Globalism vs. Culture

[Oeaohoo]

Absolutely! Most of what passes of as "creativity" nowadays is just new combinations of preexisting idioms, because hardly anybody is willing to make the necessary sacrifices for true - what I would call third-order - creativity.

However, I don't think it's quite true to say that

On 09/10/2019 at 7:13 AM, EternalForest said:

If you study all the greatest creative movements across all mediums, you'll find that they were all very insular, in the sense that it was a small group that influenced each other and did something really unique and special.

Of course, the creators of new values have always lived away from glory and the marketplace, but how is Globalism any more or less incompatible with that than, say, nationalism? If anything, nationalist environments are far more intolerant of creativity.  The empty, nihilistic, laede-neminem morality of our culture is actually quite a blessing for creators, because we are free to do what we want without anyone sticking their nose in it. Compare that to Shostakovich leaving cryptic messages in his pieces in Soviet Russia, and a placid globalism doesn't seem so bad, no?

One must also keep in mind that globalism and multiculturalism are still quite recent phenomena - what in this world is immediately perfect? I have definitely noticed that we can tend to sacrifice diversity in one sense in the name of diversity in another - but perhaps once we achieve diversity in that sense, then our focus will shift back to cultural diversity?

I also hear from you this (now quite common) complaint that we seem to value all cultures except our own, being uniquely and unequivocally aware and ashamed of our own faults, prejudices and historical failings. One will feel however one feels about this based on their political leanings - perhaps we should be, perhaps we shouldn't be... perhaps - both?

Anyway, I like your post, but I don't like the way you mix in this talk of nationalism and cultural purity with a longing for an unbounded creative spirit - they are not equivalent and do not go hand in hand, if anything quite the contrary!

PS: I watched this long interview with David Foster Wallace (wonderful author!) yesterday that you might like. Toward the end he said:

Quote

Television and corporate entertainment - because it’s so expensive - in order to make money it has to appeal to a very wide audience, which means it has to find things that a lot of people have in common - and I dunno about you but here I think what most of us have in common are our very most base, uninteresting, selfish, stupid interests; physical attractiveness, sex, a certain kind of easy humour, vivid spectacle - that’s stuff that I will immediately look at and so will you and so will you, so it’s in our very most base and kinda childish interests in which we are a mass - the things that make us interesting and unique and human, those interests tend to be wildly different in different people - so my guess is, in terms of American mass culture as a mass for things to get significantly different, what it’s going to involve is fragmentation in the entertainment industry. - DFW.

PSS: Maybe your diagnosis is correct, but your prescription is wrong? Perhaps the real reason for the current dirth of creativity is, for instance, as follows? (Whispered into the ears of Clare Graves... )

Quote

Culture contra civilisation. The high points of culture and civilisation do not coincide: one should not be deceived about the abysmal antagonism of culture and civilisation. The great moments of culture were always, morally speaking, times of corruption; and conversely, the periods when the taming of the human animal ("civilisation") was desired and enforced were times of intolerance against the boldest and most spiritual natures. Civilisation has aims different from those of culture - perhaps they are even opposite!

One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star!

 

[EternalForest]

Sorry about bumping the post after being inactive for weeks, I just haven't been online in a while and wanted to make one last reply:

@remember Despite the negative connotation with it ("It's not as good as you remember, it's just nostalgia"), I think nostalgia is something to be valued. You bring up an interesting point with the cowboys and guns example. I certainly wouldn't want cowboys of that nature running around nowadays, and perhaps it's best they be left in the past. What I'm referring to is more of the positive things we have lost to the past. There are so many ways in which past cultures were more conscious than American culture today, and I don't believe this amounts to nostalgia, it's just fact.

Media is the best way to preserve it, I agree. But that brings up the issue of lost and unplayable media. Data rot is something I worry about, how many old hard drives and CD databases of stuff we could lose... And I agree. We really are conditioned to think the future looks a certain way through scifi, but for all we know it could look nothing like that.

@Oeaohoo I don't understand how the ideas I'm presenting are nationalistic. I'm not claiming any one culture is better than another, or even that members of one culture can't join another. Anyone can join an art movement or political movement, regardless of where you're from. I think the benefits of globalism outweigh the negatives by a long shot, but it must be pointed out there will be downsides, such as cultural homogenization. If all cultures become one, cultural diversity is inherently sacrificed. Because for something to be, it must not-be something else. Let's say hypothetically, all cultures became one, what would buildings look like? What would music sound like? What would food taste like? What would the government look like? Probably something unique and awesome right? We all want to see what that would be like...but then you realize that that one Global culture would just be....it? This is it now. You wouldn't have hundreds of unique perspectives anymore, it would just leave with one. And as good as that one would/could be, I would personally rather have 100s. 

[remember]

@EternalForest  so you see, nostalgia is about cherry picking and it depends on who might be the cherry picker of what content might be of value for the future. but one person can`t cherry pick them all - so can you see the dilemma of selectivity or non selectivity?

[CreamCat]

On 10/9/2019 at 9:25 PM, Leo Gura said:

Without a unification NYC might want to nuke LA.

That is if NYC has a nuclear bomb or someone in NYC has control over it.