When Andy Hildebrand accidentally developed autotune, the music industry experienced a significant shift toward pitch-perfect music. The aesthetics of mainstream music underwent a complete transformation. The mass-production industry could now adopt formats for the widespread standardization of music. The tool even became a feature when T-Pain extrapolated the usage of the tool, creating a new genre of music. Everybody wanted to autotune their tunes. A little later, the vocal-chopped snippets with distorted pitches also became mainstream when Major Lazer’s “Lean On” hit 1 billion streams on Spotify.
A song rejected by top-selling artists was brought to life by Major Lazer (Diplo) and garnered billions of plays, making “Lean On” the fourth song on Spotify to reach that number.
Every time a new tool is released, artists strive to find innovative ways to utilize it creatively, whether intentionally or by chance. The same thing has happened with guitar distortion, vinyl scratching, and sampling. People are always attracted to new trends, which come and go in waves. However, with the spread of information through social media, there are many new micro-trends that we can barely keep up with. The latest I was able to follow was LoFi Girl and its nemesis, the hyperpop.
Lofi Girl YouTube channel captured the essence of a niche
However, to add to the pulverization of music creation, artificial intelligence isn’t just creating near-perfect songs based on current genres; we can’t keep up with the rapid release of music. Spotify’s Release Radar can’t show us everything that we could keep up with. This is a complicated scenario for new artists to break through, or even for new genres to gain widespread adoption among people. We are shifting to a scenario of niche massification.
But how does the atomization of music influence its aesthetics? The music industry will always profit from something; however, music itself is no longer the focus (and it barely was in the past). We had major music scenes that lasted a couple of decades, then shifted to short trends, and now the music creation is insignificantly related to all the rest that the artists are adding their effort to. Some niches still maintain a high quality of composition, but there is little to no progress in the mainstream regarding music itself. If we consider Spotify’s top 20 artists, most of them aren’t there because of their music, but because of the aesthetics they created alongside it; the songs are just background noise.
Xania Monet is a fake AI artist who somehow managed to reach the Billboard charts.
Many writers have already published books, articles, and essays regarding the problems of creating music for the masses. Adorno, Scruton, and Lipovetsky are worth mentioning—and their warnings were prescient. These critics were right to identify the leveling effects of mass production on art. Their so-called “elitism” wasn’t mere snobbery but a recognition that aesthetic standards exist and matter—a position I share without reservation. The dopamine shots became shorter and shorter, so that we are in a scenario where the addiction no longer cares about music; they gotta get the listener by other means necessary. Let’s listen to mainstream music (I carefully advise against it): you will find the artificial additives on every sonic wave, as it is an auditory version of ultra-processed food. The consequences of it are the same as ingesting unhealthy food; your brain is going to atrophy to the point of no return.
Music is a metaphysical process: we listen to enter another place, either through communion or solitude with ourselves. The dopamine hit eliminates this element. As Rudolf Otto pointed out, music is one of the most important artifacts used to access the sacred, as every religion incorporates it into its liturgy. Music is even mentioned as a vital element in the afterlife, as, for example, mentioned many times in the Bible, where angels sing to extol God.
‘And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: ‘ – Revelation 19:1
Mozart’s Lacrimosa captures the essence of music created for the sublime.
Now, let’s put all elements into place: ultra-processed aesthetics, artificial intelligence producing endless pieces of music, an overwhelming amount of information pushed through self-fed algorithms, and the elimination of music metaphysics. What’s left for music? The probable solution to this would be the rejection of mainstream and technological abuse of art, adopting a Luddite stance. Neo-Luddism has recently been adopted by individuals overwhelmed by the pressure that technological advancements place on society, causing them to prematurely embrace new trends. Nevertheless, we know beforehand that it’s impossible to avoid the winds of change, like a single sailor in a storm with a raft.
