The leadership of nations requires you to put pressure on the thoughts and minds of your people, left to their own devices those minds will simply be shaped by someone else.

The morality in it comes from your motivation and methods. Secretly giving piles of money to the weirdos you successfully identify as being the leaders of artistic movements to amplify those movements can't be all that bad.

The question of the day is if you were the CIA trying to do the same thing today, who and what would you fund?

Are you saying modern art is positive?

The interesting thing to me is, despite it being hard to imagine today, back then this was actually a strange thing, and did actually serve as a demonstration of American freedom of expression.

Hard to imagine today because this kind of weird art comes from just about everywhere with a few exceptions now.

Interesting to read about how it actually was the work of a few elite institutions that made this happen. Agreed the CIA angle is a bit weak, to me it's more a story about the Rockefellers and their compatriots who funded this stuff.

Oddly enough kpop is the result of American music taking over the world.

Kinda paradox because AI seems better at replicating complex classic paintings and realism than rather simple modern parametric imagery.

I feel like a picture of rolling hills with spring wheat and a blue sky wouldn’t go amiss

Eventually, people realize they will never agree and therefore don't have to fight.

They realize the majority of their beliefs already existed before they were born and will continue on after they're dead. They have nothing to add to the conversation while they are too busy fighting. They turn their focus to developing their ideas peacefully and let their subcultures flourish once again.

This isn't the first cycle and won't be the last. The last major cycle was in the 20th century due to broadcast media. I think people sometimes forget how relatively young the internet is.