This is the last in a series of three posts sketching my preliminary understanding of democratic, sacred, and profane culture.
In an online column, Dennis Prager, a tireless advocate of Judaism, discusses a song, "Fuck You," nominated in 2010 to be the Grammy Awards' Record of the Year. Prager says:
[T]he music industry, from producers to artists, is largely populated by people who regard social and cultural norms as stifling. Their professional lives are dedicated to lowering that which is elevated, to destroying that which uplifts, and to profaning that which is held sacred.[1]
A "song" such as "Fuck You" is considered profane by Prager because he holds that all individuals, as the creatures of a perfect God, deserve respect. (The term "fuck" also demeans sexuality.) In a religious context, a profane act is one that violates, demeans, or affronts the sacred, where "sacred" refers to God or something closely related to God.[2]
SECULAR EXAMPLES. I think the concept "profane" is valid in an objective, secular context as well. The profane is that which violates, demeans, or affronts the sacred in man. (See the previous post, "What does 'sacred' mean?")
The weapons in the profane assault on the sacred in man include the following.
1. Speech, in many forms. The issue here is not a curse or other expression that pops from my subconscious after I accidentally drop a brick on my foot. Instead the issue is the conscious choice of a word that assaults one's sense of the sacred. Examples include: (a) "Trash talk," which is "disparaging, taunting, or boastful comments especially between opponents trying to intimidate each other" (The Merriam-Webster online dictionary). Trash talk is communication used between individuals who are in conflict with each other, not trading with each other. Trash talk thus abandons etiquette -- the set of rules and principles designed to facilitate trade between individuals for mutually selfish benefit in society.[3] (b) Sexual terms used as a verbal assault and expressed in demeaning slang ("screw you"). (c) Terms that reduce a value-charged situation to a foul concrete ("makes me vomit"). (d) Slang terms for human organs or bodily functions -- when they do not even need to be named in a particular context -- often with a psychologically revealing special focus on excretion ("sack of shit," "pissed off"). (e) Unearned, undignified, and unwelcome familiarity ("Hey, bro!" or individuals as "folks"). (f) Gangster ("gangsta") talk, including terms of violence and denigration of others. (g) Foul language in general, including fig-leaf acronyms ("WTF").
2. Ways of dress, such as shoes with intentionally untied laces, sagging pants, and torn clothing (as a sign of "poverty chic") -- all for "effect."
3. Personal mannerisms such as slouching or moving in a deliberately jerky or otherwise undignified manner.
4. "Art" that demeans the sacred, directly or indirectly -- such as "gangsta rap" or a painting of a beautiful woman whose skin is marred by disease.
5. Styles of confrontation with other individuals, such as an "in your face" style of speaking that is loud, harsh, insulting, condescending, or physically an invasion of the victim's personal space.
6. Graffiti and other forms of vandalism, as assaults on property rights and other values.
7. Ridicule of an objective valuer, for example, laughing at the holder of objective values by belittling his accent or weight -- allegedly as "humor."
8. Attacking someone while avoiding responsibility, for example, by hiding behind the verbal shield of "jus' saying'" or "just kidding." This approach also denies the target the dignity of being faced openly and honestly, as well as respect for his ability to defend himself as a rational being.
ORIGINS OF PROFANE CULTURE?. I see two possible causes of widespread, sustained profane culture -- psychological and philosophical. The common psychological cause -- easily observed and traced to its roots -- is envy, which is hatred of superiority (real or imagined), or, as philosopher Ayn Rand stated it, "hatred of the good for being the good."[4]
The philosophically motivated democratic movement strives to make everyone equal, often at the price of lowering the high. Is it the cause of profane culture, which tears down the sacred? I seldom see serious, long-term advocates of democratic culture explicitly encourage profanation. What I do see is advocates of democratic culture sanctioning profanation by remaining silent about it. In my experience in speaking with advocates of democratic culture, their usual justification for silence and sanction is their claim that profane culture is merely another manifestation of the culture of "the people" and therefore deserves toleration.
APPLICATION. The kind of world I want to live in is one that rejects the profane and reveres the objectively sacred. Profane culture appears in the lives of upholders of the sacred only if there are no gatekeepers for the sacred or if the gatekeepers are lax. "Open" online discussion groups -- in which any anonymous person can say anything -- are an example.
Making Progress is not an "open" discussion group. Your respectful comments -- additions, deletion, or corrections -- about my notes above are welcome.
