(A loose collection of thoughts I had while reading Guy Debord’s “Society of the Spectacle”)
Humans are cultural beings in that they use culture to act upon the world. In that sense, any work made by humans is an expression of human culture. Capitalism and by its extension the capitalist nation state is the result of human culture. Humans created it and still maintain it.
The state encompasses all human culture that cements the material conditions under which capitalism can exist.
The State in its role as protector of Capitalist society, thus has an interest in the continued creation of human culture, that secures its own future.
History is Capitalism's biggest threat, because it carries within it the idea of change. The less humans are aware of its existence, the easier it is for capitalism to exert its control over them. The more Capitalism is under threat, the more it wants to create the illusion that linear time does not exist.
Art is a gateway between the material reality under which humans exist and the metaphysical. It is an attempt to take abstract emotions and ideas and translate those into relatable, real (material) objects. It is the bridge between our idea of what the world should be, and reality.
All culture reflects upon the historical conditions under which it was created, thus any culture that is created under capitalism, is capitalist. However, not all culture that is created under capitalism, serves to secure its continued existence. Some of it attempts to imagine realities that go beyond it, or ways to exist outside of its very specific vision of humanity.
If left unchecked, humans will over time find a way to first imagine a reality beyond capitalism and then eventually succeed at bringing it into being.
As with any other type of threat to itself, Capitalism uses material precarity as its main tool to force compliance. Art that does not reaffirm the status quo, or even dares to go beyond it, is usually met with commercial and social misery, whereas works that do the opposite are rewarded and praised.
The purpose of art under capitalism is to create a constant stream of realities that reaffirm its existence. The capitalist way of living has to be the most desirable. The capitalist moral has to be the most virtuous. However, since time never stops, it has to constantly create new works that reflect the current present back at its people, while also pretending that nothing ever changes.
The supposed promise of culture created via Large Language models is that it lets humans create things, without the need to involve other people in the process. In their perpetual regurgitation of previous ideas they offer a vision of a capitalist art that keeps reaffirming the status quo, while due to having removed the human element from the equation, destroying the connection between art and history.
They are the perfect reflection of Capitalism’s desire to fully dictate the conditions of its own reality. They promise an eternal stream of realities that are old, new and present at the same time. But the ideas behind them are not new. It is just another attempt at the industrialisation of human culture and expression, another attempt to take full control over both the physical and metaphysical realities that shape us.
Like any other attempt it is flawed and will ultimately fail, because like Capitalism itself, it doesn’t realise that human culture is not absolute and the material reality around us, will forever remain outside of our control.
Time will move, history will happen and the world will eventually forget about Capitalism and its States. The shape it will take after its collapse however, is still up in the air.