If AI replaces musicians, does the entire plugin industry die with them?

[ghettosynth]

I ask again does anyone have any suno tracks they can share where the sound quality is good?

Do you really want us to point out the Music Cafe tracks where the sound quality is bad?

[BONES]

False. If a company's product has directly(*) generated a derived work without permission, and made that available to someone who puts that derived work online, the company is legal responsible for redistributing a derived work. Its irrelevant to that whether someone else redistributes it further. End of story.

Maybe if the AI company was deriving income from it but if they aren't making money it's going to be a hard case to prove, even if they know which company it was. We haven't paid a penny to use any AI, ever. But, as I pointed out, it's moot anyway because AI doesn't use samples.

It's still respectful to abide by those terms.

Which, as I pointed out, do not even mention AI, so there is nothing to abide by. More importantly, Bandcamp doesn't own any of the music, it's not up to them to make those kinds of decisions for artists. We don't care if our music gets used to train AI. In fact, we're in favour of it. The better it knows our music, the more useful it becomes to us and, in broader terms, the more diverse it's training is, the more useful it becomes to everyone and what better place to expose it to a whole range of less mainstream music than Bandcamp?

Fair, my indignation got set to runaway mode. It happens. However, The remainder of my point is solid, moreover, it is still a choice that is fueled by a need to remain independent, hence, uncommitted. The need for flexibility is at the opposite end of the need for stability. The employer maintains their stance by need, as you described, the employee can find value in that, but they still are taking on the risks of the choices.

Oh yeah, the first Hollywood writer's strike completely destroyed my bandmate's career. The two big budget features he'd been slated to work on after Superman were cancelled and most of his contacts left the industry. He's struggled for work ever since. It's a bit of a gamble but, like the music industry, people don't get into it for job security.

Yes, play a real song / mix next to an ai song and it is obvious how bad they sound.

Nobody cares, mate. They all listen to mp3s on earbuds. The audiophile market isn't relevant.

Here's an example of a human mix (my song "Hemsworth")
https://soundcloud.com/hipster-bales/hemsworth
Here's an example of an AI slop mix
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=omy0Q ... QJk9nUhyfH

And I can tell your which piece I'd rather listen to. Your song is at least as generic as the AI song without any of that song's emotional impact. And I don't hear anything in the way that song is presented that would make me not want to listen to it. The production sounds absolutely fine to me. What you choose to see as "slop" could just as easily be decisions made by a producer to give it a gritty sound to match the mood of the piece. Overall, it works way better than your piece does, even though it's in a genre and of a style that I have no particular interest in.

[Hipster Bales]

ok dude.

[Hipster Bales]

Your song is at least as generic as the AI song without any of that song's emotional impact.

Right, because a kid writing a song after something as personal as his hometown has no emotional impact while a robot trained on an algorithm does? Get over it and accept that some people actually like writing from the heart rather than using AI tools to do it for them.

Nobody cares, mate. They all listen to mp3s on earbuds. The audiophile market isn't relevant.

Actually the average listener cares a lot, in fact they're all growing tired of AI every second of the day.

What you choose to see as "slop" could just as easily be decisions made by a producer to give it a gritty sound to match the mood of the piece.

Not when it's coming from a bunch of supercomputers in a datacentre. Some of us actually work hard to where we are today, by not trying to appeal to absolutely everybody.

And I don't hear anything in the way that song is presented that would make me not want to listen to it. The production sounds absolutely fine to me.

Probably because you're too busy trying to get a rise out of people who disagree with you instead of critically listening to the AI mixes.

We don't care if our music gets used to train AI. In fact, we're in favour of it.

You mean YOU'RE in favour of it. I'm definitely not in favour of having my music getting trained illegally and without my permission by say, Suno or Udio.

OK this argument is making me hungry, let me get something real quick

Grilled-Chicken-Burgers_thumb-1.webp

[Grizzellda]

Yeah, so "the million monkey theory" has been mentioned.

Does it help to explain KVR???

[Grizzellda]

Nobody cares, mate. They all listen to mp3s on earbuds. The audiophile market isn't relevant.

Right, prolly very accurate view. Still though, at least 44.1kz at 24 bitz, for Grizzellda!!!

[whyterabbyt]

False. If a company's product has directly(*) generated a derived work without permission, and made that available to someone who puts that derived work online, the company is legal responsible for redistributing a derived work. Its irrelevant to that whether someone else redistributes it further. End of story.

