Watching the activities of singers like BTS and Lee Eun-mi lately,
What is a song and who is a singer?
And what were they, and who were they?
I found myself wondering.
Wait, before that,
The industrial age's production platform, called division of labor or the factory, began to redefine all the activities and roles humans had performed up to that point. And that chain of things was able to spread worldwide thanks to the system called neoliberalism. These became the common sense of transaction and existence. When something went against that common sense, wars broke out; and on the basis of that common sense, competitive relationships and collaborative relationships were formed.
In this neoliberal era, the internet became a catalyst for these newly redefined human roles and activities. Neoliberalism became more accelerated, more granular, more globalized — recently a more-Western-than-the-West Eastern culture has formed, and Eastern-than-the-East values have started to take root in the West.
In the middle of that, the new paradigm called the "fourth industrial revolution" appeared. And it is helping to put the human roles and activities that had been redefined for a while back in their original places. Concepts that were only possible as ideals or ideology are being put into practice one by one thanks to hardware and software advances.
Even within the neoliberal economic market and competition system, thanks to the internet environment, AI, and IoT environments connected through it, individuals' time and capability — once used as tools for economic activity — have begun to be (put nicely) saved, or (put negatively) rendered unnecessary.
Whatever the reason, the idle time generated for each individual will feel like fear to some and the source of creativity and creation to others. And that difference will manifest not as a difference in economic and social hierarchy, unlike in the past, but as a difference in life's reason or in the dignity of being.
Ahead of this large current, very small-scale trivial changes are starting.
Of course, there have long been people who discard existing values and pursue new ones. But society wasn't ready and couldn't accept them. As a result, such people faced a string of hardships and were treated as resistors, misfits, or strangers.
Time passed, and society — and people — got to experience the results of their choices. Through social choices and their consequences, and individual choices and their consequences, the public began to accept, endorse, and voluntarily support healthy values for their own benefit.
So let's think again.
A song wasn't created just to give amusement (pleasure, good feeling, positive emotion) to listeners.
A song was, in one era, a role like a book of history; in another era, an earnest prayer to fulfill the wishes all shared; and it was used to carry the public's thoughts or political intentions to the other side.
Such songs began to be redefined as tools for money in the neoliberal era. To comfort, as quickly and efficiently as possible, modern people worn out by making money, the grand meanings and roles among their past functions were dismissed as excess and cut away — and they began to be optimized for the purpose of fun or pleasure.
Not only songs — many different categories held the same pattern, and they are once again returning to themselves.
Those of us (or I) living through this transitional period,
and the services (or PMs) that have to survive in this transitional period,
may need to question the standards and processes based on the knowledge and common sense of the past.