Burgess Laughlin, author, The Power and the Glory:The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com
[1] Dennis Prager, "'F_ _ _ You' from the Music Industry," in "Dennis's Columns," at dennisprager.com/columns.aspx?g=e952f04d-ae6b-4187-accb-fc26591ed637&url=f---_you_from_the_music_industry. For more on my philosophically negative but personally mixed views of Dennis Prager, see: reasonversusmysticism.blogspot.com/2010/03/prager-on-reason-and-mysticism.html and http://reasonversusmysticism.blogspot.com/2010/08/dennis-prager-mystic-activist.html. [2] For a Christian's discussion of sacred and profane in a religious context, with Biblical quotations: jackhammer.wordpress.com/2008/02/21/sacred-common-and-profane-culture/. [3] For discussion of insults: aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/2008/07/cause-of-history-ideas-or-insults.html. [4] For the concept of envy in Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism: Ayn Rand, "Envy," The Ayn Rand Lexicon.
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
May 8, 2011
Apr 24, 2011
What is democratic culture?
This is the first in a series of three posts sketching my preliminary understanding of democratic, sacred, and profane culture.
ORIGIN. The democratic movement is the movement of individuals who are striving to establish and expand a democratic society.[2] The term "democracy," for these individuals, names a concept that covers far more than only a particular form of government. One democratic activist, Yale University professor of constitutional law Jack M. Balkin, explains his view of democracy and identifies the root of the democratic movement:
The ultimate goal of our constitutional order is not merely to produce democratic procedures but a democratic culture: a culture in which all citizens can participate and feel that they have a stake, a culture in which unjust social privileges and status hierarchies have been disestablished. . . . Democracy inheres not only in procedural mechanisms like universal suffrage but in cultural modes like dress, language, manners, and behavior. Political egalitarianism must be nourished by cultural egalitarianism.[3]
Democratic advocate Randy Fullerton Sardis, an admirer of Balkin, elaborates:
Democratic culture is about individual liberty as well as collective self-governance; it concerns each individual's ability to participate in the production and distribution of culture. Removing the political, economical, and cultural elitists from their thrones and allowing everyone a chance to participate in the production of culture, sounds like a wonderful idea in my opinion.[4]
Culture, in its broadest meaning, refers to all those artifacts which can be produced by individuals in one generation and bequeathed to later generations. Democratic culture is the set of cultural elements produced by members of the democratic movement as part of their effort to create democracy.
EXAMPLES. Examples of democratic culture include: magazine articles calling for "net neutrality"; rap music lyrics berating the "elite"; Harvard philosophy professor John Rawls's book Theory of Justice (1971); a progressive income tax used to fund redistribution of income from the most productive to the least productive; "stakeholder" organizations who try, in corporate stockholders' meetings, to influence business policies and products to benefit "the people"; tax-funded "public" libraries that give everyone equal access to information; and support for folk art or the "everyday art" of "the people."
PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS. Certain institutions are also examples of democratic culture. An institution is an organization designed to continue operating even after the resignation, retirement, or death of the founding members. For instance, consider one particular institution, The Center for Democratic Culture, which is housed in the Sociology Department of the University of Nevada. Its CDC Mission Statement reveals the institution's underlying philosophy:
The Center for Democratic Culture ... derives its philosophy from American pragmatism, which regards democracy as an ongoing experiment in collective living and institution building. Democracy, according to [philosopher of Pragmatism] John Dewey [1859-1952], begins at home in a neighborly community, and is first and foremost a quality of experience.[5]
"Quality of experience" is a euphemism for life in an all-encompassing culture and society of egalitarian collectivism. And that is what democratic culture is: the culture of egalitarian collectivism.
Next post in this series: "What does 'sacred' mean?"
Burgess Laughlin, author, The Power and the Glory:The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith
[1] For a brief explanation of the principle of cultural detection: Leonard Peikoff, Ominous Parallels, hardcover, pp. 143-144, the first one and a half pages of Ch. 7. [2] For the nature of a movement: "What is a movement?," July 5, 2008, on Making Progress, at aristotleadventure.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-is-movement.html. For an objective definition of political "democracy," as a dictatorship by the majority of a society, see: aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/democracy.html. [3] Jack M. Balkin, "The Declaration and the Promise of a Democratic Culture," 1999, pp. 6-7 of my printout, www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/articles/declar1.htm. (Caution: The text duplicates some paragraphs.) [4] Randy Fullerton Sardis, "What is a Democratic Culture?," Feb. 3, 2009, p. 3 of my printout, on the weblog at atuuschaaw.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-is-democratic-culture.html. [5] For the CDC's mission: www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/mission/index2.html under Mission/Statement in the upper left corner.
Sep 29, 2008
What can historians study?
As a long-term student of history, I am fascinated with the many ways one can approach the subject. By "history" here I mean the total of all human events of the past. We can know those events through the historical record: blood-stained flint arrowheads; paintings on cave walls; relief sculpture on marble monuments; "holy scripture" on vellum; the weave of clothing on bodies buried in peat bogs; handwritten philosophical journals; and governmental records stored on sun-baked clay tablets, sheets of papyrus, or computer hard drives. History, as a field of productive work, is an inquiry (historia, in ancient Greek) into events of the past.
