You Are In My System
And that is why human-created systems just can’t be trusted
As someone highly interested in music of all kinds, I am quite happy to have discovered Chris Molanphy and his podcast “Hit Parade” in collaboration with Slate Magazine. Started in 2017, Molanphy’s podcast touches on all aspects of popular music, from musical trends to deep dives on specific artists or songs, the business of music itself, and much more. He may have even mentioned the early 1980s jam I referenced above for all I know, having not listened to all his podcasts yet.
One particularly interesting recent episode examined Lil Nas X and his chart juggernaut “Old Town Road.” Released in December 2018, the song dominated the 2019 music charts, holding the number one spot for a record 19 weeks, with a subsequent awarding of two Grammy Awards the following year.
This song also revealed a flaw in Billboard Magazine (the longtime source for tracking music popularity and sales) and their chart designations for particular songs. “Old Town Road” did appear on the Billboard Country Charts for one week, debuting at #19. One week later, the organization removed the song’s eligibility from that chart, stating the following:
“Old Town Road” incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery [but] does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version..(the) decision to take the song off of the country chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist.”
This classification conundrum can be traced back to many factors, including music executive Ralph Peer’s decision in the 1920s to split apart what was essentially the same musical style and market it to different audiences based on race (this 2020 Rolling Stone article drops in some of the basics.) It also inspired a healthy debate about the country music sphere and its relationship to Black artists, one that both preceded and continues on to this day.
Country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, who added his own vocals with a later “Old Town Road” remix with Lil Nas X, wrote that he always thought the song was country. As Mr. Cyrus noted on Twitter/X:
“When I got thrown off the charts, Waylon Jennings said to me ‘Take this as a compliment’ means you’re doing something great! Only Outlaws are outlawed. Welcome to the club!”
I won’t dive deeply into the history of country music industry here; suffice it to say, a long string of events, chock full of human biases, industry standards (the 1970s especially found many debating what was “true” country music) and pop culture evolution at large has built the foundation to the current discourse over “Old Town Road.”
I Have No Faith In Human Perfectibility
The debate over what gets classified as country music is a relatively esoteric matter, with not much in the way of dire consequences for people as a whole. However, that is not the case for a large number of human-created institutions, constructs, and theories. Humans by definition aren’t perfect; by proxy, any systems, constructs, and institutions built by them aren’t either. Yet, humans have an annoying habit of proclaiming a system as the total solution for some problem they perceive.
Thank poet Edgar Allen Poe for the subheading above. Written in a letter to James Russell Lowe in 1844, Poe used the line to express his belief that while humans were more busy than in the past, they were neither necessarily more wise nor more happy. Indeed — humans seek perfection in their pursuits, but that is hampered by our inherent imperfections.
Additionally, many humans sport an annoying tangential habit: denying culpability for an imperfect result. Almost without fail, humans try to preserve their (faux) sense of perfection by blaming others and/or external factors for the issue.
Former President Donald Trump is notorious for not apologizing for anything he’s done wrong, stating in a FOX News Sunday broadcast that “A lot of times, when you apologize, they use it as ammunition against [you].” Far more on brand is Trump’s tendency to throw others under the bus for anything that makes him look bad, including some of his finest GOP brown-nosers like Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Mitch McConnell.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Alas, Trump is hardly alone here. The denial of imperfection cuts across all groups, whether it be political party (former Democratic Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo blamed “cancel culture on steroids” for his travails), religion (many a person like Tony Alamo has blamed Satan for their actions), occupation (Dr. Harry Persaud’s blaming of Obamacare for performing all manner of unnecessary tests on patients and billing insurers), economic status (Ethan Couch and his infamous “affluenza” defense), and so on.
If you look at your average large-sized bookstore, you’ll see hundreds of titles geared toward systems of all sort, from books that promote healthy eating or weight-loss plans, to tomes that preach a particular religion as the true way to God, and works that champion surefire guidelines to find romance. These books often are best-seller material, but the reality is people are just too flawed and diverse to make any system 100% foolproof.
Let’s look at healthcare as another example. No matter the country, their healthcare systems are loaded with flaws, yet many people pose simplistic fixes for these complicated constructs.
Even on the ostensibly same side of the aisle, everyone’s got their flawed idea on how to fix it. Do you believe in the right-leaning Americans for Prosperity, an organization that believes in health care credits and savings accounts for all?
Or the even more right-leaning FreedomWorks, who believes a strict free market system is what will solve the crisis for all?
Or how about faith-based forms of healthcare, which can be cheaper for many but subject to unique rules which require members to perform certain tasks (such as negotiating the final cost with the healthcare provider) and possible lack of coverage for various medical conditions? The lack of oversight (they escape government regulation since are technically not HMO’s) can even lead to outright swindling of trusting customers, as this ProPublica article details.
The More, The Flaw-ier
Unsurprisingly, numbers play a large part here in the harm a flawed system can cause. For example, a sports team may have the talent to make a flawed offensive system work consistently. But if you lose those players and need to replace them with less talented/more flawed people, the system is bound to fail.
Examples of such are common in all ventures, with many having far more harmful impact for people than your favorite team losing a game. These random examples — the government of Bell, California and its stunning corruption scandal, the horrifying Buck v. Bell Supreme Court decision (allowing states to legally sterilize women,) or corporate malfeasance (the Japanese Minamata methyl mercury poisoning and the negligent, five-decade-long worker exposure to Beryllium dust) are but the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Makes you wish that arguing whether “Old Town Road” (a seductive jaunt of a groove) is country music or not was the most pressing problem our world had to face.
Thank you for reading — this “Side Dishes” platform expands beyond my food-, travel-, and tourism-focused Critical Rice Theory blog, which has documented my experiences in those worlds around Central Ohio and beyond since 2014.
