might be the only institution that could stand even the least little prayer of offsetting the all powerful influences of Private Wealth.

Yes, yes, Government is sometimes corrupt. But that is only sometimes. But Greed is ALWAYS corrupt. History shows us that it is not impossible for Government to sometimes work in the interests of the People, that a Public Servant might actually sometimes do his job. But Greed is always, well, Greedy. The very nature of Greed, a declared an unrepentant Vice, is, well, Evil, and it doubles itself in Pride. Greed has never been anything else but selfish, self-seeking, and ultimately debasing, and entire Civilizations are swallowed by its Profit Margins.