Enslaved To Access

I Guess We All Buy Vinyl?

You just can’t help but feel like we’ve all been duped. 

That’s at least how I felt as I began to ponder the dichotomy between access and ownership, and as I came to realize just some of the implications and effects of the rapid movement towards a world of access which has occurred over the past several decades. Ownership is indeed on the decline, and we should be concerned about it.  In its stead we have happily welcomed the now-normative, convenient modes of access, which allow us to use and enjoy goods and services without having to own them outright by which we distance ourselves from the responsibility, commitment, and freedom inherent to ownership.

There are many ways in which the access economy has taken primacy in our lives, but I would like to focus on an area that is of particular interest to me that is certainly of no less importance than any other.  This is, of course, that of arts and entertainment, particularly those media which we can enjoy on a regular and personal basis: music, film, and literature.

Naturally, there are other art forms where the access/ownership issue is relevant, but these three are particularly important, as they are the most widely and readily consumed forms of art today, and they thus all play a principal role in the expression and determination of culture.  (Obviously, there is a plethora of visual, aural, and conceptual stimuli which also vie for our attention on the stark battleground that is the social media/internet conglomerate, but these are not art and are thus not at issue here.) 

I think that without going into too much detail, it is fairly clear what access looks like in these artistic modes today.  These days, our music is conveniently located on a streaming app whose extensive catalogues of music we access either by paying a subscription or by subjecting ourselves to advertisements.  The situation is almost identical in the film category, with a multiplicity of streaming services which each offer their own database of good (and horrible) films and shows, to which a consumer gains access either by subscribing, paying a small à la carte rental fee, or of course watching a surplus of mindless advertisements.  We’re not quite there yet with literature, but it’s easy to see the groundwork being laid with services like Audible and Kindle which allow for easy and affordable access to a wide array of audiobooks and eBooks, without the cumbersome and expensive qualities of purchasing physical books. 

In all these cases, there are two abiding implications that I think ought to be candidly considered by all who access these media.  The first is the amount of power and authority we gladly sacrifice to central authorities in determining the content that is available to us. The second, which I think is even more important, regards the personal and psychological effects that stem from a reliance on these systems of access.

Central Dependency

The centralization of determinant power in the hands of these access-based service providers is a problem all too easily taken for granted. We are simply tantalized by the humongous catalogues of music, shows, films, and books that are available on these services, so much so that we totally forget how tenuous our grasp on them is. We don’t even realize how much we are limiting ourselves by putting all our faith in these seemingly limitless resources. It seems counterintuitive because it feels so empowering and freeing to have access to such a prodigious amount of content, but the opposite is in fact true. The more we invest ourselves in and rely on these services and the more we move away from actually owning books, movies, shows, and music, the less free we become and the more power we gladly hand over to these massive corporations to determine what art gets the privilege of affecting and remaining in culture.

I think it’s easy for people to come to this realization and not really care, simply because censorship has not been such a big problem on these sites (yet), and pretty much all the content one might wish for is readily available. We have, however, begun to see inklings of questionable content manipulation, as can be seen in the fairly recent Rogan/Young/Spotify debacle. Joe Rogan—podcaster extraordinaire—was forced to take down numerous episodes in the name of censorship, and Neil Young—complainer extraordinaire—removed himself and all of his content from the platform in protest to the fact that Spotify didn’t do enough to censor Rogan. Now, if you’re a hardcore Young fan and you also care about listening to everything that Rogan has put out, your just tough out of luck, and Spotify just isn’t the place for you. I don’t intend to make of this more than it is, and I understand that this removal is not all that dramatic, but I highlight it simply to show that putting all our eggs in one basket (Spotify in this case) makes you completely vulnerable to the whims of the mainframe.

Regardless of how restrictive or manipulative these platforms have been and are currently, there is no denying that they easily could manipulate what is available in the future, and the more dependent on them that we are, the more that this will affect us, since we will have less and less owned content to fall back on. I may have access today to just about any book, movie, or piece of music that I deem important, but will my children? Will I be able to educate them in the works of Wagner if I am fully dependent on Spotify to keep his opus in their catalogues? The answer is, no doubt, probably. But who knows for sure? If I purchase and physically own an album, however, I can all but guarantee its permanence to my progeny. And in doing so, I exercise my own freedom and responsibility to share it with others and allow it to affect culture. By taking the risk of investing in art, I can better protect an artistic heritage for posterity from potential ideological over-rule by any government or corporation.

