6 ms·

> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny t

> If you wanted culture, you'd have to get in your car and drive at least an hour. Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting or Korean TV or opera. Producing great culture is harder without a local community, but it's not like there's no access to culture in small towns. They're binge watching Iron Fist just like all the other geeks.

cheriot 10y ago
With fewer people in a place there will be fewer people that match OP's cultural interests. Even moving from a medium city to a larger city has a noticeable increase in organizations of people doing cool things I'm interested in.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  Right. To do things, it helps to be colocated. But in many cases, you don't strictly need to be in the same room with people even then.
dredmorbius 10y ago
There's complexity and sophistication. Which you don't simply find anywhere. Having lived in small towns, big cities, and desert planets.
derefr 10y ago
People tend to use "culture" to refer, more often than not, to the local availability of global culture-production top-dogs. For example, New York has "fashion culture", because it's a place where you can expect to run into people who aren't just into fashion, but who lead and dictate the world's fashion. In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  That means "culture" is a dog whistle referencing some sort of elitism.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    It's about self-perfection: figuring out the best way to live, getting closer to that ideal, and exploring and trying to resolve its internal contradictions. But the best way to live differs from culture to culture -- and I'm not convinced that the rural South has the same kind of ideal as the North, which means I came on too strong earlier. What does the Celtic or Celticized world's high culture look like...?
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
    Its not elitism at all. There is just a lack of what people commonly call culture in less populated areas. Greater concentration of people leads to greater specialization and a greater diversity of interests. For example, when Id return to my Midwestern hometown during college break and Id be dissapointed by the local "Mexican"(Cheese, nacho cheese, doritos, and jalaoenos) pizza. It just stands to reason that the more oeople you have in an area, the greater the diversity and intensity of interests, which we call cultyre. My hometown definitely doesnt have a Bat'leth martial arts class, but you can find it in a big city. Thats why you get such an influx of artsy types to places like NYC because no one ia into their art where they are from
    - mercutio2 10y ago
      I love urban high culture, so I'm a cheerleader for what I think you're trying to champion here, but I think most of what you just described is precisely cultural elitism. It's quite possible to square traditional urbanism's affection for multiculturalism and an affection for artistic and culinary excellence, but it takes some nuanced language to express why those aren't in conflict. Embracing cultural elitism while denying it linguistically doesn't really help make the argument.
      - 10y ago
clock_tower 10y ago
> Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. I remember reading a conservative/neocon author who tore into this relativizing of culture, insisting on the old definition that "culture" didn't just mean "whatever junk's growing in a petri dish", but I can't remember who it was -- Barzun, Goldman ("Spengler"), or Dalrymple. The point's valid regardless. "Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing" -- and it's particularly silly to use cultural relativism to defend Republicans.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  Recognizing that other cultures exist and that people have different preferences isn't a partisan idea. Nor is it cultural relativism.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- ancarda 10y ago
  >"Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing" People are "savage" because they like different things to you such as country music? If so, you're an incredibly narrow minded and shitty person. If not, please elaborate.
  - clock_tower 10y ago
    Culture in Matthew Arnold's definition is the pursuit of human perfection. Different cultures have different norms of human perfection, and pursue different things; this fits Spengler's (the real one's) idea that a culture has a core proposition. Within a civilization, high culture is a culture's full expression of itself; it seeks out and engages with the contradictory or self-defeating parts of its values, and tries to advance the culture's understanding of what perfection is and how it can be attained. (What the postmodernists call deconstruction, and Gardiner called "high parody," is a fundamental part of this process.) Low culture is mindless entertainment; it doesn't try to shape its consumers in any positive way, and certainly doesn't advance the society's understanding of its ideals. Middlebrow/bourgeois culture tries to be high culture and fails -- but typically fails intentionally. (To be at the forefront of understanding is prestigious but uncomfortable, and the middle class wants prestige but not discomfort.) Mass culture is typically low, since low culture sells, but can rise to middle or high. Low culture, and occasionally middlebrow or mass culture, can produce things that high culture finds interesting and takes up -- and high culture can similarly cross-fertilize downwards. See Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe for some very interesting discussion of this, which was more common then than it is today. "Culture" historically means "high culture": the thrust towards self-improvement, plus the continued refinement of what exactly you're trying to self-improve towards. This sounds uniquely Western (especially modern Western -- "Faustian" in Spengler's terminology), but you see the same process in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia. The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture -- so perhaps it's unreasonable of me to condemn poor rural areas for not participating in it. Or perhaps not? It's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available. Regardless, it's high culture -- or at least middlebrow culture, which is regrettably easy to mistake for it -- that reverend_gonzo was lamenting lack of access to.

