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I nicked the title for this essay: http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/ http://rocknerd.co.uk/201

I nicked the title for this essay: http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthetics-punk-rock-is-now-enforced-by-law/ http://rocknerd.co.uk/2013/09/13/culture-is-not-about-aesthe... Culture is not primarily about aesthetics: it's about monkeys' mutual grooming. It's about aesthetics after the piece of culture has fulfilled subcultural needs. Is your typical metalhead going to choose an exquisite harp symphony over a pretty-good slab of loud metally rock'n'roll? Probably not.

wpietri 12y ago
You're normally so sharp about deflating dodgy ideas that I'm surprised to see you say this. As I read it, you and Gwern seem to assume that a) there is an objective "best" measure for art, and b) the purpose of experiencing art is is to consume "best" art. I don't think either of those are true. I agree there's a status component to things, but we're monkeys; there's a status component to everything. (If I avoided everything where status behavior was an important driver, I'd have to stop typing right now; open-source software is filled with it.) Culture, being the summation of everything we talk about, is "about" a lot of things. Really, it's about everything. Sure, everything social that we do is socially mediated, and therefore has status components. But to say that's what it's primarily about is to me like saying that all of marine biology is really about water. Sure, it's there, and sure, anything you point at is related to seawater. But saying it's all about seawater strikes me as a rhetorical technique used to dismiss something, not a serious analysis.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  Oh, it's totally all mixed up. It's intersubjective, which means you can sorta rank stuff but not really. However, I do think culture is primarily about culture, i.e. mutual grooming and good feelings with our fellow monkeys. I speak here as a superannuated rock journalist with a ridiculously large record collection.

wpietri 12y ago

You're normally so sharp about deflating dodgy ideas that I'm surprised to see you say this. As I read it, you and Gwern seem to assume that a) there is an objective "best" measure for art, and b) the purpose of experiencing art is is to consume "best" art. I don't think either of those are true. I agree there's a status component to things, but we're monkeys; there's a status component to everything. (If I avoided everything where status behavior was an important driver, I'd have to stop typing right now; open-source software is filled with it.) Culture, being the summation of everything we talk about, is "about" a lot of things. Really, it's about everything. Sure, everything social that we do is socially mediated, and therefore has status components. But to say that's what it's primarily about is to me like saying that all of marine biology is really about water. Sure, it's there, and sure, anything you point at is related to seawater. But saying it's all about seawater strikes me as a rhetorical technique used to dismiss something, not a serious analysis.

davidgerard 12y ago
Oh, it's totally all mixed up. It's intersubjective, which means you can sorta rank stuff but not really. However, I do think culture is primarily about culture, i.e. mutual grooming and good feelings with our fellow monkeys. I speak here as a superannuated rock journalist with a ridiculously large record collection.