Save us from Ourselves

I was at a meeting yesterday hosted by the Los Angeles Board of Public Works.  To welcome us, one of the Commissioners asked us if we knew what the purpose of city government was.  Nobody volunteered with a succinct, accurate answer so the Commissioner said the main purpose was to provide "security" for the citizens.  As such, most of the city's budget goes to the police and fire departments.  All other services are considered ancillary.

The Business Improvement District that I work for has a similar M.O.; over 60% of our budget goes to our security program, while the remaining funds are spread thin throughout our cleaning, maintenance, improvements, advocacy, and management programs.

It suddenly became painfully apparent to me that humans spend a great deal of their time and money to protect themselves from other humans.  It's amazing that we can accomplish anything when our main function in life is to prevent and clean up other people's messes.  Why is this?  I realize people say things like "human nature" but why isn't human nature to respect each other and fulfill our own destiny without harming others?  I know what some people would say - the devil.  That's right, Mr. Horned Up and Red, hanging out down below in his kingdom of fire, sending his evil angels out to tempt mankind into breaking the 10 commandments.  But all that hubbub aside, what is it about humans that has gone so terribly wrong?

In my dealings with homeless people, many questions and answers have presented themselves to me, but still nothing at all remotely indicative of exactly what it is about society that seems to crush and ruin people, whether inwardly or outwardly, and makes monsters out of so many men (and women).  

Listening to some AM talk radio recently, one perspective is that the chemicals our bodies intake these days, via the foods we eat, the products we use, and the air we breathe, is partially to blame for many mental and physical ailments.  But of course we know that people were screwing each other over long before plastics came into play.  Despite the absolute despair that certain people feel in the world today, it's fairly easy to look back in history and see that perhaps things haven't really gotten any better or worse, but simply stayed constant in the cycle of terror, manipulation and vengeance that humans wreak upon one another.

To steer this train of thought in a less dire but still concerning direction, I also thought about this phenomenon and how it applies to the music industry.  When I was little, pop music meant everything to me, and it seemed to mean a heck of a lot to many other people.  People bought records.  There is nothing convenient about a record.  It's an unwieldy, 12 inch piece of plastic which must be handled with the utmost of care.  In order to hear the music that it contains, one must remove it first from the cardboard jacket, then from a dust sleeve, taking care not too touch the grooved surface which covers about 90% of the record and contains the physical reproduction of the sound waves via a series of bumps and etches in the vinyl.  Then, the record must be placed on a rotating plate, and a needle must be applied carefully to the outer edge of the record; this needle should be calibrated to have the correct amount of weight creating pressure so that the needle can accurately recreate the sound waves.  Even after all this work, only half of the music can be heard before one must remove the needle, flip the record over, and start again.  But people loved it.  They loved buying records, they loved following their favorite artists, who remained somewhat of a mystery in those pre-internet days, when bands could represent themselves with some stylized MTV videos, colorful photos and an interview here and there.  Then the industry decided that, rather than spend a lot of time and resources on a bunch of bands who were doing OK and having some success, they wanted to focus on those artists who were breaking records and blowing up - the only problem with this is, that in order to appeal to the mass-markets that record labels now expect, the product is often diluted or "dumbed-down" (I hate that phrase, after I read somewhere how redundant it is; nothing could really be "dumbed-up" or "smartened-down"...)

Now, after years of cranking out crap that mainly appeals to pre-teens or those trying to be hip, record labels wonder why CD's aren't selling and kids download music for free without the slightest inclination that what they are doing is illegal or immoral.  They just think that's what you do.  Record labels have screwed themselves over, and in the process, have burst the bubbles of so many people dreaming of a career in showbiz.  Of course there are the random success stories of musicians who made it big through internet channels like MySpace or YouTube, but the reality is that without any sort of non-biased, commercially driven outsiders there to offer opinions, and more importantly wads of cash, a huge portion of amazingly creative and socially viable pop music will never be made.  It will never make it out of the amateurish hands of those who lovingly created it but had no idea how to sharpen it, hone it, polish it, produce it, and market it.  That's because for every singer/songwriter out there with a brilliant vocabulary and understanding of melody, hooks, and universal appeal, there are hundreds of peons employed to make some bimbo sound half-way decent on record when in reality she couldn't write a sentence nor sing it to save her life.  

What has the world come to?  Or, is it just the same old...