(Feb 19, 2023 ● Oslin Pierrette)
An aspect of Opioid-Induced Hyperalgesia effect (OIH) in many cases is that long term users may experience emotional numbing, where they feel less pleasure from activities that were once enjoyable, but now they also experience less pain from activities that would normally be uncomfortable or painful. Things aren’t as good anymore, but they aren’t as bad either. Basically this silver lining is the living death, it’s the obsoleteness & meaningless of living. With long term use your body becomes so used to receiving pleasure and also pain relief from artificial means, your body becomes less responsive to natural forms of things that would normally trigger stimulation. You become so numb to everything. And these issues can persist long after you try to avoid these artificial substances, leading to an excruciatingly long recovery process, if recovery is even possible, some may never recover. This can make it more difficult for individuals in recovery to experience natural rewards or stimulation and can increase their risk of relapse.
I see a similar effect happening within art, music, movies, tv, social activities like parties & gatherings, etc. Where there is a high consumption of culture artificially. High consumption of low risk, very safe, very replicated, very predictable, very boring, very apathetic, and very low rewarding quality of these different aspects of culture.
I really like this part from The Truman Show. “why do you think that uh, Truman has never come close to discovering the true nature of his world until now?”… “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.” Society as a whole is very accepting of whatever the way of the world is. Not saying we don’t verbally combat things, or don’t add some resistance, but for the most part, we accept what the reality is as our world. I look at art & culture and the drastic drop off in quality and stimulation. The drop off has been noticed and talked about by some, but these cultures and genres still continue on as normal. The issue comes in with the masses being so accepting to a lower standard, quality, and stimulation of art & culture, and it has been very desensitizing to their ability to receive art & culture, especially with high and long term consumption.
Why this is compared to effects of long term opioid use, is because it’s essentially the same thing. Opioid is an artificial substance for pain relief, but also can have an effect of pleasure and euphoria. These feelings are not coming from natural stimulators. So the mechanisms or chemicals in your body that are typically used to create the natural feelings of euphoria and pain relief are not in use. With long-term use these mechanisms can become corroded, you start to lose the ability to stimulate these feelings naturally. Forcing you to consume it artificially now, having access to only lower artificial quality of euphoria now. And now you see this in art & culture. They have been indoctrinated in this lower quality synthetically manufactured art & culture. Beautiful creations typically emanate from the spirit and soul, they’re based on feelings. This is true innovation and creation. But for the most part now, things are being synthetically created, or really replicated from other “successful” products in their field. And success is based on monetary and numeric metrics. Which deeply affects the quality of things that are manufactured, because things aren’t really being created. This synthetically manufactured culture exponentially resonates less, it’s not as stimulating. Everything is so simulated, it’s so formulaically created. “The simulation is a reflection of us, and we are turning into a reflection of the simulation. And the further we go down that path, it’s leading to an abyss of empty nothingness.”… “A simulacrum is something that replaces reality with its representation.”
These synthetic manufacturers have been able to stimulate “fire” products and content. They have somewhat of an ability to manufacture whatever is cool of the time. They have access to data to see what people are engaging with, what the trends are, and replicate whatever that is.
“but generally, “manufactured” refers to something that is made through a process of mass production using machines, while “created” can refer to something that is made through a process of imagination, inspiration, and skill.”
You don’t need inspiration, your imagination, skill, a soul to express, you don’t need those things to replicate something that will pop. Large groups of people are still getting stimulated through artificial substances, just like in the opioid crisis. Even though it’s an instant gratification substance that wears off quickly, you have a lot of access because of the over-saturation of these opioid-like content, “art”, and product. Like opioids, it’s so readily available for consumption. Which leads to a very high consumption of it. Long term effects of this synthetic manufactured culture, has seemingly desensitized a large bulk of the masses from receiving actual genuine beautiful art. They have been consuming mainly artificial art & culture for so long, the stimulation they have been experiencing is cheap artificial pleasures, and they haven’t been experiencing joy, happiness, and pleasure from beautiful genuine art. They haven’t been interacting with the mechanisms that stimulate their spirit and soul. So the mechanisms in your body and soul that are typically used to create the natural feelings of euphoria and joy are not in use. With long-term use these mechanisms become corroded, you start to lose the ability to stimulate these feelings naturally. Also you start to lose the ability for beautiful art to stimulate the soul and spirit, making those things useless. Forcing you to consume it artificially now, having access to only lower artificial quality of euphoria now. That ability to receive, be stimulated, and be able to discern what beautiful and good art is has been corroded. Many people have been or are becoming numb to authentic beautiful art.