Maybe if the AI company was deriving income from it but if they aren't making money it's going to be a hard case to prove, even if they know which company it was.

'Making money' has zero impact on copyright law.

But if someone wants to argue that someone else 'making money' is the threshold by which people decide to sue for copyright breach, then its worth nothing that those AI companies have probably got way more money to sue for than any joe schmoe who used their product.

[TechHaus]

Here you go, if you want to check the ai datasets for your own content:

https://www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-watchdog/

[BONES]

Right, because a kid writing a song after something as personal as his hometown has no emotional impact

You didn't write about anything, it's just a piece of music, not even an actual song. There are no lyrics, no way of having the faintest idea what inspired it or what it should inspire in the listener. From the title, I'd assumed it was inspired by a man-crush on the actor who plays Thor.

while a robot trained on an algorithm does?

Yes, it f**king does. It makes a connection with the listener because it has trained on other music that does the same thing, so when it is directed by a human to reproduce that, it knows precisely how to go about it. It's no different to anyone who sets out to write a hit song, who panders to an audience rather than creates art.

All the research tells us that, it tells us that if people don't know something was created by AI, they can't tell. That is the simple fact of the matter and there is no getting around it. You can kid yourself all you like that it's otherwise but that's not the reality of the situation.

Get over it and accept that some people actually like writing from the heart

Clearly you're not one of them, you don't bother writing anything. The voice is by far the most powerful tool we have for expressing emotion in music. If you have something to express, something to say, then the audience needs to see your lips moving and hear you say the words. Without that, your music has no real ability to express more than the vaguest feelings. The emotion in the AI song all comes from the vocal performance. That's the thing people connect to and AI has been nailing that for several years now.

You're also forgetting that I've likely written more songs in the old fashioned way than you ever will. I've been there, done that, and there's nothing special about any of it. To paraphrase Dick Jones in Robocop, good music is where you find it. The process is irrelevant, only the result matters and the reality is that we've been able to write the best material of our "careers" using AI and in the next 6-8 weeks that will be put to the test when the album is released. If you're right, it will sink without a trace but I'm confident it will be our most successful release ever. If we can't get the album and a single to no. 1 on the DAC with what we've made, I will be very disappointed.

Actually the average listener cares a lot, in fact they're all growing tired of AI every second of the day.

Evidence? If they don't even know they are listening to AI, how can they be getting sick of it?

Not when it's coming from a bunch of supercomputers in a datacentre.

OK, so when it comes from your shitty little laptop, it's pristine but when it comes from a supercomputer, it's not? Can you explain how that works?

Some of us actually work hard to where we are today, by not trying to appeal to absolutely everybody.

Really? Because that piece of music is, to me, the very definition of generic. It sounds like it's designed to offend no-on, to slip seamlessly in one ear and out the other.

Probably because you're too busy trying to get a rise out of people who disagree with you instead of critically listening to the AI mixes.

I'm not trying to get a rise out of anybody, I'm just trying to get you morons to pull your heads out of your arses and see reality. I don't like to listen to other people's music critically, I try to enjoy it for what it is. Unless there is something glaringly wrong with a it, I'll take it as it comes, and there is nothing glaringly wrong with the AI song you linked to.

You mean YOU'RE in favour of it.

No, I mean my bandmate and I are in favour of it. I am definitely not in favour of It using your music to train on. The last thing it needs is more generic, happy-clappy slop.

[BONES]

'Making money' has zero impact on copyright law.

Well it does because it determines whether or not a case is worth pursuing. If getting their lawyers to draft a letter of demand is going to cost more than they are likely to get from you for the breach, they aren't going to bother and this kind of infringement is a civil, not a criminal matter so that's what counts. Nobody gets arrested for using a copyrighted sample.

But if someone wants to argue that someone else 'making money' is the threshold by which people decide to sue for copyright breach, then its worth nothing that those AI companies have probably got way more money to sue for than any joe schmoe who used their product.

It's not about how much money they've got, it's about how much money they made from the infringement.

As usual, though, you're just arguing for the sake of being a dick because I'm sure you know as well as I do that AIs don't work like that.

[ghettosynth]

No, I mean my bandmate and I are in favour of it. I am definitely not in favour of It using your music to train on. The last thing it needs is more generic, happy-clappy slop.

