Is Our Culture Ready for the Trashcan?

There have been great points on two seperate views here; the notion that western culture is in decline and that it is on the rise. In some ways it is in decline, for the reasons stated, and in some ways it is on the rise, again, for reasons stated. But here's another way tolook at it: it doesn't matter. Maybe things like this are true:

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

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But it doesn't matter becuase if you like Opera, it is still there for you to enjoy. Maybe the majority of novels on he NY Times bestseller list are mediocre pulp. But it doesn't matter because their are still great authors out there that stack up to the greats for you to enjoy. I do happen to think that many of the TV shows and movies, etc. are trash, but I don't watch them, so they don't affect my life. The point of my whole argument is that it only matters how you culture YOURSELF. Because whether your interests are high brow, low brow or a crazy combination of the two, you will be able to satisfy those interests. So maybe Western civilization is decline. So what? My life will be exactly the same whether it does or doesn't.

As he has pointed out, for every one person who does enjoy culture in the artistic sense of the word, there are hundreds who don't; many of whom are intellectually incapable of doing so. Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

Brian... when was it ever different? Shakespeare had to compete with bear-baiting... the Elizabethan version of the WWF or Monster Truck Shows. The majority of the population was never reading the finest literature, attending the opera and ballet, patronizing the leading painters and sculptors of the day. What has changed is that the source of money has shifted from the few to the many. There is far more money involved in populist films, books, and other art forms than in what we might call "serious art" and thus there is much more publicity for such art than there ever was in the past. Today's pop star would have been but part of a local vaudeville act or an amateur musician singing filthy ditties in the local pub or county fairs not too long ago. Even so... for the vast majority of the population it was musicians such as these and not Mozart and Beethoven that accounted for their experience with music/culture.

Apparently, the guy who took care of pigs in Rome, read and enjoyed Virgil. That is not why they had funny killing people and annimals. They are high cultured individuals.

And one can only imagine the heights of artistic and cultural splendors that the Barbarian tribes... on the ascendancy... were privy to.:p

No slight intended to Aunt, but I don't understand in what sense this debate is worth having. I am the grand daughter of a Roman shoe maker, and an invalid. Am I literate? Goes without saying. Cultured? Cosmopolitan? No. I am a provincial American in a provincial founding city who wants to reverse my grandfather and return to Rome so I can die in peace. I rarely enjoy opera, and don't want to debate that, but like the musical, I have no ear for it. What I know about art is your standard art history 101.

In the 19th century, I would have died in birth, and even many decades ahead of that, but here I am, a pretty smart crippled peasant with a university education. Is violence a problem in that system, as Neely mentions? Certainly, but everything is pretty much available to anyone, even the poor. Poverty makes aesthetic acquisition difficult, but not impossible. We live in a mass media global age.

I am never going to be cosmopolitan, and that's just fine. I've done a great deal already.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

As he has pointed out, for every one person who does enjoy culture in the artistic sense of the word, there are hundreds who don't; many of whom are intellectually incapable of doing so. Opera houses, concert halls etc. may be full but their total audiences are minuscule in comparison to the population at large who never use them because they would much rather stay at home and watch such great cultural achievements as Desperate Housewives or trashy soap operas.

Brian... when was it ever different? Shakespeare had to compete with bear-baiting... the Elizabethan version of the WWF or Monster Truck Shows. The majority of the population was never reading the finest literature, attending the opera and ballet, patronizing the leading painters and sculptors of the day. What has changed is that the source of money has shifted from the few to the many. There is far more money involved in populist films, books, and other art forms than in what we might call "serious art" and thus there is much more publicity for such art than there ever was in the past. Today's pop star would have been but part of a local vaudeville act or an amateur musician singing filthy ditties in the local pub or county fairs not too long ago. Even so... for the vast majority of the population it was musicians such as these and not Mozart and Beethoven that accounted for their experience with music/culture.

