I think its like in moby dick how many chapters are dedicated to long rants about whaling which seem boring but beneath the surface is a man taking the only greater power he can actually comprehend (whales/music) and using that to try and interpret the wider world. But because Patrick is only dedicating himself to pop music and surface level concerns he's never going to discover his sense of humanity.

Patrick lives an extremely hollow life and i think those chapters are him taking the things he knows lots of regular people look up to and value and attempting to pull higher meaning out of them