Certainly, discretion is advised. A balanced approach is needed, but we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in society, where we can’t trust any media or information. The exact process will happen to music consumption. Will we blindly embrace music created by AI, with the plastic hyperrealism it produces? If history shows us a pattern, we have to agree that it’s a certain yes. The aesthetics of music will reveal a shallow, unholy, addicted society, not as a norm, but as a Zeitgeist. We can’t pretend to have a crystal ball, but we see the data and realize that this path was taken.
The obvious objection to this critique is: who decides what’s good? But this question itself reveals the depth of our cultural crisis—it assumes aesthetic value is merely subjective preference, that one person’s masterpiece is another’s noise and neither judgment holds more weight. In reality, criteria exist: technical mastery, structural coherence, emotional depth, metaphysical resonance. These aren’t arbitrary impositions but accumulated wisdom from centuries of musical tradition. Rejecting expertise and canon in favor of algorithmic popularity or radical relativism—the notion that “everyone’s taste is equally valid”—has produced precisely the aesthetic wasteland we now inhabit. The democratization of creation tools doesn’t eliminate the hierarchy between craft and noise; it merely obscures it under the illusion that all output is equivalent.
Therefore, acknowledging that the trends are becoming extreme and aware of how music for the masses is being produced, we, as a minority that thinks critically about the situation, will not simply become Luddites; we will have to construct a new path. We must reassert that not all music is equally valuable, that mastery and tradition matter, and that standards are not oppressive but liberating. The gatekeepers and curators—critics, educators, artists who maintain these standards—aren’t obstacles to progress but necessary filters against cultural entropy. Using the premises of the classical standards created by the giants on whose shoulders we stand, we must produce a counter-wave of discriminating, sober use of technology so that we can thrive through this storm: a tech-culturally savvy elite that filters and shares what is good, pure, and meaningful. There’s no wishful hope in the midst of a dystopian future, only pragmatic solutions grounded in the recognition that excellence exists and must be preserved.
Not by coincidence, Depeche Mode had a song called Sacred on their album “Music for the Masses”. What a unexpected turn of events.
Recently, I stumbled upon a YouTube video that was suggested to me, entitled “No Seriously, Classical Music is Dying”. The video was not particularly viral, nor the author is massively followed. The content was created by someone who actually has a bond with classical music but feels frustrated that it needs artificial means to survive.
She has some interesting points of view; nonetheless, we should dive into the arguments where the concern is raised. For example, why is it not popular or accessible, and why do patrons need to keep classical music alive, and why don’t they let it die because of “elitism”? All of those points are valid, but they don’t hold if you take into consideration the history of music itself: classical music always relied on the elite to survive and to be developed, as the universities and intellectuals of the world also did. Those things don’t rely on popularity for full development; they need a few people with money and vision. The best example of that was made in the Renaissance by the Medici. They not only supported music but also art in general, and because of people like them, we could further develop culture and science.
If we let the mob decide whether one style of music should live or die, we would end up regressing toward the most primitive forms of musical expression. This isn’t a moral judgment about anyone’s taste—it’s a structural observation about how cultural evolution works. When accessibility becomes the only criterion for survival, music optimizes for instant comprehension. But instant comprehension favors the familiar, the repetitive, the immediately graspable. Over generations, this creates a ratchet effect: each iteration must be understandable by ears trained on the previous iteration’s simplicity. There’s no mechanism for complexity to enter the system—no pathway for forms that reward sustained attention, no infrastructure for music that reveals itself gradually.
We can already observe this trend in contemporary popular music: the diminishing importance of melody, the simplification of harmonic structure, the reduction of song length, and even the decrease in instrumental variety. These aren’t accidents but adaptations to an attention economy that penalizes anything requiring more than a first listen to appreciate. The issue isn’t that simpler music is morally inferior—it’s that if we dismantle every institutional support for complex forms, we don’t get democratic complexity. We get only what survives without cultural scaffolding, without mentorship, without the time to develop ears capable of hearing what isn’t immediately obvious.
If we just “let classical music die,” we are letting go of music’s capacity for depth. We’re not preserving this tradition because it’s “better” in some absolute sense, but because it represents a pathway to experiences that require preparation—earned transcendence, revelation through training. That’s not an elitist movement; that’s a humanist movement. It’s defending the human capacity for growth, for the delayed gratification of understanding something that once seemed opaque. Without preserving forms that demand apprenticeship, we eliminate the very possibility of such transformations.
