Everyone should familiarize themselves with this discussion; it applies to everyone for good or ill.
Jesus fucking christ flag if "everyone should familiarize themselves with this discussion" why don't you get started by summarizing what you think is important since it mostly seems like a bunch of philosophers made to fight with each other by proxy via cherry-picking their statements and extrapolating fifty years into the future. If "it applies to everyone for good or ill, how come Is so completely removed from my experience or understanding that it might as well be written in Venusian? Wait wait wait I think I found it towards the end: The accounts and the interviews collected by Martel, along with his own analysis, are instructive and quite representative of a reality that, until now, sociological and philosophical studies have not dared to address. The great majority of humanity does not engage with, produce or appreciate any form of culture other than what used to be considered by cultured people, disparagingly, as mere popular pastimes, with no links to the intellectual, artistic, and literary activities that were once at the heart of culture. This former culture is now dead, although it still survives in small social enclaves, without any influence on the mainstream. Is this it? Is this the piece? Is this the "kids these days" gripe of the essay? 'cuz if so, this is the argument used against the Gutenberg Press. It takes "culture" from the elite and, in giving it to the masses, kills it.A few years before Steiner’s essay, in November 1967, Guy Debord published in Paris La Société du spectacle, whose title is similar to the subtitle of my own collection of essays, although it approaches the theme of culture in different ways.
The author approves of this change, because, as a result, mainstream culture has swept away the cultural life of a small minority that had previously held a monopoly over culture; it has democratized it, putting it within everyone’s reach, and because the contents of this new culture seem to him to be perfectly attuned to modernity, to the great scientific and technological inventions of our era.
Fair enough, but if you're going to read this I sure do miss when the proles took the culture the church and aristocracy gave them and liked it crap, read Society of the Spectacle too.
We are, as usual, further apart than sun and moon. Did you feel the article's characterization of Debord was unfair? Or lacked nuance? If that essay will tell me anything I don't already know about commodity fetishism and the ideology from which it is extrapolated, I suppose I will read it.
Me am not bizarro flagamuffin. I think he is as fair as can be expected in a few paragraphs where his purpose is mostly to contrast himself with Debord, but a few paragraphs of hostile if polite summary isn't a good substitute for actually reading the book.
Culture being shared between people creates unity and empathy. It's hard to hate who are like you, and it's hard to hate people who share your values. While these minority cultures continue to exist, mankind will be divided and fighting itself. The broad media, the destruction of "culture" is progress. We call it "culture" because we see it, we don't notice we live in a massive, variable, awesome culture every single day that is bigger and better than any of those minority cultures that died to create the larger, better, culture. In some way, this lack of diversity may be bad, but the unity it creates will far override those downsides. I understand the motivation to preserve these "unique" things, to keep them around, but honestly I can't see them being useful in the future. Those people in those cultures would be better off partaking in the larger ones, making memes on reddit and laughing at celebrities. Free choice should always prevail, and free choice is causing these cultures to die, let the people who make them up be part of the rest of the world, rather than shoving them into a glass box so we can observe them and think "how quaint". Humans aren't individuals, we are a small unit in a larger society, and if we can't all push in the same, or a similar direction, we have no power at all. "Culture" stands between us and a united mankind. It will die, and I will happily dance on it's grave, because it dying means many real physical people won't have to. Do you want real culture? That modern practices of people forming new ideas and treading new ground? Go to the subreddits where people gather to follow odd rituals and traditions, having fun as they speak and behave in all forms of funny manners. Go to the fan-forums, the communities surrounding different devices or games or events. Go to the science clubs, the gaming conventions. Observe when you find an obscure form full of welcoming people sharing a hobby. No, these things are childish, they aren't "real" culture, I don't like them! We have culture, we live in it ever day, and idiots like this who are all doom and gloom because latin isn't being enjoyed and poetry got boring as we start demanding more from our environments. The world moved on and this guy mistook culture's lack of proximity to you to its death.
