The New State Religion
A problem of cultural values
Like most modern people I spend hours each day online. I encounter far more cultural products in a day than a 20th century consumer would come across in an average month.
These are some of the creations I’ve encountered this week:
A new Star Wars film starring the shallow and unpopular character of Rey, directed by a Pakistani documentarian and feminist activist with no experience in blockbuster filmmaking
An Ice Spice song (the less said about the better frankly)
Poetry by Rupi Kaur; ‘exploring’ (ostensibly) themes of feminine victimization and empowerment and with a strong reliance on modern text message constructions and verbiage (so-called ‘instapoetry’)
A soon-to-be-released show (film?) which is entitled with something about a “society of magical negroes” and revolves around a Harry Potteresque fantasy of using magic to reassure and placate (historical) American white people, thereby protecting black people…
A $26 poetry book by Megan Fox, nearly every poem an exploration of emotional and physical abuse of women by male partners
These aren’t products I dove into, nor ones that I plan to. I have absolutely no interest in these creations but they seem representative of modern culture. Perhaps it’s simply my biases and perspectives but our (popular) culture seems uniquely shallow and monotonous and… bad.
If you disagree, or you think that messages about identity group and ‘empowerment’ and victimhood and the ultimate, unquestionable worthiness of subjectivity and personal experience are so good that they should dominate our culture then we disagree. That’s a matter of opinion… but it’s objectively true that most people in our society DO NOT embrace these ideas (yet anyway) and so your cultural project is one of (forgive the ominous implications) re-education. In any case, the homogeneity and shoddiness of modern films and books and music on average is my starting assumption.
Why is this the case?
Much of the character of modern culture relates to profit incentives and changing patterns of consumption and monetization. There’s also the newish development of themes and characters which are didactic and seem to exist largely to ‘deconstruct’ traditional narratives and focus heavily on the burdens of women or racial/sexual minorities. I also believe that this new trend is being undercut by bad and narcissistic writing, but that’s not what I want to establish here.
The deepest values
Our civilization is currently delving into the notion of a kind of radical and unconstrained individualism: life exists to self-actualize, the barriers to that are not one’s own flaws or weaknesses but are social structures, the ultimate social good is a redistribution of wealth and status and power from groups which historically dominated to groups which did not. Unfortunately, I don’t think these ideas are deep enough to root a culture in. Culture is an expression of human existence and the deepest expressions of that existence (war, death, pride, growth, nobility, child-bearing, romantic love, self-sacrifice) are now considered passé, or are ideas in service to the dominant ones. This feels strange and false on a visceral level to consumers, and so we’re left with this oddly shallow culture, constantly proclaiming its own worth but deeply unconvinced. This insecurity leads to conflict and defensiveness and scape-goating. There’s always a larger society and so it can always be blamed for the failure of art, even when that culture largely reflects the value of the artist.
I was going to write something about the trouble with social orthodoxies (how they become rigid and banal and invite their own toppling) but I think I’ll save that for another time.
Instead, here are some predictions for the future of our culture:
Legacy media and Hollywood and te recording industry will continue its repositioning toward the young and online
They will become more and more orthodox and rigid and shallow, and new mediums and paths to creation and distribution will emerge
The status quo will fight back against its growing weaknesses by trying to characterize everyone outside the orthodoxy as illegitimate and immoral
Simultaneously the cultural establishment will appeal to the state for subsidies and restrictions on competitors and advantages and censorship
We will have a new state religion, in display in schools and nightclubs and publishing houses and movie theatres
This religion will invite its own destruction. The creative geniuses of tomorrow will rebel and the entire edifice will topple.
Thanks for reading!