The Myth of Classical Music’s Popular Past
When people claim that classical music is “dying,” they usually imagine a golden age when it was popular, when concert halls were packed and symphonies were a shared civic ritual. But this is a modern projection. Classical music was never popular in the democratic sense — it was always the music of a minority, sustained by institutions, courts, and patrons who could afford the space and leisure to cultivate listening. Its apparent exclusivity was not an accident of privilege but the necessary condition for its depth. Classical music wasn’t accessible; by an unexpected turn of events, it’s more accessible today than it was ages ago.
Roger Scruton would say that beauty requires “disinterested attention” (Kant’s view) — something that cannot arise in a commercial environment where every sound must justify itself by numbers. The salons, chapels, and aristocratic courts of Europe were small, but they were listening communities, bound by reverence rather than market demand. Adorno called this the “autonomy of art”: the right of a form to develop according to its own logic, not the logic of the crowd. What sustained that autonomy was precisely its distance from popularity.
Schopenhauer, who believed music expressed the inner structure of the world itself, saw in this distance something metaphysical: only those freed from the immediate struggle for existence could fully surrender to the Will revealed in sound. Access, therefore, was not simply economic; it was existential — it required quiet, contemplation, and an inner discipline that most of life discourages.
When the public concert finally emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it didn’t democratize classical music in substance, only in form. The bourgeoisie replaced the aristocracy, but the function remained the same: a small, cultivated public acting as custodians of a complex art. The present obsession with “accessibility” forgets that every art form that endures does so through apprenticeship — through the few who carry the knowledge for the many. It was during the Romantic period that classical music became more introspective and took center stage. Before that, music was part of something else: a ceremony, a party, liturgy, background noise to anything else.
So yes — classical music was never popular, nor was it meant to be. Its power lies in its resistance to mass consumption. What made it valuable was not its reach but its refinement — the density of form, the intricacy of its inner life, the demand it placed on its listener. To expect it to thrive on the same terms as pop culture is to mistake a cathedral for a shopping mall.
Elitism versus Consumerism
Classical music never asked for a crowd; it asked for a congregation. As Roger Scruton reminds us, beauty is not an opinion but a demand—the demand that we learn to attend. The aesthetics of Classical Music rely on contemplation, not consumerism. Beauty creates obligations: to listen with patience, to refine taste, to make cognitive sacrifices for meaning. Elitism, in this register, is not snobbery but structure: an acknowledgement that some goods require apprenticeship. Adorno, writing from a different angle, calls mass culture production a machinery of regression. The “culture industry” trains the ear to crave the easily repeated and the instantly known. When the ear is trained downward, patronage becomes scandalous and difficulty becomes “elitist.” When the ear is trained upward, patronage appears as what it once was: the practical mechanism by which high forms survive periods of low appetite.
However, some degree of self-judgment among the classical elite must be revised, as pure intellectuality bypassed moral judgment and relativism emerged as a wild card. This prompted the decay of virtuosity, and the beast of emotions was loosened in the scene. Contemporary classical music paid more attention to its form than its content. This is where the sublime lost its place. Even Stravinsky reflected on that when he shifted his compositions towards neoclassicism.
The Medici were not merely pursuing a pastime; they were establishing a symbolic monument (maybe even greater than what they actually envisioned). Scruton is clear: high art grows where there is a conception of the sacred—of things before which we stand, not things we use up. Patronage concentrates resources around the holy so that difficult goods can appear in the world at all: cathedrals, fugues, instruments that require decades to master. Perhaps the sense of death in classical music reflects the refusal of the sacred in this Gestalt.
The Sacred and the Profane
Perhaps what we call the death of classical music is not an aesthetic crisis at all, but a spiritual one. It is the symptom of a civilization that no longer acknowledges the sacred — or rather, that refuses to admit the sacred as a legitimate category of experience.