Unlike flagamuffin, I don’t find your philosophy to be abhorrent. I would say it’s a bit depressing and if I were to describe it in my own words, I’d say you have a rather aggressive binary world view where things are either the most useful they can be, or they need to be discarded. I remember pretty well how you got my mental wheels turning when we discussed conservationism again and while you frustrated me, I enjoyed it. So let me type up a small counter argument. Keep in mind I haven’t read the article in question, this is just a response to what you’ve posted. Also, please note that I’m using “culture” and “world view” interchangeably in this response because I think the two are so closely tied together they’re impossible to separate. First and foremost, I think when it comes to the core of the problem that divides mankind, I don’t think it’s caused by a lack of a homogeneous culture. I believe it’s caused by people not respecting the rights and well being of others and putting their own concerns as the highest priority, often not thinking about how acting in their self interests might put others in harms way. I very much believe that we can all be different and still get along very well. With that out of the way, I have a few counterpoints for you to consider. Homogeneous Cultures Can Actually Be More Harmful Different cultures often have different priorities in values or different ways in seeing the world. A lot of people often like to point to these differences and the frictions they can cause and see them as a negative, but that’s not always the case. Many times, these frictions often slow things down and create a buffer protecting us from potentially harmful behavior. A world view that stresses the importance of conservationism for example has lead to the EPA, protecting both nature and people from direct and indirect harm. On the other hand though, the desire to embrace technology, innovation, and industrialism has given us an amazing economy. The key is finding a balance and sometimes its easier to balance to large objects on either side of a long lever, adjusting the fulcrum, than it is to balance two smaller objects on a much smaller lever, closer to the fulcrum. Different world views similarly allow people to see behavior that others might not notice as unhealthy. We all know the dangers of group think as a whole, but I want to throw out and individual story that I think helps illustrate some of this. The other day, francopoli made a post about Mormons to which kleinbl00 left a very compelling anecdotal story about living in a community that is majority Mormon. I want to be perfectly clear here, in that I am not bashing on Mormons, but I think if true (which I don’t have much reason to doubt kb would make something like this up), it’s a very compelling argument as to how a culture that is predominantly homogeneous can lead to a corrupt system. There is no doubt in my mind that with a good system of legal checks and balances and vigilant citizens, situations like this can be avoided. However, in places where such checks and balances are lacking, differing cultures and world views act as their own system of checks and balances. We Can Draw On Other Cultures To Further Arts I could throw out a lot of examples here, but in an attempt to keep things focused, I’ll just throw in some examples from cinema. Yojimbo is probably one of my most favorite movies of all time. It’s beautifully shot, beautifully paced, and tells a wonderful story. It is distinctly Japanese in every sense of the word. A Fistful of Dollars is a shameless rip off of Yojimbo and it’s fucking fantastic. It is equally beautifully shot, beautifully paced, and tells the same wonderful story in a completely different genre. It is very much a western, but every now and again you get a niggling hint of Japanese behind it. The movie was so well received that it’s credited for making spagetti westerns a popular western sub genre here in the states. A Japanese storyteller inspired a European storyteller and brought a whole genre to popularity here in The States. It works both ways though. I’ve never seen nor read Shakespeare's King Lear. I need to fix that. I did however, at the age of 12, watch Kurosawa’s Ran which is heavily inspired by Shakespeare’s story. This is a movie that rocked my little mind to the core, damn near traumatizing me, and through discussing it with my parents and mulling it over in my head, this single work of film reinforced my world view of pacifism. I cannot stress enough how powerful that statement is. A core piece of who I am as a human being is due to in part because of a film I watched created by a man who was influenced by a European writer and his own national history. That’s the power of art and culture. We Often Turn To Cultures Outside Of Our Own For New Experiences And Perspectives I can’t speak for anyone else, so I’ll just put my own personal experiences here. I love food. I really love American food. Steak and potatoes. Meatloaf. Hot dogs and burgers. Coleslaw. Pickled everything. There is enough distinctly American foods out there that I could never get bored with eating. However, I find myself so lucky that a) I love food and b) my wife also loves food. We’re willing to try almost anything. We love Thai food, Greek food, Indian food, Chinese, Korean, Mexican, Peruvian. On and on I could go. We don’t eat foods from other cultures day in and day out, but we’re so thankful that we can almost whenever we want. They bring us a joy and a comfort that is hard to replicate, and many times we find ourselves eating at family owned restaurants, run by immigrants and their family members, and we’re lucky to get to meet them. While on the one hand we’re paying for our meals, at the same time I see them as a gift of love and friendship, two key elements in bringing people together. I love art. I don’t understand most of it and I don’t really have a desire to. I’ll confess right now that I’m not a huge fan of classical European art. Know what I love? Folk art. Masks. Costumes. Pottery. Quilts. On and on. When I look at art, whether in museums or online, the majority of what I look at is stuff from Africa, Central and South America, Asia, and American Indian art. They’re unique, they’re exotic, they’re beautiful and compelling. When I look at what they make and read about them, I learn so much about how other cultures think and feel, what they find important, and