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In the days to which you refer, manure had to spread on the land by hand, it was know in England as muck spreading. With modern technology it can be spread much wider and thicker in a much shorter time. Moreover, I don't buy into the theory that the sins of the fathers will automatically be visited onto the sons; what happened in former times has little or no relevance within the context of today where a paradigm shift in technology is fundamentally altering people's attitudes in ways that have heretofore been impossible.
But I always return to my own experience when discussing this subject and I can categorically state that when I was at school none of the things mentioned as being today's norm would have happened. And that people generally were more considerate in their dealings with each other. Now if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody esle who may be interested, that you are wrong.

Really?
I mean, today in american the use of certain words is not allowed because people are more considered to certain people feelings reggarding their skin.
Also, you lovely americans had such "understanding" of your latin-american friends. Pancho and Sancho.
Your grandmother or grandgrandmother voted? Apparently people are so considerated about them...
You can even be a commie now.

Today, It is norm to have public places prepared for people who have some physical problem, apparently it was not a norm a few decades ago.

It is very funny to argue that the sins of our parents wont make me blind and at sametime argue "in the past..."

The problem with supporting an argument by citing one's personal experience is that the someone else will submit an opposing argument supported by their personal experience, which pretty much exposes both arguments for what they are - to wit, anecdotal and subjective, and therefore unconvincing in the broader context.

And the problem with quoting someone dead who agrees with you is that you're merely recruiting another subjective opinion, and the guy who disagrees with you will just cite a dead person who agrees with him.

So you need some kind of objective and measurable support for an argument on either side of the debate. It was all different when I was a kid will not really move the discussion along - if, indeed, the idea is to move the discussion along, rather than simply to state one's own belief and then say that anyone who disagrees is wrong.

1. I am not an American and I refer to my experience of the UK. We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.


2. The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.

Quote: "In any event, let's hear your thoughts!"

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.

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Having grown up in South London in the Seventies, I can tell you that we had all that. I can even tell you in which schools we had it, if you like. To quote an earlier contributor to this thread, if you are telling me that it's not true or that I have imagined it, then I have to tell you, and anybody else who may be interested, that you are wrong.

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.

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If that were entirely the case, none of us would have posted more than once. And yet, we have - in answer to subsequent posts. Which, I think, under most definitions, qualifies as a discussion.

The use of the F word at an award ceremony when emotions and adrenaline are sky high is not what I would call evidence of damaged and decaying culture.
Even though the article expounds upon issues other than Melissa Leo's slip it still seems that what is forgotten is art and culture evolves (not always for the better as the Dark Ages coming from the decline of the Roman Empire gives example to.)
Even the Renaissance was not perpetuated until the the end of time. Art and thinking evolved and things moved on. Culture fluctuates and maybe we are beginning a decent into a new dark age or maybe it's just a mini Rococo type dip.

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

1. I am not an American and I refer to my experience of the UK. We may not have had parks for the disabled but neither did we have a drug problem, children taking knives to school and the kind of behaviour that has recently been described as our broken society. But if you think that that's preferable to what went before, that's your entitlement.

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Potato, Potato. LSD is used for 60 years. Unless your generation is the war-generation then you had problem with drugs. Thomas De Quincey opium diary is from XIX century. England had problem with druggs for more than a century and in fact, thank god, they cann't not use drugs to make wars like they did with China. Seems like an improvement.
Children didnt took knives at school? Where have you heard so? Maybe because childrens in school is something quite recent. But considering the punk generation among teenagers came in 70's, I really doubt this. Or Maybe Vicious and Rotten didnt count because they didn't went to school.

And who said anything about what I prefer? In fact, I am not too eager to join this canibalistic apokalipse. I have survived quite fine a handful before, so I can tell you: the end of the world is a bore.

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2. The idea isn't to move the discussion along but for members to state their opinions as asked for by Aunt Schecky who initiated the thread.

Quote: "In any event, let's hear your thoughts!"

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You replied to Stlukes. I replied to you. There is no such rule as not discussing or just stating opinion.