In the classical tradition, music was never merely entertainment. It was an anamnesis, a remembering of order. From Pythagoras to Bach, sound was bound to number, number to cosmos, cosmos to God. Harmony was not a style; it was a metaphysical statement — that the world had a hidden architecture and that the ear, properly trained, could perceive it. In that sense, every fugue, every symphony was a small enactment of the sacred: form imposing itself upon chaos, proportion rescuing sound from noise. Kant and Hegel were fond of this notion of virtuosity and the sacred, as Rudolf Otto points out, as well as of music as a reflection of the numinous.
Roger Scruton repeatedly insisted that beauty is a “glimpse of the transcendental,” a way for mortal beings to perceive something eternal. To experience the beautiful, in his words, is to stand “in the presence of the sacred without needing theology.” When we lose the sense of the sacred, art loses its vertical axis — its striving beyond itself. It becomes horizontal, functional, flattened to the level of consumption.
Adorno, from a different temperament, diagnosed the same pathology: the “administered world,” where art’s aura decays because meaning itself has been instrumentalized. In such a world, the concert hall becomes just another leisure venue; silence becomes awkward; and transcendence is confused with branding. The sacred — that sense of something before which one stands — becomes alien to the social order, even offensive to it.
Schopenhauer would have seen this as the victory of the Will’s lowest expressions: endless striving, restless distraction. The contemplative dimension of music, which once offered temporary deliverance from the Will, now competes with background noise. The “death” of classical music, therefore, is the death of contemplation — the death of the listener who could still experience music as metaphysical deliverance.
When you write that if we let classical music die, we let music as a whole die, this is what you are really describing: the loss of the sacred gesture itself — the bowing of the soul before form, the recognition that sound can be more than sensation. Classical music’s disappearance would mark not the extinction of a genre but the completion of secularization — the total refusal of transcendence.
The Death of Music
If we acknowledge that Classical Music is dying, we might as well say that music itself is dying. Music became a commodity, and a really worthless one, as the mass production of its production, enhanced by today’s artificial intelligence, makes us lose the connection to what music really is: “The beauty of music is the beauty of the world itself, revealed to the sense of hearing.” (Roger Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music).
Somehow, though, music will find its way out of this hyperrealism where nothing satisfies the soul anymore, as the abuse of technology and the market will turn things around and make people cultivate the purity of music created by humans for humans, as a way of transcending the sublime. Or we might head towards a time when people take their auditory version of SOMA and become numb. I rather hope for the opposite.
Core Philosophical Foundations
Roger Scruton – The Aesthetics of Music (1997) Scruton argues that beauty demands “learning to attend” and that music reveals transcendence without theology. His chapter on tonality and meaning is crucial for the “sacred architecture” argument.
Roger Scruton – Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (2011) More accessible summary of his aesthetics. The section on “desecration” directly addresses what happens when the sacred dimension is lost.
Theodor Adorno – Philosophy of New Music (1949) His critique of the “culture industry” and defense of art’s autonomy. Warning: dense, but the sections on Schoenberg vs. Stravinsky illuminate the “contemporary classical paid attention to form over content” point.
Theodor Adorno – Introduction to the Sociology of Music (1962) More approachable. His typology of listeners (expert, good, culture consumer, emotional, resentment, entertainment, indifferent) maps perfectly onto the accessibility critique.
The Sacred and Music
Arthur Schopenhauer – The World as Will and Representation, Volume I, Book III (1818) The section on music where he argues music expresses the Will itself—the metaphysical foundation for your “music as deliverance from striving” argument.
Rudolf Otto – The Idea of the Holy (1917) Defines the “numinous”—that sense of the sacred you’re invoking. His concept of mysterium tremendum explains why beauty creates obligations, not just preferences.
Cultural Patronage and History
Jacob Burckhardt – The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) The definitive account of Medici-style patronage. Shows how cultural forms require institutional support, not popularity.
