“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” – Peter Tosh

We’re a culture of babies. Our knowledge has been sprinting upward on an exponential curve, but our wisdom sighs and chuffs up a modest incline, pausing frequently for a deep fried snack and a nap. We don’t mind the planned obsolescence of new gadgetry; it gives us an excuse to upgrade to that snazzy newer version everyone else already has. We know our clothes come from sweatshops and our meat comes from factory farms, and these things are terrible, and someone should really do something about them. But we still want cheap food and clothes. Because we’re used to them. And we like them. And we want more. Because we’ve got a serious infection of narcissism.

In a recent Rolling Stone review of the new Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings record, the reviewer asked if the new album was “a record or a museum exhibit”. Jones and the Dap Kings make retro soul music in which “the details are picture-perfect: Every guitar scratch and brass blast sounds like it was teleported straight from 1965 to 1972”. In the end the reviewer concludes- “Sharon Jones sings with force and feeling, but there’s only so much you can do to breathe life into music so in thrall to the past. Call the Dap-Kings a band if you want- they’re really connoisseurs” (1). 

When I was growing up retro was part of the landscape, such as people dressing up for 70s themed parties and the like, so I figured it had just always been a part of human culture. Perhaps Persians in the 1540s copied the ways of Persians in the 1420s, who knows, I didn’t really think about it. So I was startled to learn that ‘retro’ is in fact a very recent development in the evolution of human culture. And it’s distinctly postmodern.

Modernity. What is it? It’s a complex question, but it’s something we need to figure out if we’re ever going to evolve beyond its limitations. Cause we’re caught up in it, it floats all around us, so close as to be almost unrecognizable. It’s more than just a time period, or a particular geographical happening. It’s something grander and more strange than that, irreducible to singular coordinates. It’s the story of human growth, with its continual changes in form and meaning. And it’s a story of acceleration.