In any case, art is crucial, and sacrificing our control over its dissemination is exceedingly dangerous. It is no accident that in so many instances of fictional totalitarian dystopia—Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and even the film Equilibrium to name a few—and even in various historical examples of totalitarianism, i.e. the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, art is of utmost concern for these oppressive regimes, whether they eliminate all forms of art or merely those which oppose their ideologies. In Brave New World we also see the production and dissemination of state-sponsored entertainment, “feelies” as they are called, which serve to keep the masses content, addicted, and reliant on the mainframe. By moving away from the ownership of art and becoming increasingly reliant on access services, we simply make it a whole lot easier for any totalitarian power to wipe out any artistic elements that it wishes and to dictate the development of culture.

Personal Effects

In addition to its negative political ramifications, the access system of art has caused many problems to individuals and to culture itself, particularly with regards to how art is treated and viewed on account of it.

Never before have we had access to so much artistic content. This may sound like a great thing, and, in a way, it is, since by subscribing to access-based services I certainly have far greater opportunities to enjoy great works of art and certainly more exposure to works of which I would otherwise have no awareness. Such a glut of artistic content at our fingertips, however, tends toward an overindulgence and overstimulation of content, and even the good art we enjoy becomes less meaningful; we are so desensitized to artistic stimuli that we run the risk of consuming art as mere entertainment with no real connection to the work. This tends towards a sense of entitlement sans responsibility along with an increasing need for instant gratification. Consequently, our sense of what we need and even what we want becomes overinflated. No longer happy with what we can own, we now feel the need to have constant access to a world of diverse entertainments at our fingertips which will never satisfy our increasingly consumptive desires. This ease of access not only artificially increases our demand for stimuli and dopamine releasers but also decreases our ability to wait for them, and we thus increasingly train our brains to expect instant gratification and that we don’t need to be responsible for the things we wish to enjoy. Both are thoroughly damaging psychological effects which invariably tend towards sinful and, in some cases, violent activity.

One question I often see posed by supporters of access over ownership is the following: “Do I really need to own all the things I want to use or enjoy? Can’t I just access them instead?” This is an interesting, woke-ish question which I think stems from a rather entitled disposition. Of course, it is important to eschew materialism, and it seems that some of these access-proponents hide questions like these behind such an honorable motive, but I think some even more important questions to ask in response to this are: “Do I really need to enjoy all these things? Are they necessary? Are they helping me achieve my purpose?” This is certainly not an argument for philistinism, or being indifferent to art. On the contrary, I think having access to less art by constricting oneself to enjoying that art which he is willing to purchase, create, or inherit, and which he will thereafter indefinitely keep, will allow one to be more fully moved by that art, to more deeply enjoy it, and to develop a more artistic soul for himself. He will thus be more attuned to Beauty and more motivated to glean it and the other Transcendentals out of the art he enjoys, as opposed to one who is constantly moving along from one artistic stimulus to the next to satisfy his own appetite for entertainment.

So, What Can We Do?

Throughout this article I have highlighted the extremes of this issue to point out some of the dangers of the direction we continue to careen. While I apologize if you are offended because you think you have a generally good appreciation of art and you only listen to your music on Spotify, read your books on Kindle, and watch your movies on Netflix, I can’t ignore the grave reality of these access systems. Our insistence on abandoning the responsible ownership of art and providing seemingly unlimited access thereto has engendered a generation that is too weak and too afraid to make any real commitments or take any risks; a generation unwilling to truly invest itself in art who will therefore never be able to truly reap the benefits of it; a generation increasingly dependent on the mainframe to be entertained who will be thoroughly at a loss when their access gets taken away, with nothing owned to fall back on, and nothing to pass along to their progeny.

So, what can we do? I know that this is a difficult line to draw, because for one, it really is frightfully attractive to have unlimited access. I mentioned earlier in this article that it really does feel empowering to have so much at our fingertips without having to really own it, even though it is truthfully nothing but disempowering. It is also hard because, despite all these dangers which I have pointed out about the access system, I can say that I have truly benefitted in many ways by subscribing to these access services in the past: I have listened to inspirational, spiritual podcasts and great music on Spotify that I never would have known if my only option was to purchase and own them. Similarly with great movies which I have streamed, which I can truthfully say have bettered me. I, therefore, am not advocating for a collective need to unequivocally abandon these services, but for each of us to discern and develop a healthy balance between access and ownership, and to invest in the ownership of art in hopes that we might inculcate a more fruitful appreciation of it in ourselves and others, become more independent of the central mainframe, and further develop our own individual artistries as a result. I ask for your prayers as I search to find that balance myself.

Pax Christi

The Ride of the Valkyrie from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen

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“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

-Aldous Huxley