The Crisis of Contemporary Culture
Christopher Lasch – The Revolt of the Elites (1995) Argues that contemporary elites abandoned their custodial role—directly relevant to the point about “pure intellectuality bypassing moral judgment.”
George Steiner – Real Presences (1989) Argues all serious art and literature are predicated on the wager that transcendence exists. When culture loses this wager, art becomes mere commentary. Essential for your sacred/profane section.
On Listening and Attention
Alex Ross – The Rest Is Noise (2007) Accessible history of 20th-century music. Shows how classical music’s relationship to audiences transformed.
Pierre Bourdieu – Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979). Maps how “cultural capital” works. Helpful in understanding the infrastructure of taste without dismissing it as snobbery.
The Populism Question
José Ortega y Gasset – The Revolt of the Masses (1930) Classic argument that mass society threatens cultural excellence. Controversial, but articulates the concern about “letting the mob decide.”
Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America, Volume II, Part I (1840). Chapters on how democracy affects arts and letters. He predicted exactly the tension describing between democratic equality and cultural refinement.
Contemporary Diagnosis
Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (2009) Short, sharp analysis of how market logic colonizes all cultural space. His concept of “depressive hedonia” (can’t enjoy anything but can’t stop consuming) illuminates the sense of “nothing satisfies the soul” closing.
Jonathan Haidt – The Anxious Generation (2024) On how technology destroyed contemplative capacity in young people. Directly relevant to the “tyranny of immediacy” point. A very popular book by Haidt.
Counterpoints Worth Engaging
Richard Taruskin – The Oxford History of Western Music (2005). A Monumental work that challenges romantic myths about classical music’s autonomy and purity. Reading him would strengthen your argument by forcing you to address his critiques.
Lawrence Levine – Highbrow/Lowbrow (1988) shows how the classical/popular distinction is historically constructed, not natural. Engaging with this would make essentialism more defensible.
Derek Sivers said “Die Empty” (which is actually a book by Todd Henry).^1 Bill Perkins has a book named “Die with Zero”.^2 Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf coined the motto “Preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten,” a pietist way of living for missionaries. ^3
Todd aimed to live fully and create everything possible with his lifetime, being productive. Perkins’ book aims to help people enjoy their earnings rather than let them sit idle as useless cash. However, Nikolaus’ message was to live for a cause that extends beyond one’s life.
What can we achieve if we combine all of them? A meaningful life. Maybe a bit of what Viktor Frankl’s^4 work was about, but it’s really what the Bible has been preaching all along.
Let’s do a mental exercise. For example:
1. Die Empty – Living Fully & Using Your Gifts
These verses encourage pouring out your talents, energy, and life for God’s purposes:
2 Timothy 4:6-7 – “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Matthew 25:14-30 (Parable of the Talents) – calls us to invest what’s entrusted to us, not to bury it.
John 9:4 – “As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work.”
2. Die with Zero – Enjoying & Sharing God’s Provision
Scripture teaches that blessings are meant to be enjoyed and shared generously, not hoarded:
Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 – “I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.”
1 Timothy 6:17-18 – “Command those who are rich…to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”
Luke 12:33-34 – “Sell your possessions and give to the poor…For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Proverbs 11:24-25 – “One gives freely, yet grows all the richer; another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.”
3. Be Forgotten – Living for God’s Glory, Not Our Fame
These verses remind us that the goal is to glorify God, not ourselves:
John 3:30 – “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
Galatians 6:14 – “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…”
Matthew 6:1-4 – “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them…your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Psalm 115:1 – “Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”
Isaiah 40:8 – “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”
What if we blended these three ideas into a single vision for living?
Die Empty – exhaust your gifts, leave nothing undone that your heart calls you to create.
Die with Zero – savor your resources while you’re alive; don’t hoard what could have been joy or generosity.
Be Forgotten – don’t cling to legacy or fame; let your life point to something larger than yourself.
Together, they outline a counter-cultural but liberating path: Live fully, give fully, and release the need to be remembered. You pour out your talents and your wealth for meaningful work and for people you love, and you do it in service of something transcendent—whether that’s your faith, humanity, or the next generation.
