Save Point

Gahlord Dewald, writing for his newsletter:

The culture we make as a society is a reflection. It reflects our values, our hopes, our vision, our fears. We dream of travel and so we make airplanes and cars and trains, devise a myriad of social practices and language to encode it in our society—highways, rush hour, morning commute, stuck in traffic.

Recently Neil Young and Joni Mitchell reminded us of one way music and business rituals intertwine. Young feels that his music should not be the loss leader used to pay for messages that are dangerous to his community.

In a "freedom of speech" sense people have a right to say dangerous and untrue things; there are so many people doing this that I can't understand how it could be worth $100,000,000. But it's the company's money, not mine, they are free to build the kind of world they wish to be in too.

Similarly, I feel that people who place a lower value on promoting dangerous messages are free to disassociate from the cultural distribution rituals which fund and promote dangerous messages.

Create and support the social rituals that improve your community, that build the kind of society in which you want to participate.