I can’t help but feel moved by that. I don’t really know how to sum this up, so let me just say that I enjoy comics and advertising art, but there’s something about folk art from other cultures that fill me in such a way that a lifetime’s supply of comic books and magazine ads never could. If it weren’t for other cultures, I wouldn’t have that fulfillment. I am a religious man. I was born and raised a Baha’i (though I’m a lapsed Baha’i of about 8 years at this point, but I'm still a Baha'i) and I think my religious upbringing is a core part in who I am. My faith inspires me to be compassionate, to be giving, to encourage others, to work hard, to strive to be honest and just. Sometimes I fail a little. Sometimes I fail a lot. I haven’t stopped trying though. While I’ve been raised a Baha’i, I don’t read strictly Baha’i writings for my spiritual fulfillment and I often look to other religions for inspiration. Hafiz is a sufi mystic who’s poetry touches my heart in ways I can’t put into words. When levydb shared his sermons with me, I listened to them all in a single afternoon, letting them turn the gears in my head as I thought about where I agreed with him and where I disagreed with him and why. I found myself wishing I could invite him over to dinner sometime so we could sit in the backyard and talk in the evening as we listened to the local wildlife. I love the challenge of reading the Bible and the Quran, I love the feeling of warmth I get from reading Buddhist texts, I love the moral undertones of American Indian and African Folktales, and on and on I could go. By investigating other religions, I come to not only appreciate my own more, but I also come to appreciate myself more. Closing I could go on and on, but I’ve been at this for over an hour now and I don’t think I’m really doing any good conveying my point. So let me just put it this way. Our cultural differences will only drag us down if we let them. If we embrace them though, celebrate and respect them, they can help us become better individuals and they can help us create a better society. The potential is there, we just have to make the right choices to bring it out.
I think the difference we have here, mainly, is the concept that culture is separate from what we seek in the world. Imagine, for example, the cultural differences between the US and soviet union. The cultures, at their core, destroy one another. They are opposed very strictly, and it's impossible for the two to truly coexist and worth together without the fear of the other destroying your own, or making it non-functional. Culture creates those values/rights/emotions you mention. How do we decide what rights to protect, what emotions are a priority? I think that, without a relatively homogeneous worldwide culture, we will always find places we cannot find agreement, and we will find places where that occurs while we are unable to step away from or ignore the issue. That will, when the conflict is between nations, lead to war. The positive examples you mention of culture, I agree with, and that's largely why I pointed to the examples of all the culture that exists in our modern world today that this guy was totally ignoring. While we all share the common values of freedom and so on, and only disagree on the methods with which we should progress the world, cultural differences are great. It's the substantial cultural changes, things like the differences between western ideals of liberation of women to middle-eastern ideals of protection of women, and so on, that cause the problems. We are waging the war between those two ideals like that today in the middle east, after we defeated them within our own nations. Should we stop? Should we allow all those "horrible" things to happen ? Should we stand by as nations kill atheists? That's their culture, to stop them, to erase that culture, is pushing us towards that homogeneity I mention. We aren't going to stop the conflicts until the middle east thinks, relatively, like we do. As for the drawing on other cultures to create art, we can draw from within our own culture just as effectively, especially when that other culture who created the art shares a common set of ideals and values with us. It's okay to have widespread, minor, cultural variation that results in many cultures all existing, but all forming this massive mesh that has no real appearance of distinction. You get all the benefits of that individualism, that spirit of differing values, with none of the downsides. Even though all you see is a big grey blob where no ideas are dominant in any area, you can still see the artists you mention produce works. Homogeneous does not mean that all the parts which make up culture are alike. Instead, it means that the things that make up culture in any region throughout the world are similar. Areas like the Mormons, where all must follow this one ideal are bad, I agree entirely. However, having a "Chinese" culture and a "Japanese" culture and a "British" culture is just as bad. What I want is for society, a big range of separate colorful paints to be mixed together into a shade of homogeneous shit-brown. I do not want society to be painted over with bleach, to be of only one color, but to not be a series of distinct colors as people so often look at culture today. So I feel that we don't disagree. I love seeing communities form around ideas, of differing viewpoints, of taking in what they have to say. However, I hate the idea of these communities having their own power, their own "drive", their own nations within to dwell. Instead, they should be isolated and separated, as all cultures would be in this situation, forced to mix and meld with everything and everyone. Nothing distinct, nothing identifiable, we all live these very "non-cultured" lives of suits and cars and normal things. However, the "culture", the ability to be an indavidual is still there, it just comes out in a different way. I choose to partake in the culture I live around, by going around on the internet and forming ideas and opinions, listening to my parents, and so on. Culture isn't forced on me by the society I live in, or it shouldn't be, in my opinion. Note: sorry if this feels like I'm not responding to your post, but I'm trying my best to read your post, understand your points, and respond to that rather than responding to you quote by quote. I did read what you wrote and appreciated all your various comments.