This aligns with Viktor Frankl’s insight that humans thrive when a purpose beyond pleasure or power guides their lives. It’s also ancient wisdom echoed in Scripture: “Whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
A possible summary mantra could be:
Create what only you can create. Share what you have while you can. Then step aside so the story isn’t about you.
That’s a life well-spent—productive, joyful, and meaningful, all at once.
Music is a metaphysical experience because sounds interact directly with your brain, independent of other senses, and can transport you to different realities. Therefore, the power of music goes beyond its source; it’s sublime [1][10][11].
Many philosophers contemplated music as the most sublime art form, primarily because of its characteristics. Even Nietzsche said that life without music would be an error.
How Sound Interacts with the Brain
Physical entry: Air vibrations reach the cochlea in the inner ear, where hair cells convert them into electrical signals. These signals travel via the auditory nerve to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe [2][10].
Emotion & memory: The auditory cortex has strong connections to the amygdala (emotion), hippocampus (memory), and nucleus accumbens (reward/dopamine). This is why a song can trigger goosebumps, nostalgia, or even tears [3][10].
Imagery & mental travel: Music activates parts of the default-mode network and parietal association areas involved in mental imagery and spatial processing. Brain-imaging studies show that listening to certain sounds—like ocean waves or cathedral echoes—can create vivid inner scenes, almost as if you’re in another place [4][5].
Altered sense of time and self: Rhythms entrain brain oscillations; tempo can change the perception of time. Deep engagement (like in trance or flow) can reduce activity in the prefrontal cortex, which can feel as though self-boundaries dissolve [1][11].
It’s fascinating that one can be mentally transported to another state purely through sound. The Pavlovian-like effect of sonic cues can be used deliberately: when a composer understands how specific sounds trigger emotional reactions, they can shape the listener’s feelings [3][10].
Pop Music and the Hook Economy
The pop-music industry has long experimented with what keeps audiences engaged. While verse-chorus (ABAB) song forms pre-date the 20th century [6], record labels and radio learned that hooks, repetition, and brevity boosted listener retention and sales.
In the streaming era, songs have become shorter and hooks appear earlier to meet the fast-scroll attention economy [7][8][9]. Long-form tracks still thrive in niche scenes, but mainstream pop increasingly favors the “fast-food” style—often around two minutes.
The Composer’s Deeper Role
Recognizing that emotions can be influenced through sound makes the composer’s task even more intriguing. It’s not only about harmony or melody—it’s about shaping collective memory and meaning. Throughout history, music has been used to embed ideas—from protest anthems and theatre music to advertising jingles and even the Psalms, whose lyrics and metrics endured long after their original melodies were lost.
However, the commoditization of this art may disrupt one of humanity’s most sublime forms of transcendence. I’ll share this song by Porcupine Tree as a critique of the current scene.
Daniel J. Levitin – This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (2006) – A popular-science classic explaining how music perception, memory, and reward work in the brain.
Roger Scruton – The Aesthetics of Music (1997) – A philosophical exploration of the metaphysical and aesthetic nature of music.
The word “aesthetics” is not superficial — we are the ones who made it so.
Originally, aesthetics derives from the Greek aisthesis, meaning “perception through the senses.” It goes beyond what is merely visible, encompassing that which reveals meaning, interiority, and the very reason for something’s existence.
By reducing “aesthetics” to superficial procedures or a thin layer of appearance — whether in the body, in objects, or in environments — we neglect the fact that every form expresses a content. Form, therefore, is the language of the interior.
If we use the word only to describe what is superficial, it is our own vision that becomes limited. Aesthetics is not confined to vanity; it represents the visible manifestation of the invisible.
At the same time, even without using the term “aesthetics,” behavior that focuses solely on the outward aspect of appearance reveals a lack of inner meaning: the greater the effort to seem something, the less substance there often is.
Therefore, if we are concerned with aesthetics, it is essential first to care for the content — because the exterior inevitably reflects the interior.
