The Beatles: Time to let it be?

[Igel]

23. Eh.

If the past stifles the present in a democratized culture, it's because most people prefer the past to the present. They think it better satisfies their needs.

In the 1990s American and German lit swamped the Czech literary scene. It wasn't necessarily what publishers wanted to publish. It was what readers wanted to buy. The indigenous writers and literati were irate about it. Let's assume there are 20 popular writers at any given time. Each year, they can turn out a certain amount of literary production. If you have a population of 10 million and you're just considering the year's output, there might be some really good stuff; odds are it won't be as good. Now, if your up against writers from a cohort of over 400 million literature, fairly prosperous people and you're picking the best for the last 40 years you're facing some stiff competition. So the foreign and the past swamped the present in the 1990s Czech literary scene.

The solution was the same in both cases: For the musicians and the writers to actually produce material that readers wanted. Or to produce less popular material that the musician or writers liked, and be happy that there are at least some others that support it, rather than rant about how superior they are and how boring and pedestrian those lesser being, the "majority," are.

As for the Olympics, if you're looking at cultural contributions you don't want to focus on the here-and-now. What's the contribution of Russian music and literature to world civilization and culture? Pussy Riot? Only if "world civilization" is defined to be a very, very small number of people.