cheriot 10y ago

With fewer people in a place there will be fewer people that match OP's cultural interests. Even moving from a medium city to a larger city has a noticeable increase in organizations of people doing cool things I'm interested in.

humanrebar 10y ago
Right. To do things, it helps to be colocated. But in many cases, you don't strictly need to be in the same room with people even then.

dredmorbius 10y ago

There's complexity and sophistication. Which you don't simply find anywhere. Having lived in small towns, big cities, and desert planets.

derefr 10y ago

People tend to use "culture" to refer, more often than not, to the local availability of global culture-production top-dogs. For example, New York has "fashion culture", because it's a place where you can expect to run into people who aren't just into fashion, but who lead and dictate the world's fashion. In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.

humanrebar 10y ago
That means "culture" is a dog whistle referencing some sort of elitism.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  It's about self-perfection: figuring out the best way to live, getting closer to that ideal, and exploring and trying to resolve its internal contradictions. But the best way to live differs from culture to culture -- and I'm not convinced that the rural South has the same kind of ideal as the North, which means I came on too strong earlier. What does the Celtic or Celticized world's high culture look like...?
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Its not elitism at all. There is just a lack of what people commonly call culture in less populated areas. Greater concentration of people leads to greater specialization and a greater diversity of interests. For example, when Id return to my Midwestern hometown during college break and Id be dissapointed by the local "Mexican"(Cheese, nacho cheese, doritos, and jalaoenos) pizza. It just stands to reason that the more oeople you have in an area, the greater the diversity and intensity of interests, which we call cultyre. My hometown definitely doesnt have a Bat'leth martial arts class, but you can find it in a big city. Thats why you get such an influx of artsy types to places like NYC because no one ia into their art where they are from
  - mercutio2 10y ago
    I love urban high culture, so I'm a cheerleader for what I think you're trying to champion here, but I think most of what you just described is precisely cultural elitism. It's quite possible to square traditional urbanism's affection for multiculturalism and an affection for artistic and culinary excellence, but it takes some nuanced language to express why those aren't in conflict. Embracing cultural elitism while denying it linguistically doesn't really help make the argument.
    - 10y ago

clock_tower 10y ago

> Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in. I remember reading a conservative/neocon author who tore into this relativizing of culture, insisting on the old definition that "culture" didn't just mean "whatever junk's growing in a petri dish", but I can't remember who it was -- Barzun, Goldman ("Spengler"), or Dalrymple. The point's valid regardless. "Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing" -- and it's particularly silly to use cultural relativism to defend Republicans.

humanrebar 10y ago
Recognizing that other cultures exist and that people have different preferences isn't a partisan idea. Nor is it cultural relativism.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
ancarda 10y ago
>"Culture" means "culture", not just "whatever the local savages are doing" People are "savage" because they like different things to you such as country music? If so, you're an incredibly narrow minded and shitty person. If not, please elaborate.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  Culture in Matthew Arnold's definition is the pursuit of human perfection. Different cultures have different norms of human perfection, and pursue different things; this fits Spengler's (the real one's) idea that a culture has a core proposition. Within a civilization, high culture is a culture's full expression of itself; it seeks out and engages with the contradictory or self-defeating parts of its values, and tries to advance the culture's understanding of what perfection is and how it can be attained. (What the postmodernists call deconstruction, and Gardiner called "high parody," is a fundamental part of this process.) Low culture is mindless entertainment; it doesn't try to shape its consumers in any positive way, and certainly doesn't advance the society's understanding of its ideals. Middlebrow/bourgeois culture tries to be high culture and fails -- but typically fails intentionally. (To be at the forefront of understanding is prestigious but uncomfortable, and the middle class wants prestige but not discomfort.) Mass culture is typically low, since low culture sells, but can rise to middle or high. Low culture, and occasionally middlebrow or mass culture, can produce things that high culture finds interesting and takes up -- and high culture can similarly cross-fertilize downwards. See Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe for some very interesting discussion of this, which was more common then than it is today. "Culture" historically means "high culture": the thrust towards self-improvement, plus the continued refinement of what exactly you're trying to self-improve towards. This sounds uniquely Western (especially modern Western -- "Faustian" in Spengler's terminology), but you see the same process in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia. The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture -- so perhaps it's unreasonable of me to condemn poor rural areas for not participating in it. Or perhaps not? It's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available. Regardless, it's high culture -- or at least middlebrow culture, which is regrettably easy to mistake for it -- that reverend_gonzo was lamenting lack of access to.