For Kant, aesthetics is not vanity: it is the experience of harmony between our perception and the form of an object — something that awakens in us a sense of fitness that does not depend on ornament or fashion.
For Schopenhauer, aesthetics is not superficial: it is precisely what frees us from the superficiality of desire and connects us to something deeper.
In essence, aesthetics is not an accessory to life but a mirror of who we are. When reduced to the veneer of appearances, it loses its purpose; when cultivated from within, it becomes an authentic expression of meaning. Kant reminds us that true beauty is a harmony that needs no ornament, while Schopenhauer shows that aesthetic contemplation draws us away from the futility of wanting and closer to what is essential.
To care for aesthetics, therefore, is above all to care for the depth it manifests — the soul — because every truly beautiful form is born from genuine substance. Aesthetics is not confined to looks or to the way we dress, but to everything that shapes our taste and our interactions with the world.
Years ago, I embarked on a music project called Omega Code. We made modest progress as a group, but the project ultimately stalled. The primary reason was pragmatic: I realized that advancing to the next stage would require a disproportionate investment of time and energy—one that would threaten my livelihood. To turn it into a sustainable primary source of income, I would have had to make it the center of my professional life. I chose not to. Instead, I brought the project to a close, leaving it as a vivid memory rather than a career. I focused on Combustion Studio instead.
Despite its brevity, Omega Code became an unexpected apprenticeship. It taught me valuable lessons about the music industry, including the importance of collaboration and leadership, as well as the interplay between aesthetics and creativity. Much of our sonic experimentation was driven by visual inputs, a synesthetic approach where imagery shaped sound. Being deeply immersed in the creative field, I benefited from the contributions of many collaborators who subtly shaped the project.
One of the most surreal aspects was the global reach of our visual campaign. Before we released a single track, a series of poster designs sparked international attention. The project existed as an MVP (minimum viable product), yet people engaged as if it were a cultural artifact. We received over 500 illustrations from around the world; designers used our template to generate their own variations. The triangular motif we used triggered a brief design trend in 2009—a slight fever that seemed disproportionate to our scale.
The triangle puzzled many: Why a triangle if the name was Omega Code? Our symbol, inspired by the Christian Trinity, was less a literal reference to “omega” than an emblem of the project’s philosophical roots. As Jungian psychology might suggest, symbols carry meaning beyond logic, surfacing archetypes that resonate collectively with others.
A decade after closing Omega Code, we now find ourselves in the midst of the AI surge. Its influence reaches across disciplines. While many express concern over potential disruptions, I regard this era as an unprecedented opportunity. For the first time, ideas themselves—not just final products—are becoming effortless to manifest.
Back then, many of my conceptual ideas remained unfulfilled because they demanded budgets I didn’t have. Today, a well-crafted prompt can breathe life into concepts that once seemed unattainable. When ideas are grounded in coherent principles, aesthetics, and personal vision, AI becomes a tool to overcome what Jung called the “archetypes of the collective unconscious.”
Prototyping—once a luxury—is now accessible to anyone with curiosity. Since the early 2000s, the internet democratized creativity; today’s AI tools amplify that democratization exponentially. This is neither optimism nor pessimism; it is simply an acknowledgment of historical momentum.
Even brief engagement with old Omega Code concepts recently yielded results that were unimaginable at the time—3D experiments, photographic mock-ups, and even musical sketches. Yet there remains a danger in assuming that AI will deliver finished work. As the painter Chuck Close once said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” Technology offers tools, not miracles; the art still requires discipline, hard work, and human intention.
Were Omega Code to arise today, it would sound and look entirely different, shaped by new tools and cultural currents. My intention in revisiting it is not nostalgia but an invitation: to emphasize ideation and hands-on creation—to remind us that tools alone do not make the artist.
”“Inspiration is for amateurs;
the rest of us just show up and get to work.”