WHOLES. First of all, historians can draw inferences from these items to describe whole periods of history: the Roman Empire (27 BCE-c. 400 AD), the Gupta Empire of northern India (c. 320-550), the explosive expansion of Islam (c. 600-800), the Ming Dynasty in eastern China (1368-1644), the Renaissance (c. 1400-1550), and the spread of communism in the 20th Century.
INDIVIDUAL DIMENSIONS. Each type of evidence used by some historians to describe broad periods of the past can itself become an object of long-term study by other historians. For example, one can study the history of stone tools, as a section of the history of technology, itself a division of the history of culture, that is, all the products created by some individuals and passed to other individuals in their own society or in later generations.
Other elements of culture suitable for historical study include languages, customs, institutions, and ideas. In the latter domain, one may study individual ideas--such as the idea of progress, the idea of reform, or the idea of a particular metaphysical hierarchy; or one may study ideas as systems, as in the study of the history of a particular worldview (religion or philosophy). In one way, studying the history of a particular religion, such as Christianity, is narrow because it excludes many other religions; but in another way, in the number of objects subsumed, studying the history of a particular religion is an enormous task: from the past flows a river of ideas, customs, institutions, and the lives of millions of individuals, each with his own particular understanding of the religion.
Time is another dimension that partly defines a historian's object of study. One historian might study a particular subject either at one point in time (the culture of the Americas in 1491) or through a great length of time (the Church in the Middle Ages). Another historian might specialize in generalizations, so to speak. For instance, a historian who is fascinated with societies considered as wholes might compare cultures such as the Indus River Valley culture of c. 2000 BCE and the culture of the Mayans c. 500 CE.
Still other historians can work in the area that underlies history as a field of inquiry: the philosophy of history. These historians would address questions such as: What is history? What are the proper objects of study? What special cognitive problems arise in studying aspects of reality that no longer exist and can be known only by fragments from the past? What ethical problems, if any, arise for historians, knowing that their conclusions may influence views of the past and therefore affect not only contemporary politics but also the inferences of philosophers?
At the other end of the scale of abstractions, some historians, those fascinated with the manner in which particular individuals acted in the circumstances of their time, might turn to writing biographies. Or historians who are fascinated with examining history under a microscope might turn to a particular event (the Islamofascist attack on the USA on September 11, 2001), a particular institution (socialized medicine in Britain), or a particular movement (the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th Century). At this scale of work, the historian can observe particular individuals taking particular actions which had particular observable effects. Carrying this approach further, some historians might study an event while it is happening--as in the seemingly endless NATO "war" in Afghanistan against "terrorists."
In summary, a particular historian may choose for study any element of human action or culture at any particular time or place. His object of study may be ancient or contemporary, small- or large-scale, concrete or abstract, and particular or general in scope. The historian is limited only by his own purpose, the length of his productive life--and the facts of what individuals have actually done, as shown in the historical record.
EXAMPLES. Following are examples of historical studies from my library. (I am not making recommendations, only citing examples.) Together they illustrate the vast range of objects which historians can study.
- The Story of Maps, Lloyd A. Brown: a history of maps from the ancient world to c. 1950.
- The Great Chain of Being, Arthur O. Lovejoy: a history of an invalid but enormously influential idea, a metaphysical hierarchy ranging from God down to the lowest worm.
- The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350, Robert Bartlett: a detailed examination of the extraordinary wellspring of Viking-French "nobles" spreading from their homeland in Normandy to the periphery of Europe, from England (in 1066) to Constantinople.
- Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy, Constance Brittain Bouchard: a report about the dynamic this-worldly economic activities of Cistercian monasteries (which were officially devoted to poverty and separation from this world), based on the author's detailed study of monastic records surviving for 800 years.
-Clocks and Culture: 1300-1700, Carlo M. Cipolla: a study that is both narrow (looking at one mechanical invention, the clock) and broad (what the radical differences in design and use of clocks in Ming Dynasty China and Renaissance Europe reveal about the two cultures during the "period of the great divergence" of Eastern and Western culture).
-That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession, Peter Novick: a study of the struggles over the issue of objectivity--myth or norm?--in the profession of history in the USA from c. 1880-1980.
-Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, Richard J. Evans: a close look--written as an intellectual detective story--at Evans's own research into the Holocaust and at his objective testimony in a British civil trial, a trial in which Nazi-sympathizer David Irving sued an American writer for libel because she said Irving's historical writings were fraudulent (which they were).
To a beginning student of history who is wondering what to study, my suggestion is to follow your passionate interests, held within the context of your highest values, including your central purpose in life. Are you fascinated with the history of Pittsburgh, the evolution of stone tools, or the development of logic? Follow your love.
