What the retrospectives about the death of Pitchfork this month — and retrospectives of the next critical publication to die next month — are really looking for is not an answer to that question that works and makes sense. We already have one. We have a million! What they’re looking for is an answer that makes sense to the bros. To the people who own the companies that buy these often modestly profitable publications and bite into them like that weird bug Annie Dillard talks about it in Pilgrim at Tinker Creekthat injects its victims with a liquefying agent and sucks their innards out — the bros who do that to our favorite magazines.
And the problem is that there’s no answer that will work on the bros.
There is no answer to the question “What is criticism for” that will work on them. There is also no answer to the question “What is education for” that will work on them. There is no answer to the question “Why give health care to a poor person” that will work on them. There is no answer to the question “Why live” or “Why save the planet” or “Why be human” that will work on them. They subordinate their souls, their judgment, their common sense, even their practicality (the thing you’re supposed to be able to rely on businessmen for) to a machine logic that does not finally need any people — that would be perfectly content with endless gathering of paper wealth on a dead planet with no people anywhere on it, just computers talking to each other. This is the real meaning of Elon Musk’s obsession with figuring out how to prevent artificial intelligence from going Skynet, or with Rosco’s Basilisk or whatever. Artificial intelligence will never be intelligent enough to simply bring about nuclear apocalypse or create Hell for the unbelieving, but guys like him, in control of everything, will do both of those things, feel that they have to constantly do both of those things in small ways every day. Because their job is not to answer questions, render judgment, discern, think. It’s to be “clear-minded” and “unsentimental” enough to just let the spreadsheets think everything for them. If we want human minds with human values to be making the decisions about what gets cut and what gets continued, we have to remove guys like this from power, and replace them with people who understand that efficiency and practicality and profit for their own sakes eventually cease even to be efficient, practical, and profitable. Efficiency, practicality, and profit exist for people to help people do people things.