When you have these manufactures and these cheap “creatives”(really they’re just an instrument of the Manufacturing machine) making most of the mainstream content. They have a massive bulk of the market share of what people see on their timelines and feeds. And they’re manufacturing that very safe, very regurgitated, very apathetic content and product. That’s where you get to that silver lining like you get with opioids. Where things aren’t as good anymore, but they aren’t as bad either(I think it’s very bad though. To me it’s degenerative apathetic filth, but I am not the voice of the masses or mainstream). That’s where art becomes obsolete, a meaningless abyss of nothingness. In many cases, and different art forms, you see how absurdly degenerative they’ve become. And this is what is being fed to the masses, most importantly to the youth who just are born into this, this absurdity is just natural reality to them.
This is very dangerous for the real authentic creatives and artists that create from a place of artistic integrity, from a place of beauty. You’re trying to make quality art during this mass desensitization to beauty in art and degeneration of the masses, a very inconvenient combination for real artists. You want to include higher levels of taste, of expertise, of intellect, of beauty into your work, in a world where a large bulk of the masses don’t have the ability to equip those attributes, because those attributes have been desensitized and corroded within them. They don’t have the intangibles to grasp the details in your work. They don’t have the ability to discern what true quality is. So for the authentic creatives, it becomes incredibly hard to break through.
For example, say someone created a film like Portrait of Lady on Fire or Synecdoche, New York. For the desensitized masses, they lack the intangibles to grasp the subtleties to connect to that film. Those films most likely will do nothing for them, when they’re densely packed and tastefully created films. Or admittedly myself, I thought Frank Ocean was BS, but then I gained the expertise and the ear to be able to grasp and connect to something like Blonde. An experience like that helps me open up to receive other art that was outside of my range, expanding my perception. That’s the masses you want to sell your work to, maybe they don’t have the ability to understand your work yet, but you have the opportunity to open their eyes, and change their minds and hearts. But that’s not what a lot of these creatives are facing. These new creatives have to deal with people whose ability to receive the beauty in your art have been corroded, with a very low probability of them developing the ability to receive beauty. And it’s only going to get worse because it’s a growing issue. I still do believe you should keep your artistic integrity. Catering to people that don’t care about the craft most likely will destroy your essence, but unfortunately might be the route for some or many. Which is adding to the degradation of the arts.
There used to be corners where people just rapped. And not everyone was a rapper on that corner. But the listeners had a level of expertise to comprehend and break down the bars. There was an intellect to the consumer. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your status is, if you came with quality work, you got your respect. This is where meritocracy thrives. But when the consumer lacks the expertise, care, and the intellect, that’s where the appreciation of the craft gets destroyed. And the people that get the respect becomes very random in terms of quality of work, because now it’s more numerically metric based, more status based, and status is also very numerically metric based. Also it’s extremely saturated, you’re competing with millions of people, when before you had the ability to compete block to block. You can locally make something of yourself based on your skill also mixed in a bit with your cachet, that also mattered, but not as much as the skill. But you were able to build to a viable point through local means. Now with the diminishing of those aspects, the route is homogenized and everyone, millions of people have to compete on the internet. And you can gain engagement with means outside of skill and talent, purely your internet cachet can get you a deal.
Who benefits from this? Who benefits from the degradation of the masses? Like in typical fashion, like you can see from other work on my website, it’s corporate. The people have no care for the well-being of the arts & culture and the people of it, but they benefit the most from it, the vultures. What type of artist is harder to find and cultivate? Your artists like Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, and Drake or artists like Lil Nas X, Roddy Ricch, and Polo G(No disrespect to some of these guys and their peers, and 100% disrespect to some of them as well). It’s very rare and hard to find musical acts of that stature in the first group, with extremely large budgets to fund their visions. And the second group, you can have great luck, and probably not as hard to find those tiers of talents. You can find talent like that anywhere, and the budget for their visions are exponentially cheaper. But one similarity they all share, is all of them have a Billboard number 1 hit. So what group do you think corporate would want to choose from, and most likely it’s group 2. Exponentially cheaper and easier acts to find, but still can generate a lot of revenue, they don’t care what happens to the quality of the culture, all that matters is their profits. So they benefit from intentionally degrading the masses. Like with the opioid crisis, indoctrinating the masses with opioid like product and content, cheap artificially manufactured content. To the point where they struggle being stimulated by beautiful art that takes effort and expertise to appreciate, and they are hooked on artificial content that can be easily replicated. Now you homogenized a large portion of the masses, and you can widely predict and replicate what a lot of what that massive desensitized group will engage with. Also indoctrinate lower quality content into the masses, where these machines can constantly and easily replicate cheap content and products that the masses will accept and consume.
We have to spark a movement where we contextualize who’s good and who’s not. Who’s striving to create and has beautiful art and who’s not. Show who and what is in said tier of talent and quality. Too many lines are blurred, and things appear way bigger and better than they should be. Maybe a movement of people who can discern true authentic art, could help coach the masses into seeing the value and quality in true art, maybe it could spark abilities in them to discern true meaningful art, where they start discarding the absurdity of the cheap synthetic stuff. Implementing a standard of quality that you will not accept less than, expecting a lot more from creatives. Aspects like these can start to correct the way this obsolete & meaningless art culture is currently.
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