A Strange Tale

Here is a strange tale and a true story.

A popular and award winning music band named KLF in the U.K. decided to erase its music and physically burned one million pounds of earnings from their music in the '90s.  They then filmed a documentary asking people why thought they did it.

Most observers concluded that their action was wrong, perhaps even demented.  Indeed, they said with indignation, that they could have at least made a charitable donation of it.  The story then died away.

Many years later, looking back, the musicians themselves to this day cannot explain their action.  Especially when they think of explaining it to their children.

Recently a British journalist, John Higgs re-examined this episode with more depth and nuance.  He has also written a biography of Timothy Leary, of LSD fame.

Higgs' fuller explanation of what is going on here goes into all sorts of discussions of modernism, post-modernism and meta-modernism; which in my opinion is too much to explain this particular strange tale.

So the thoughts below are not Higgs' full explanation of what he thinks happened, rather a couple of ideas that point in the direction of the answer.  

1. Instead of burning the 1 million pounds, if the band had bought a gas guzzling truck, or built an ostentatious house with those million pounds,  most of the people who objected to the burning of the money, might not have minded.

2.  Throughout history humans have made sacrifices for the "good" - goats, horses etc.  Higgs asks if this could be viewed as a "sacrificial offering" of sorts?  That is, they burned what society universally considers valuable (and should have been meaningful to them as well)

All this leads to a discussion of what is of true value in life, and what stories do we tell ourselves to comport ourselves to society.

Here is the link to their story:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid#Legacy

I thought this story touches a chord and would be especially interesting to mention.  We are living in times of radical change in technology, generations, politics and culture.

Knowingly or otherwise, we are exploring models through which we view ourselves, society and the world at large.