Photo via Flickr user Joe Lee.
Brian Eno has never been afraid to express his political and social views. On New Year's Day, he continued this tradition with a passionate post reflecting on the "terrible year" narrative of 2016, the loss of our social structures, and his hope for more collective action."2016 was indeed a pretty rough year, but I wonder if it's the end - not the beginning - of a long decline," Eno began. "Or at least the beginning of the end….for I think we've been in decline for about 40 years, enduring a slow process of de-civilisation, but not really quite noticing it until now."Eno cites things such as the loss of secure employment, the dismantling of unions, lack of funding for the education system, "knee-jerk nationalism," and "the concentration of prejudice enabled by social media and the internet" as some of the causes for the long decline.Later, he touched on "righteous selfishness" that has led to the loss of wealth distribution. "No wonder people are angry, and turning away from business-as-usual government for solutions," Eno wrote. "When governments pay most attention to whoever has most money, the huge wealth inequalities we now see make a mockery of the idea of democracy."Still, his post was not without some hope. He believes that 2016 was the year people finally began to wake up and "think out loud, together.""Inequality eats away at the heart of a society, breeding disdain, resentment, envy, suspicion, bullying, arrogance and callousness," he wrote. "If we want any decent kind of future we have to push away from that, and I think we're starting to."Read Eno's full post below. Last week, Eno shared an excerpt from his new ambient album, Reflection.
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