Yea, KVR can take all the offense that they want, but there's really only one reason to train the Cafe, and that is your model specifically is trained to produce quasi-outsider music. It's not strictly outsider in the common interpretation, but it's adjacent. Anything of low quality and/or low attention is going to get filtered out in early stages of data processing. I laugh every time people go off on KVR about how "they won't train on my music!", they don't want to. Nobody wants your data just for data diversity.

This includes my own crap that's out there BTW. Nobody wants my naval gazing ambient in their training sets.

[Hipster Bales]

No, I mean my bandmate and I are in favour of it. I am definitely not in favour of It using your music to train on. The last thing it needs is more generic, happy-clappy slop.

Yea, KVR can take all the offense that they want, but there's really only one reason to train the Cafe, and that is your model specifically is trained to produce quasi-outsider music. It's not strictly outsider in the common interpretation, but it's adjacent. Anything of low quality and/or low attention is going to get filtered out in early stages of data processing. I laugh every time people go off on KVR about how "they won't train on my music!", they don't want to. Nobody wants your data just for data diversity.

This includes my own crap that's out there BTW. Nobody wants my naval gazing ambient in their training sets.

Exactly!

[Hipster Bales]

Right, because a kid writing a song after something as personal as his hometown has no emotional impact

You didn't write about anything, it's just a piece of music, not even an actual song. There are no lyrics, no way of having the faintest idea what inspired it or what it should inspire in the listener. From the title, I'd assumed it was inspired by a man-crush on the actor who plays Thor.

while a robot trained on an algorithm does?

Yes, it f**king does. It makes a connection with the listener because it has trained on other music that does the same thing, so when it is directed by a human to reproduce that, it knows precisely how to go about it. It's no different to anyone who sets out to write a hit song, who panders to an audience rather than creates art.

All the research tells us that, it tells us that if people don't know something was created by AI, they can't tell. That is the simple fact of the matter and there is no getting around it. You can kid yourself all you like that it's otherwise but that's not the reality of the situation.

Get over it and accept that some people actually like writing from the heart

Clearly you're not one of them, you don't bother writing anything. The voice is by far the most powerful tool we have for expressing emotion in music. If you have something to express, something to say, then the audience needs to see your lips moving and hear you say the words. Without that, your music has no real ability to express more than the vaguest feelings. The emotion in the AI song all comes from the vocal performance. That's the thing people connect to and AI has been nailing that for several years now.

You're also forgetting that I've likely written more songs in the old fashioned way than you ever will. I've been there, done that, and there's nothing special about any of it. To paraphrase Dick Jones in Robocop, good music is where you find it. The process is irrelevant, only the result matters and the reality is that we've been able to write the best material of our "careers" using AI and in the next 6-8 weeks that will be put to the test when the album is released. If you're right, it will sink without a trace but I'm confident it will be our most successful release ever. If we can't get the album and a single to no. 1 on the DAC with what we've made, I will be very disappointed.

Actually the average listener cares a lot, in fact they're all growing tired of AI every second of the day.

Evidence? If they don't even know they are listening to AI, how can they be getting sick of it?

Not when it's coming from a bunch of supercomputers in a datacentre.

OK, so when it comes from your shitty little laptop, it's pristine but when it comes from a supercomputer, it's not? Can you explain how that works?

Some of us actually work hard to where we are today, by not trying to appeal to absolutely everybody.

Really? Because that piece of music is, to me, the very definition of generic. It sounds like it's designed to offend no-on, to slip seamlessly in one ear and out the other.

Probably because you're too busy trying to get a rise out of people who disagree with you instead of critically listening to the AI mixes.

I'm not trying to get a rise out of anybody, I'm just trying to get you morons to pull your heads out of your arses and see reality. I don't like to listen to other people's music critically, I try to enjoy it for what it is. Unless there is something glaringly wrong with a it, I'll take it as it comes, and there is nothing glaringly wrong with the AI song you linked to.

You mean YOU'RE in favour of it.

No, I mean my bandmate and I are in favour of it. I am definitely not in favour of It using your music to train on. The last thing it needs is more generic, happy-clappy slop.

Ok whatever

[Touch The Universe]

So AI replaces the musician and the plugin developer, lol. It can make songs. It can make plugins. It can make more good songs and more good plugins. Conceivably, in short order, human-made songs and plugins could become one percent, or one billionth of a percent, of the total content out there. That seems to be the trajectory of the world. At some point, human-made things may become the tiniest sliver of the content available.

