As I get older, I become more convinced of one thing: the quality of a band is solely determined by the quality of each of the individual members. The amount of time the group has existed has little to do with the quality of the band’s performances. A band with skilled members can record a better record with each member playing to only the metronome and never hearing anyone else than a band with unskilled members can record playing to each other.
In truth, most of the time playing to another member is catering to that other member’s mistakes. Few musicians, if any, in rock music raise to a point at which listening to the other members could be a means of imitating fine nunaces. Why? We simply don’t have almost any players at a level at which fine nuance is an issue. I can name all of the drummers in popular bands with nuanced playing in five minutes — if not in thirty seconds.
Or perhaps simply consider that in an orchestra the majority of members never listen to the other members at all and only to the conductor. Coincidence?
Should I emphasize how relevant I feel all of this is for any theories about building better societies? A band is the ultimate image of a society — involving nearly as much intimacy as a marriage and vastly more responsibility on each individual member. In addition, because there are more than two members, there are problems of subdivisions of loyalties and the consequent shifting of subloyalties at all times is present, which is one of the major causes of unrest in all societies.
So in our microcosm society we see that the interactions of the society are actually far less important than the quality of the members.
Should we take this as a suggestion that the problem with creating utopia has never been, despite all efforts to the contrary, to come up with a better scheme of social organization or laws, but to improve the quality of the human stock itself? That better men placed under worse governments would still live better lives than current men under better governments?
Do you see what I’m getting at? The goals I’m implying? The real aim for humanity should be humanity. Our goals should be entirely set in this world. We can improve ourselves, we can improve the next generation by educating them better — but also by selecting our mates better.
Do you not have purpose now? Do you have even five minutes left in which to be bored? Then you’re not listening. There is so much to do. Too much to do. Our generation, dedicated to this task wholeheartedly, would only see a fraction of what could be achieved. The scope of human potential’s highest registers has not even begun to be explored.
Everything we do wrong, we do wrong out of laziness.