I think the school violence Neely mentions is sociological in nature more than cultural, though it should be noted that *ghetto chic* is now part of that dynamic. Declinists have been worried about the health of the Western Hemisphere since Time Magazine published a wry and poignant piece, in the 70's, on going out for ice cream while the world was going to hell due to communist regimes.

Time Inc had not the slightest idea at the time that the Internet would begin to erode the distinct style of its voice.

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Originally Posted by JCamilo

Potato, Potato. LSD is used for 60 years. Unless your generation is the war-generation then you had problem with drugs. Thomas De Quincey opium diary is from XIX century. England had problem with druggs for more than a century and in fact, thank god, they cann't not use drugs to make wars like they did with China. Seems like an improvement.
Children didnt took knives at school? Where have you heard so? Maybe because childrens in school is something quite recent. But considering the punk generation among teenagers came in 70's, I really doubt this. Or Maybe Vicious and Rotten didnt count because they didn't went to school.

And who said anything about what I prefer? In fact, I am not too eager to join this canibalistic apokalipse. I have survived quite fine a handful before, so I can tell you: the end of the world is a bore.



You replied to Stlukes. I replied to you. There is no such rule as not discussing or just stating opinion.

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I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say but I reiterate: I do not remember any children taking knives to the school I went to and neither do I recall hearing of any other school having that problem. As for drugs in the UK, where they were a problem was when laudanum was prescribed by doctors who were at first unaware of its addictive properties, but my reading of the period doesn't show that it was as great as that of today when drugs are supposed to be illegal. The only point of agreement I do find in what you say is Britain's use of opium against the Chinese which was obviously wrong.
General education in England began in 1870 with the Education Act, which established non-denominational schools throughout the country, so your belief that it is "something quite recent" is a matter of opinion.
The rest of your post is meaningless to me except that the subject of this thread is not the end of the world but that of western culture.

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Originally Posted by Emil Miller

I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say but I reiterate: I do not remember any children taking knives to the school I went to and neither do I recall hearing of any other school having that problem.

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Annoucement: you are not the world.
Repeat: You are not the world.
Once more: Yo are not the world (and before you say that it is not about the world, but england, you are not england either).

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As for drugs in the UK, where they were a problem was when laudanum was prescribed by doctors who were at first unaware of its addictive properties, but my reading of the period doesn't show that it was as great as that of today when drugs are supposed to be illegal. The only point of agreement I do find in what you say is Britain's use of opium against the Chinese which was obviously wrong.

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The only reason is that at that mediocre time, use of several drugs was fine. Poeple like Quincey could destroy their intellect (his use of opium was not exactly legal) and nobody would think anything about it. In our world, higher developed, we can treat people from it, not just alchool. We are much superior: we can see the problem.

Must I point that in the 80's junkies were not accepted in society at all, just like Homossexuals, to the point AIDS was a gay plague. Only when it started to kill people who had higher moral superiority (probally people who still behaved like those people in early XX century, when society was not close to an end) they had to understand that the disease was killing people, not those who they considered "Out of society, statistics, etc"

Thank God, we do not have anymore those days, we are less sensible and when we seem those guys dying in slums, we do not jump over it happily to ignore them problem, right?

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General education in England began in 1870 with the Education Act, which established non-denominational schools throughout the country, so your belief that it is "something quite recent" is a matter of opinion.

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So, 140 years and it was able to include all society at once. Nice. I love those modern stories. Maybe the guys with knives were not there yet when you studied. Was it in 1920?

You know, it is so much easier to leave kids and knifes out of school.

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The rest of your post is meaningless to me except that the subject of this thread is not the end of the world but that of western culture.

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The point is that your limited experience is not a pattern of western society. Kids had fights in school. Drugs are a western problem for long, even cocaine, lsd, heroine - hello, hippie movement was in the 60's. (I will not even mention alcohol). Punk was in 1970. That is 40 years ago. If you did not saw it is because you are not looking with the eyes wide open.

The decline if western society is happening for so long that earth became flat.