Is Culture Dying?

The diversity of modern culture is unequivocally a good thing. But that comes at the cost of more fragmentation, the loss of a cohesive cultural language. And that fragmentation can be interpreted in different ways.

The "culture" of a society isn't a blob of random human activity, but an orderly ecosystem arising from the interactions between particular subunits. To maintain ecosystem health, we must reject the cynical “poptimist” framing of culture as a mere vehicle for entertainment and commerce and instead promote the benefits of constant cultural refresh.

In a casual aside, Duke sociologist Keiran Healy offered a simple but terrifying observation.*

Culture has changed fundamentally.

It used to be the ballast of our world.

Now it creates chaos.

Which brings us back to the question of traditionalism and dynamism, and their potential interaction: if you have had a cultural revolution that cleared too much ground, razed too many bastions and led to a kind of cultural debasement and forgetting, you probably need to go backward, or least turn that way for recollection, before you can hope to g... See more