The End of Western Civilization (For Real This Time)

"Cause everybody's shakin like the end of the world
And everybody's waitin on the end of the world
And I aint got a friend baby left in the world
Don't let me dance all night alone"
-The Gaslight Anthem, Say I Won't (Recognize)

There's a fearmongering video circulating around the internet claiming that since immigrants in Europe and the United States (read: non-white people) reproduce faster than white people, Western Civilization's days are numbered. Now, while Western Civilization may have been invented, at least to a great degree, by white people, it is certainly not dependent on white people to exist. In fact, I think that nations not previously associated with the western tradition are preserving it better than most of the west, or at least better than the United States. Mathematics, science, and reason are all dying a slow death here, while there are millions upon millions of kids in China and India who are taking these subjects far more seriously than most of us in the so called "Western World" are. It doesn't take an all-American orchestra to play Copeland, and the scientific method doesn't just pertain to the people who invented it.

However, civilization as we know it is going to end, and the end may possibly be worse than a burqa-filled stoning-fest of a caliphate. I know this because the most recent viral video, which I cannot escape no matter how hard I try, represents the fact that we have killed music. This is, of course, the infamous "Friday," the latest tween-pop chart topper with a video that's so bad that you for some reason just have to show it to all of your friends. Since for some reason I researched this, the song was never actually intended to be released or sold. It was written and recorded as part of a $2,000 "vanity package," where someone writes a throwaway song for you to sing, which maybe you will use to get your name out there. Now, there have been artists who didn't write their own material for as long as there has been recorded music, but this is different. You can see that it was recorded at something called "Ark Music Factory." Notice anything in the name? Music Factory. That's right, music is now just like an automobile or a blender or a cheap children's toy with numerous choking hazards and traces of asbestos.

Maybe music was already dying when we started selling recordings, and maybe this is just the culmination of a long process. But maybe we have killed music as a form of raw expression, or even a form of culture. No one wants to hear songs they like, or even songs they know. They want to hear songs that they know other people will know. Music is a label, an identity, just like what kind of car you drive or what kind of clothes you wear.