Burgess Laughlin
Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith
WHOLES. First of all, historians can draw inferences from these items to describe whole periods of history: the Roman Empire (27 BCE-c. 400 AD), the Gupta Empire of northern India (c. 320-550), the explosive expansion of Islam (c. 600-800), the Ming Dynasty in eastern China (1368-1644), the Renaissance (c. 1400-1550), and the spread of communism in the 20th Century.
INDIVIDUAL DIMENSIONS. Each type of evidence used by some historians to describe broad periods of the past can itself become an object of long-term study by other historians. For example, one can study the history of stone tools, as a section of the history of technology, itself a division of the history of culture, that is, all the products created by some individuals and passed to other individuals in their own society or in later generations.
Other elements of culture suitable for historical study include languages, customs, institutions, and ideas. In the latter domain, one may study individual ideas--such as the idea of progress, the idea of reform, or the idea of a particular metaphysical hierarchy; or one may study ideas as systems, as in the study of the history of a particular worldview (religion or philosophy). In one way, studying the history of a particular religion, such as Christianity, is narrow because it excludes many other religions; but in another way, in the number of objects subsumed, studying the history of a particular religion is an enormous task: from the past flows a river of ideas, customs, institutions, and the lives of millions of individuals, each with his own particular understanding of the religion.
Time is another dimension that partly defines a historian's object of study. One historian might study a particular subject either at one point in time (the culture of the Americas in 1491) or through a great length of time (the Church in the Middle Ages). Another historian might specialize in generalizations, so to speak. For instance, a historian who is fascinated with societies considered as wholes might compare cultures such as the Indus River Valley culture of c. 2000 BCE and the culture of the Mayans c. 500 CE.
Still other historians can work in the area that underlies history as a field of inquiry: the philosophy of history. These historians would address questions such as: What is history? What are the proper objects of study? What special cognitive problems arise in studying aspects of reality that no longer exist and can be known only by fragments from the past? What ethical problems, if any, arise for historians, knowing that their conclusions may influence views of the past and therefore affect not only contemporary politics but also the inferences of philosophers?
At the other end of the scale of abstractions, some historians, those fascinated with the manner in which particular individuals acted in the circumstances of their time, might turn to writing biographies. Or historians who are fascinated with examining history under a microscope might turn to a particular event (the Islamofascist attack on the USA on September 11, 2001), a particular institution (socialized medicine in Britain), or a particular movement (the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th Century). At this scale of work, the historian can observe particular individuals taking particular actions which had particular observable effects. Carrying this approach further, some historians might study an event while it is happening--as in the seemingly endless NATO "war" in Afghanistan against "terrorists."
In summary, a particular historian may choose for study any element of human action or culture at any particular time or place. His object of study may be ancient or contemporary, small- or large-scale, concrete or abstract, and particular or general in scope. The historian is limited only by his own purpose, the length of his productive life--and the facts of what individuals have actually done, as shown in the historical record.
EXAMPLES. Following are examples of historical studies from my library. (I am not making recommendations, only citing examples.) Together they illustrate the vast range of objects which historians can study.
- The Story of Maps, Lloyd A. Brown: a history of maps from the ancient world to c. 1950.
- The Great Chain of Being, Arthur O. Lovejoy: a history of an invalid but enormously influential idea, a metaphysical hierarchy ranging from God down to the lowest worm.
- The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350, Robert Bartlett: a detailed examination of the extraordinary wellspring of Viking-French "nobles" spreading from their homeland in Normandy to the periphery of Europe, from England (in 1066) to Constantinople.
- Holy Entrepreneurs: Cistercians, Knights, and Economic Exchange in Twelfth-Century Burgundy, Constance Brittain Bouchard: a report about the dynamic this-worldly economic activities of Cistercian monasteries (which were officially devoted to poverty and separation from this world), based on the author's detailed study of monastic records surviving for 800 years.
-Clocks and Culture: 1300-1700, Carlo M. Cipolla: a study that is both narrow (looking at one mechanical invention, the clock) and broad (what the radical differences in design and use of clocks in Ming Dynasty China and Renaissance Europe reveal about the two cultures during the "period of the great divergence" of Eastern and Western culture).
-That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession, Peter Novick: a study of the struggles over the issue of objectivity--myth or norm?--in the profession of history in the USA from c. 1880-1980.
-Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, Richard J. Evans: a close look--written as an intellectual detective story--at Evans's own research into the Holocaust and at his objective testimony in a British civil trial, a trial in which Nazi-sympathizer David Irving sued an American writer for libel because she said Irving's historical writings were fraudulent (which they were).
To a beginning student of history who is wondering what to study, my suggestion is to follow your passionate interests, held within the context of your highest values, including your central purpose in life. Are you fascinated with the history of Pittsburgh, the evolution of stone tools, or the development of logic? Follow your love.
Burgess Laughlin
Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith
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