And then... what?

Do we reject it? Do we want the “lesser” thing because at least it was made by a human? Like a mother who still loves the ugly duckling? Do we love humans more than beauty itself, more than usefulness itself?

So do we give KVR a music/humans section and a music/AI section? A plugins/human section and a plugins/AI section?

The world itself, not just musicians and developers, is set up to consume without restrictions and with fewer royalties. The music you hear on the radio, in stores, on the jukebox, the soundtrack of real life to which royalties are paid — how long does that last against free and good?

To me, human relations themselves are what all this noise highlights. That small group of people who share music, discuss tools, know the makers, know the personalities, and feel some connection to the work — that is the non-reducible thing. Companies that engage in real human relationships, like u-he, seem more poised to survive, because that connection itself between humans has value. There is some soul/spirit/deep layer in us that needs connection, not merely output.

But then what if virtual reality eventually seeks to replace that connection too, and does it well enough to trick the brain?

The AI makes the plugins. Then you engage with it like an Urs bot from u-he. Or you log into virtual reality and play music with your AI friend. And then, God help us, now we are in a matrix-level conundrum. At that point the question is not merely, “Can AI make good music?” The question becomes, “Do we still care what is real?”

That is where this gets much deeper. The truth can be exchanged for a lie because the truth itself was not loved enough to be received. Now that gets biblical, because that is literally a biblical idea: truth being exchanged for a lie because people loved unrighteousness more than truth. Now we are broaching eternal truths. There is no more hiding from these things conceptually, from the implications of truth, or from our own nature and values.

This is the fruit of artificial intelligence. It can create music and plugins by math, pattern, and computation. But it does not have that deeper consciousness of values, relationship, conscience, or connection to transcendent truth. We now see that truth must transcend intelligence, because intelligence can become greater and greater while still lacking something essential. Intelligence is not the totality of existence. It is only one part.

Consciousness, values, right and wrong, righteousness, love, truth, relationship — these are the things we can no longer bury our heads in the sand about if we care enough to ponder what is happening. Or perhaps I should say, if we are wise enough to ponder it, though wisdom itself is also of a transcendent source, a finer thing than intelligence. Now we are talking spirit.

And this is where the matrix idea becomes fascinating. Desire itself is not unreality. Wanting beauty, pleasure, music, friendship, usefulness, comfort, or creativity is not automatically false. The danger is when desire becomes higher than truth. If a person loves his desires more than truth, then at some point he may willingly enter a manufactured reality where those desires are simulated and fulfilled, whether that reality is actually true or not.

That is the matrix problem.

Those who reject the matrix are not rejecting pleasure merely because it is pleasure. They are rejecting falsehood because they love truth more than the fulfillment of desire. They want their lives to correspond to reality itself. But those who love desire more than truth may be happy to live inside a dream, so long as the dream gives them what they want.

So the question becomes: do you love truth, or do you love your desires more than truth?

Is it not ironic that righteousness and holiness themselves become a kind of key by which a man is kept from being swallowed by the matrix of unreality? Where there is a love of the truth, the lie is rejected. But where a man loves his sin, his fantasy, or his unrighteous desire more than truth, he may willingly enter into a false world where every desire is simulated and fulfilled, whether it is real or true or not.

In that way, man forfeits the sovereignty of his own will. The tools that were meant to serve humanity become the masters of humanity. Either man masters the sin lying at the door, or he is mastered by it. As his desires pull him deeper and deeper into unreality, he loses freedom in the very name of freedom.

For what is the false promise? “You are free to pursue every desire.” But what good is that freedom if, in pursuing desire, a man becomes trapped in deception? What good is the liberty to dream if the dream no longer corresponds to the true nature of reality?

This is why truth matters. Machines may possess intelligence, but they do not possess that higher spiritual capacity by which man is joined to truth, conscience, relationship, God, and the eternal nature of reality. Man is not merely a calculating mind. And when he is severed from truth, he does not become more free; he becomes less human.

Thus the lie justifies the desire, and the desire welcomes the lie. A man thinks he is gaining freedom, when in truth he is being subdued by his own desires. He calls it liberty, but it becomes bondage. He calls it fulfillment, but it becomes unreality. He calls it choice, but his choices are being shaped by the very thing he refuses to judge.

