Do I Have a Culture?
More later cause I have little time. When I discussed "self-interest" in a previous post it was intended to be a facetious claim. This fits your model I think because there really is not organic culture of self-interest. Self-interest is a top-down ideology created by elites to keep the mechanisms of our state operating and maintain their role of prominence. This seems to be a recurring trend in many of our "cultural principles" (I would add "manifest destiny," to those ideas of "pioneerism," and the like, i.e., exploitation and imperialism).
Again referring to Gramsci's theory of hegemonic leadership, he argues that culture is one of the most effective tools of domination employed by the elite. It is easily disseminated and often consented to by the subordinate. So one may ask what any "cultures" are other than one of many congealing forms of ideology that order and accumulate societies. Culture is one of the places where ideology materializes.
Interesting timing on this discussion though, since I am beginning an essay written by Arendt addressing the "Crisis of Culture." Particularly, Arendt is addressing what in her time was seen as the "crisis" of the rise of a mass or "popular" culture. I have only just begun and will have to add more later, but many on this site know that I have always been critical of popular culture, which I see as little more than the dissemination of a consumerist ideology and the destruction of art through its commodification.
Arendt discusses a theory of how popular culture arises. She sees "modernity" as a rebellion against the court cultures (best embodied by Louis the 14th's court culture), "society" as it is called. Prior to industrialization there was no "mass society" because the masses did not have enough leisure time to create one. As conditions improved a mass society developed and was accompanied by a mass culture (they always arrive together, society and culture). She talks about how the modern rejection of high society by the elites was most evident in the fact that the revolutionary ranks were often filled by intellectuals and many "modern" novels glorify the proletariat.
Much of the crisis of modernity was a battle of individual man against society, and prior to the rise of "mass society" the individual of society always had a refuge to where he could retreat from society, the "masses" (again, the glorification of the proletariat in 20th century literature and the tendency of intellectuals toward revolutionary movements). With the rise of "mass society" the refuge disappeared and the tension between individual man and society heightened. This is as far as I am in the article, but you can see how interesting it is going to be!
I will take off here from that Arendtian point of departure and suggest that now the individual man has to reject society and culture altogether to alleviate this tension (one can already see a future "dialectic of the individual man and society", I will get right on it). Hence, there is the notion, clearly espoused by me, that popular culture is a contradiction of terms. What happens when man is separated from culture, well its not completely clear and I think our lifetimes will probably answer this question more fully as we systematically destroy cultures, but Hitler had a suggestion. Hitler proposed that one of the ways the Nazi regime would gain domination over the German peoples was to reunite the German people with the German culture, hence the idea of a "National" Socialism and Hitler's ban on modern art. Maybe this can help explain the rise of religious fascism in the world today as certain factions in the world (and this is not limited to the Muslim world, see the rise of Hindu fascism in India, the rise of the right-wing Jewish leadership in Israel, and the rise of the Christian Right in America for just a few examples) try to "reunite" the people with a "culture" whose existence they see threatened by the spread of liberalism and the like.
Not sure where I stand on all this, but for the most part I agree with Occy. I do not feel as though I have a "culture." I know I explicitly reject popular culture as my culture and I feel I do so with good reason, but on some level am I just fighting that battle between individual man and society that Arendt points to? Another question I have, and here is the one Occy has been dreading, is what is "culture." I have expressed in this post and others that culture is just a tool to order (usually hierarchically) a group of people, a "society" (again, Arendt suggest that culture requires a society to arise, cannot remember the direction of the relationship, but maybe society requires the antecedent imposition of a culture). Is a culture just a tool of domination in hierarchical social orderings? Is it "synthetic," is it created to impose a social order, or is it "organic," does it arise naturally and then is potentially appropriated and used to create a social order?
Again referring to Gramsci's theory of hegemonic leadership, he argues that culture is one of the most effective tools of domination employed by the elite. It is easily disseminated and often consented to by the subordinate. So one may ask what any "cultures" are other than one of many congealing forms of ideology that order and accumulate societies. Culture is one of the places where ideology materializes.
Interesting timing on this discussion though, since I am beginning an essay written by Arendt addressing the "Crisis of Culture." Particularly, Arendt is addressing what in her time was seen as the "crisis" of the rise of a mass or "popular" culture. I have only just begun and will have to add more later, but many on this site know that I have always been critical of popular culture, which I see as little more than the dissemination of a consumerist ideology and the destruction of art through its commodification.
Arendt discusses a theory of how popular culture arises. She sees "modernity" as a rebellion against the court cultures (best embodied by Louis the 14th's court culture), "society" as it is called. Prior to industrialization there was no "mass society" because the masses did not have enough leisure time to create one. As conditions improved a mass society developed and was accompanied by a mass culture (they always arrive together, society and culture). She talks about how the modern rejection of high society by the elites was most evident in the fact that the revolutionary ranks were often filled by intellectuals and many "modern" novels glorify the proletariat.
Much of the crisis of modernity was a battle of individual man against society, and prior to the rise of "mass society" the individual of society always had a refuge to where he could retreat from society, the "masses" (again, the glorification of the proletariat in 20th century literature and the tendency of intellectuals toward revolutionary movements). With the rise of "mass society" the refuge disappeared and the tension between individual man and society heightened. This is as far as I am in the article, but you can see how interesting it is going to be!
I will take off here from that Arendtian point of departure and suggest that now the individual man has to reject society and culture altogether to alleviate this tension (one can already see a future "dialectic of the individual man and society", I will get right on it). Hence, there is the notion, clearly espoused by me, that popular culture is a contradiction of terms. What happens when man is separated from culture, well its not completely clear and I think our lifetimes will probably answer this question more fully as we systematically destroy cultures, but Hitler had a suggestion. Hitler proposed that one of the ways the Nazi regime would gain domination over the German peoples was to reunite the German people with the German culture, hence the idea of a "National" Socialism and Hitler's ban on modern art. Maybe this can help explain the rise of religious fascism in the world today as certain factions in the world (and this is not limited to the Muslim world, see the rise of Hindu fascism in India, the rise of the right-wing Jewish leadership in Israel, and the rise of the Christian Right in America for just a few examples) try to "reunite" the people with a "culture" whose existence they see threatened by the spread of liberalism and the like.
Not sure where I stand on all this, but for the most part I agree with Occy. I do not feel as though I have a "culture." I know I explicitly reject popular culture as my culture and I feel I do so with good reason, but on some level am I just fighting that battle between individual man and society that Arendt points to? Another question I have, and here is the one Occy has been dreading, is what is "culture." I have expressed in this post and others that culture is just a tool to order (usually hierarchically) a group of people, a "society" (again, Arendt suggest that culture requires a society to arise, cannot remember the direction of the relationship, but maybe society requires the antecedent imposition of a culture). Is a culture just a tool of domination in hierarchical social orderings? Is it "synthetic," is it created to impose a social order, or is it "organic," does it arise naturally and then is potentially appropriated and used to create a social order?
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