I like your analogy for a lot of different reasons. I'm gonna be honest here, I've never had a discussion about having to defend the value of cultural diversity. I just thought it was always a given. In your experience, is there a structured, objective way to go about it, or will it mostly be an exercise of spinning our tires in the mud?
Not my analogy, Heraclitus'. I'm not a fan of one-size-fits-all arguments. Misunderstandings are generally through nuance and perspective and those should never be assumed.
Hmm. Yeah. In my mind, the concept is more of an abstract generality, which is part of the reason I was trying to think of specific examples to try to support how I feel about the subject. I know the entire concept of culture is massive and complex and I'll admit that bioemerl's post made me think about the matter because his argument has left me genuinely befuddled. In my defense, it's not something I've ever thought too deeply about. So now I'm thinking about it. It's something.
I'm really not a fan of arguing abstractions to begin with. You're necessarily stripping away many of the details that often make up the true core of the debate. One of my beefs with the article above is it claims to be about "HOW GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT KILLED CULTURE" but is mostly several thousand words of 50-year-old abstract thought welded onto a couple names. It's an attempt to extend the abstract to the real, and a half-hearted one at that.
The broad media, the destruction of "culture" is progress. We call it "culture" because we see it, we don't notice we live in a massive, variable, awesome culture every single day that is bigger and better than any of those minority cultures that died to create the larger, better, culture. In some way, this lack of diversity may be bad, but the unity it creates will far override those downsides. I understand the motivation to preserve these "unique" things, to keep them around, but honestly I can't see them being useful in the future. Unfortunately I find everything stemming from your worldview completely abhorrent. I do mean everything; outcomes, ideas, events. Luckily I still enjoy talking to libertarians for the sake of conversation.Culture being shared between people creates unity and empathy. It's hard to hate who are like you, and it's hard to hate people who share your values. While these minority cultures continue to exist, mankind will be divided and fighting itself.
Why do you find my worldview completely abhorrent? I wouldn't really call myself a libertarian in the "everyone is always free to do whatever" or "government shouldn't exist.". Instead, I am more a "government should not be able to directly tell people they cannot do a thing". For example, government should not be able to do things like saying "you can't own a gun", but can increase taxes to very large amounts in order to pay for/control the damages done by those people. Carbon taxes, for example, are something I support. Carbon caps are not things that I support. I would not support the banning of segregation, but would support the heavy taxation of any business that participates in such a thing, and the giving of the money from those taxes to those who are effected by that negative environment. I do believe that the freedom to choose how one acts typically results in a person behaving in the way that makes the most sense for them, and that if culture is dying, it is dying for a reason, and that reason is probably a good one. I think that the banning of activities under force results in resentment and hatred, pushing us into a place we should not be.
Interesting. I feel like there is a separate conversation to be had regarding the final two paragraphs. Unfortunately, I don't really have conversations on hubski anymore. EDIT: feel free to toss me an email address, if you want. Not what I said. Your worldview itself is quite intoxicating: a sort of cultural pacifism. The future it leads to is what I worry about. We'll see who's right, I suppose.Why do you find my worldview completely abhorrent?