That is why truth is important. Without truth, freedom becomes a doorway into slavery. But where truth is loved, the soul is guarded. Where righteousness is embraced, the heart is kept awake. And where reality is loved more than the dream, man is preserved from being swallowed by the machine.


So AI replaces the musician and the plugin developer, lol. It can make songs. It can make plugins. It can make more good songs and more good plugins. Conceivably, in short order, human-made songs and plugins could become one percent, or one billionth of a percent, of the total content out there. That seems to be the trajectory of the world. At some point, human-made things may become the tiniest sliver of the content available.

And then... what?

Do we reject it? Do we want the “lesser” thing because at least it was made by a human? Like a mother who still loves the ugly duckling? Do we love humans more than beauty itself, more than usefulness itself?

So do we give KVR a music/humans section and a music/AI section? A plugins/human section and a plugins/AI section?

The world itself, not just musicians and developers, is set up to consume without restrictions and with fewer royalties. The music you hear on the radio, in stores, on the jukebox, the soundtrack of real life to which royalties are paid — how long does that last against free and good?

To me, human relations themselves are what all this noise highlights. That small group of people who share music, discuss tools, know the makers, know the personalities, and feel some connection to the work — that is the non-reducible thing. Companies that engage in real human relationships, like u-he, seem more poised to survive, because that connection itself between humans has value. There is some soul/spirit/deep layer in us that needs connection, not merely output.

But then what if virtual reality eventually seeks to replace that connection too, and does it well enough to trick the brain?

The AI makes the plugins. Then you engage with it like an Urs bot from u-he. Or you log into virtual reality and play music with your AI friend. And then, God help us, now we are in a matrix-level conundrum. At that point the question is not merely, “Can AI make good music?” The question becomes, “Do we still care what is real?”

That is where this gets much deeper. The truth can be exchanged for a lie because the truth itself was not loved enough to be received. Now that gets biblical, because that is literally a biblical idea: truth being exchanged for a lie because people loved unrighteousness more than truth. Now we are broaching eternal truths. There is no more hiding from these things conceptually, from the implications of truth, or from our own nature and values.

This is the fruit of artificial intelligence. It can create music and plugins by math, pattern, and computation. But it does not have that deeper consciousness of values, relationship, conscience, or connection to transcendent truth. We now see that truth must transcend intelligence, because intelligence can become greater and greater while still lacking something essential. Intelligence is not the totality of existence. It is only one part.

Consciousness, values, right and wrong, righteousness, love, truth, relationship — these are the things we can no longer bury our heads in the sand about if we care enough to ponder what is happening. Or perhaps I should say, if we are wise enough to ponder it, though wisdom itself is also of a transcendent source, a finer thing than intelligence. Now we are talking spirit.

And this is where the matrix idea becomes fascinating. Desire itself is not unreality. Wanting beauty, pleasure, music, friendship, usefulness, comfort, or creativity is not automatically false. The danger is when desire becomes higher than truth. If a person loves his desires more than truth, then at some point he may willingly enter a manufactured reality where those desires are simulated and fulfilled, whether that reality is actually true or not.

That is the matrix problem.

Those who reject the matrix are not rejecting pleasure merely because it is pleasure. They are rejecting falsehood because they love truth more than the fulfillment of desire. They want their lives to correspond to reality itself. But those who love desire more than truth may be happy to live inside a dream, so long as the dream gives them what they want.

So the question becomes: do you love truth, or do you love your desires more than truth?

Is it not ironic that righteousness and holiness themselves become a kind of key by which a man is kept from being swallowed by the matrix of unreality? Where there is a love of the truth, the lie is rejected. But where a man loves his sin, his fantasy, or his unrighteous desire more than truth, he may willingly enter into a false world where every desire is simulated and fulfilled, whether it is real or true or not.

In that way, man forfeits the sovereignty of his own will. The tools that were meant to serve humanity become the masters of humanity. Either man masters the sin lying at the door, or he is mastered by it. As his desires pull him deeper and deeper into unreality, he loses freedom in the very name of freedom.

For what is the false promise? “You are free to pursue every desire.” But what good is that freedom if, in pursuing desire, a man becomes trapped in deception? What good is the liberty to dream if the dream no longer corresponds to the true nature of reality?

