Our competitors are looking not just to beat us but baffle us. So, yes, the new American culture makes even business more changeable and chaotic. And culture, those underlying assumptions, are the culprit.

The elites and intermediaries stand helpless before the flood.

In our culture, trends die young.

But categories are now less clear. They have multiplied and in some cases collapsed. And this makes the world buzz with imprecision. A FTL teenager looks into the social world and goes, “Oh please. I’m supposed to navigate that? What do I aim for? If there’s an identity waiting for me out there, I can’t see it.”

After all, the point of culture is often less the content than the sharing of the content. Entire communities, substantial, lasting communities, spring up from shared shows to say nothing of the tribal pleasures of shared lifestyle. The failure of sharing comes from a failure of culture and that makes culture a problem.

Anyone with several decades left on the planet is obliged to wonder how bad things will get.

Our mutualities are fading.

There is too much culture for culture to have manners, method or modulation. Things don’t cohere. They don’t line up in the beautiful diffusion waves running vividly in from the margin. This means it’s much harder to figure what and when culture will reach us. No more taking a position in the diffusion stream, as an innovator, early adopter, or

A profusion of categories multiples the opportunities for human happiness. On the other hand, if you are 18, this explosion of categories may strike you as a new and daunting order of complexity.