I had a big brain breakthrough the other day.

I was listening to Finn sing “In My Eyes” by Minor Threat. My first thought was: wow, this is good—he’s so charismatic. Then the next thought hit me: Wait, why are we listening to a song that’s over 40 years old? It was original in its time, but why isn’t he making something original now?

That spun me into a bigger question: Does it even feel like there’s original music anymore? Or am I just getting old?

Then I thought about Plato and the idea of the Ideal—the Platonic Ideal. The idea that everything has its perfect form. There’s an ideal “cat,” and every real cat is just some version of that.

Back to Finn: maybe there will only ever be one true ideal of a hardcore straight-edge band—and that’s Minor Threat. Maybe everything else in hardcore is just a version of that ideal.

And now, because of the internet, we don’t lose things to time anymore. The backlog of all music is instantly available, so we keep circling the ideals instead of breaking cycles and rediscovering them. In the past, hardcore or straight edge would fade, then someone would reinvent it fresh. But now the “perfect” example is always right there.

I don’t know—I just had to share this. I actually got goosebumps when the thought hit me.