Baba Stiltz Big City (2023)
Philosophical determinism is the idea that everything that happens is entirely determined by prior causes. In its most radical form, it asserts that every decision, every event and every thought is dictated by an unbroken chain of causality. One well-known illustration of this concept is Laplace’s Demon, named after French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace. This hypothetical demon, an omniscient intelligence, could calculate the entire future with absolute precision, at least if it knew all the laws of nature and current states of all particles in the universe at a given moment. In other words, everything would be predetermined and free will an illusion.
This idea can be unsettling, if not downright depressing. If our decisions are the result of prior states, we are reduced to a mere spectator of our own lives. Sounds familiar? Life itself can sometimes feel predetermined—like running on a hamster wheel or being trapped in a golden cage—even without an omniscient, hypothetical demon. The eccentric Swedish DJ and producer turned singer-songwriter Baba Stiltz expresses this sentiment in his song “Big City”, singing about life in a metropolis where everything seems preordained: “All is predetermined / like a shitty movie / […] / life is a bummer, life is lame.” The city becomes the metaphorical stage for an existential melancholy where everything follows a script.
Yet, in spite of the dictates of determinism, we can still break free from our routines every once in a while and lose ourselves in groovy Americana-country songs like “Big City”, surrendering to someone else’s melancholy.
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