Chuck Close
We achieved amazing results with the Omega Code project, particularly through the collaboration of talented artists who contributed to the posters. Notable individuals involved included Joshua Davis, Mike Cina, Nelson Balaban, Tom Muller, Robert Lindström, Michael Paul Young, and Motomichi Nakamura, among others. Gabriel Wickbold took the final photograph for the album cover, while Brendan Duffey, known for his work with Bruce Dickinson, Sheryl Crow, and Kendrick Lamar, handled the album’s mastering. Still, the effort required to bring this project to life was significantly greater than what is typically needed today.
One should take advantage of the zeitgeist rather than be overwhelmed by it.
There are no excuses for being idle.
Suggested Reading
– On Symbols & Archetypes:
– Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols (1964): “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity.”
– On Creativity & Labor:
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, for the concept of “flow” in creative work.
– On Technology & Art:
– Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction — for historical parallels between earlier tech shifts and AI.
– On Prototyping & Design: – Eric Ries, The Lean Startup — for the concept of MVP as applied to art and music.
From time to time, society turns to the past to draw new impulses from it. This occurs because, at certain moments, the present no longer provides inspiration or meaningful prospects for the future. When the contemporary world appears stagnant or saturated, we return to what has already proven to hold vigor and significance.
Such movements arise periodically. The avant-garde often reaches a point of saturation: its creative energy begins to wear thin, and the dominant aesthetic starts to feel excessive or even destructive. While this does not necessarily lead to “social collapse,” there is a threshold of cultural rupture beyond which cycles of revisitation and renewal emerge.
These revivals are sometimes dismissed by the intellectual elite as mere “nostalgia.” Yet they are not simply nostalgic; rather, they represent efforts to rebuild upon foundations that once proved fruitful, now reshaped with new techniques and contexts. Such movements act as attempts to recalibrate the sensibility of an age and tend to spread most visibly through the arts. The Renaissance, Classicism, Romanticism, and others were each driven by reflection on the paths already taken and by the search for both aesthetic and existential adjustment.
Before the internet, these processes unfolded slowly, often taking decades to consolidate and disseminate. Today, however, we witness constant micro-revolutions, which appear to be converging toward a larger revision of the Zeitgeist. The past few decades have brought intense disruptions across multiple fields, reflected in a fragmented and chaotic aesthetic landscape. The pursuit of the sublime, once a guiding force in the arts, has to some extent been replaced by a culture of shock. The accelerated flow of information challenges human capacities for assimilation, generating a kind of stress that verges on incompatibility with our nature.
In response, a quieter movement has begun to take shape—one oriented toward simplicity, tranquility, and reconnection with what endures. It manifests in social and intellectual practices that resist both rampant consumerism and rigid ideological demands. Frequently labeled as conservatism, this impulse in fact acquires an avant-garde quality within the current context. Wearied by impositions, many are once again seeking the sublime—through a kind of futuristic revival that combines critiques of technology with a retreat from mass-produced pop culture.
From Amusing Ourselves to Death (Neil Postman, 1985) to Digital Minimalism (Cal Newport, 2019), calls for a more frugal and meaningful life have multiplied. Yet this impulse coexists with opposing forces that invest in the bizarre and the ephemeral. We thus live in tension between utopias and dystopias, both reflected in contemporary aesthetics. The key question is what kind of fruits each tendency will ultimately bear.
In the end, aesthetics divide into two broad orientations: those that seek only the fleeting instant and those that strive for the perennial. Their results, of course, are very different. Over the long term, some currents will endure as transformative, while others will be remembered merely as passing phases—like the Lisztomania of the nineteenth century.
Pain reminds us that we have a limited and finite body, but it should also remind us that we are not our body; we only have a body. We are spirits, but if we think we are only a body, we will enter into continuous despair, suffocated by materialism, immediacy, and the anguish of avoiding discomfort. The awareness of who we are frees us from this finitude.
Once we are free of this conception of finitude, we can truly aspire to things greater than us. This can be reflected in the Zeitgeist; those who aim for trends are often stuck in their immediacy, whereas those who strive for superior aesthetics create timeless art, societal, or scientific pieces. This thought frees us from thinking only about our egos and allows us to live as a whole. Struggling to create is part of the process; it shouldn’t be avoided.