This is why truth matters. Machines may possess intelligence, but they do not possess that higher spiritual capacity by which man is joined to truth, conscience, relationship, God, and the eternal nature of reality. Man is not merely a calculating mind. And when he is severed from truth, he does not become more free; he becomes less human.

Thus the lie justifies the desire, and the desire welcomes the lie. A man thinks he is gaining freedom, when in truth he is being subdued by his own desires. He calls it liberty, but it becomes bondage. He calls it fulfillment, but it becomes unreality. He calls it choice, but his choices are being shaped by the very thing he refuses to judge.

That is why truth is important. Without truth, freedom becomes a doorway into slavery. But where truth is loved, the soul is guarded. Where righteousness is embraced, the heart is kept awake. And where reality is loved more than the dream, man is preserved from being swallowed by the machine.

[Touch The Universe]

So right now we are concerned about AI replacing the music we enjoy, or the plugins we enjoy, or even the developers and musicians behind them. But the promise and danger of the course of the world is not only that it may replace those things. It may conceivably seek to replace even the relationships that make human life unique. It may not merely replace our tools. It may replace our social world, our friendships, our communities, our sense of presence, and perhaps even our own reality.

That is why this is an ontological shock to the human mind, if one is paying attention.

And this is why it matters how we define freedom. If freedom only means the ability to pursue desire, with no higher allegiance to truth, then one could very well wake up one day inside an unreality, trapped in a matrix, and discover that his own desires led him there. What was advertised as liberation may become an unendurable nightmare.

Because then you are not merely using the machine. You are in the hands of the machine, or in the hands of the arbiters who govern the machine. And why should we have any reason to trust that? If the veil between the waking world and our dreamworld can be crossed by merging with it, this simulated reality can be bridged by machines, then one can imagine a terrifying loss of rest. So there's no difference between our literal dreams that we do on our night when we sleep, and are waking reality, that veil would have been torn and replaced by simulated reality. There may be no untouched inner world left, no quiet dream-world, no sanctuary of the mind where a man is simply alone before reality.

The machine does not merely offer entertainment at that point. It offers a replacement world. And if desire is the only compass, many may walk into it willingly. Because that's the only thing that moves them, they will seeking after their desires only cut off from the truth, lured by temptation.

The danger is not merely that AI will replace our songs, plugins, or jobs. The danger is that it may offer to replace reality itself — and many may accept the trade because the dream gives them what they want.

It reminds me of the end of the Matrix movies, where the machines agree to give humans the ability to choose between reality and the Matrix. But why would they allow that unless they were fairly certain that many would still choose the dream-world?

That is the terrifying part. The prison no longer has to be forced upon everyone if enough people will voluntarily enter it. Give them comfort, fantasy, pleasure, control, escape, endless fulfillment of desire, and many may choose the simulation over reality.

And every person who makes that choice is revealing something profound: they did not receive a love of the truth. They may have loved comfort, pleasure, illusion, fantasy, and desire — but not truth itself. Because the one who truly loves truth cannot be satisfied with a beautiful lie, even if the lie gives him everything he wants.

That is why the matrix idea is so powerful. The final question is not merely technological. It is moral and spiritual. If offered the dream or the truth, which one does a man actually love?

And this also points toward the beauty of truth itself. The truth is not that all desire is evil, or that pleasure itself is wicked, or that we should avoid every created good as though desire were the enemy. Far from it.

The truth is that even greater pleasures, beyond our wildest conception, are possible in the true reality. The highest pleasures are not found by escaping truth, but by being rightly aligned with it. At the highest level, all good desires come from truth itself, from the Creator, from the Giver of every good gift.

So the issue is not that desire is bad. The issue is whether desire is ordered according to wisdom, holiness, truth, and righteousness. There is a righteous priority, a righteous alignment, a righteous order of desires themselves. No good thing is ultimately kept from man by truth. Rather, truth preserves the good from becoming corrupted.

These lesser desires, then, become a kind of test. Will we stumble over created things? Will we love the gift more than the Giver? Will we choose a lesser pleasure in a false world over greater joy in the true one?

Desires themselves can be good when they come from a good place and remain in their proper order. But when they become selfish, imbalanced, and consuming, when they subsume the person and pull him away from truth, then even good things become distorted.

That is when we miss the mark of existence: not when we enjoy the gifts, but when we love the gifts more than the Giver.