In the age of the internet, there has never been more access to music in all of history. More importantly, there has never been more music being created and recorded than what we have seen in the last ten years. Thanks to the advent of home studio and computer-based digital audio work stations, creating a quality recording of your work has never been easier. Musicians no longer have to rely on major labels to make what they love, resulting in music for the masses.

So why is it that when I sift through my Facebook news feed I hear the same broken record echoing that “the music industry is dead,” when my iTunes library seems to grow bigger every year? I’m talking about those kids who won’t shut up about how the only good music was made in the 70s, or that old-school hip-hop is the be-all and end-all of quality rap music. How can someone complain about music being dead when every conceivable sound is being created and recorded around the world? Do you really want to go back to a system where you were only able to listen to the handful of bands that could afford the thousands of dollars it costs to go to a recording studio 30 years ago?

I can already imagine your counter-argument. Yes, I know that people have their own preferences and tastes, and some people might just like a different style, but too often the people complaining describe music as a hugely important thing in their life. If you don’t care about music and just want to listen to a few of your favourite tracks, that’s fine, but if you love music the style you love is very likely still being created, and you just don’t know about it because you’re too busy mourning the loss of Pink Floyd despite only knowing “Money” and “Wish You Were Here.”

Instead of complaining about Nirvana being the last best west of rock, start looking for the hundreds of bands that still want to create music that way. Instead of whining about Wu-Tang-Clan why not look into the rap artists who love them, and are channelling their style to this day. There is almost a zero percent chance that someone right now in this world with billions of people that someone isn’t making great music just like the artists you love. You just have to find it.

Is it that hard to imagine that there are people just like you, who want to create music that channels your favourite time period? If you love classic rock, check out Tame Impala, The Black Keys or The Sheepdogs. If you miss old-school rap, check out Joey Bada$$ or Kendrick Lamar. To borrow classic relationship advice, there are other fish in the sea, and those fish probably play your favourite music. Sure, these artists aren’t going to be identical carbon copies of the older generation, but there is far more to music than what you hear on the radio. Are you really so dull that you have already given up on finding new stuff in your 20s?

At the end of the day, those complaining about rock or hip-hop being dead need to admit to themselves that they are either too lazy to look for something new to listen to, or just looking for something to complain about. I’m grateful for the music of the past, and excited for the music of the future. If music is really important to you, maybe you should be too.

Nichole Fanara / The Silhouette

The Western world has put itself into a food bubble – an impenetrable array of thoughtless eating habits that steer away from the natural world and celebrate neat little packages. How did we become this?

Every time I watch a food commercial, it’s for little chocolates in baggies that control calories, or chip companies giving you the chance to create a flavour of your choice like chicken and rice. Do you have any idea what goes into the flavour-making process? I can’t help but wonder if there is any real chicken or rice used in the chemically induced flavour making process.

There has been a persistent news story that is developing into worse versions of itself. The scandal of horsemeat being used in the place of beef has been all over Europe and the United States, found in packaged foods from little companies to well-known corporations like Ikea and Nestle. It is affecting both poor and wealthy nations alike, in supermarkets and school lunches, and as fast as these companies are trying to get to the bottom of the issue, the ignorant community of citizens (us) remain content to continue with our days.

I wonder what the food regulations in Canada are like. Do you know? Processed foods (like those contaminated with horsemeat) have different regulations than fresh foods. When Mad Cow was distributed, it was through fresh foods. The governments in both Europe and North America cracked down on food regulations for fresh food. But this one aspect is not enough to encompass all means of food production.

The level to which we are disconnected from our food is startling. In Dominican Republic, a local family showed us Westerners how they kill their chickens (yes, by hand). They know exactly where their food comes from, where it has been, what it has eaten and the sanitation (or lack thereof) necessary to produce a hearty dinner. But what do we know up in Canada? If you don’t live on a farm, you know squat. And the sad thing is that if something were to happen like Mad Cow that could seriously cause illness, we would not know until the illness spread and it was too late. There is no way for us to tell if our food is safe, real or uncontaminated. We completely put our trust in the hands of corporations. They make the rules. They decide for us.

Perhaps the system of processed and “fresh” (which is still processed to some degree) foods is better than the alternative of growing and killing our own source of food. Perhaps the good old Western way helps you to sleep at night knowing you haven’t hurt a fly today. But in reality, if we cannot trust the hand that feeds us and we cannot bite it for fear of the law, then how are we to sleep at night knowing that the hurt fly is actually us? In a world obsessed with rules and control, can we survive all the mistakes made by the boss?

There is a lot of room for play in our society. We play with our food all the time. But how far is too far, and how much more disconnected can we get in our desire to control everything from nature’s gift of food to our own bodies and weight? Is it really so barbaric to grow your own food when the food we create in a factory is so mass produced we lose a sense of connection to the earth, to life and to our health?