I’ve been thinking about cultural meaning and how it’s found in things like art and literature beyond the immediately individual and subjective, and so wish to brainstorm a bit to stir conversation. The motivation here is the prevalence of (cultural) nihilism, decline in literacy; the broad appeal of art and literature. I apologise if this is sophomoric and uninformed, but I’m not writing a research paper here!
It’s clear that much (all?) of meaning is purely relational, wherein something is valued individually because it is valued broadly. Something held as a strong social signifier by those with high status, and then by those in the lower classes wish to signal in kind to their peers. The primitive itself doesn’t matter very much for this—It may even have no meaning. I would of course like to immediately dismiss the notion of nihilism as anything but entirely ruinous and destructive, even if meaning can be considered arbitrary, because human emotion has an inherent value to humans; even a false mythology can enrich countless lives.
So anyway, we’re past the age where any kind of credible elite could boast an “aspirational” set of cultural traits as intermediaries to “power and wealth,” and guidance by a few is replaced by an algorithmic-democratic arbitration. The question I come to is: how on earth could something like literature ever regain its prestige as a means toward intellectual and humanistic development in a world where the mechanisms for the broad valuation of a single thing have been dismantled or fundamentally transformed? Maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees by not calling “material conditions,” but it seems to me social media only accelerated these very slowly dwindling values that no longer had a source. Or, education has become so specialised that the expert gains no social capital and can neither understand nor be understood by any other outside his field. “Polymath” doesn’t mean as much “broad education” as “the ability to stay away from screens” and “self-control.” What great values will arise in a social media world where social signifiers are largely artificial and falsifiable?
I’m just lately concerned with the feeling that no one much cares for anything anymore and wondering how I’m supposed to, either. If all the ancient social valuations disappear, how does anyone dedicate themselves to anything without finding it pointless? The reason the for the decline in e.g. the youth playing instruments is not that the kids are lazy and stupid, but because great signs of meaning have broken down into much smaller ones. What’s next?
It’s clear that much (all?) of meaning is purely relational, wherein something is valued individually because it is valued broadly. Something held as a strong social signifier by those with high status, and then by those in the lower classes wish to signal in kind to their peers. The primitive itself doesn’t matter very much for this—It may even have no meaning. I would of course like to immediately dismiss the notion of nihilism as anything but entirely ruinous and destructive, even if meaning can be considered arbitrary, because human emotion has an inherent value to humans; even a false mythology can enrich countless lives.
So anyway, we’re past the age where any kind of credible elite could boast an “aspirational” set of cultural traits as intermediaries to “power and wealth,” and guidance by a few is replaced by an algorithmic-democratic arbitration. The question I come to is: how on earth could something like literature ever regain its prestige as a means toward intellectual and humanistic development in a world where the mechanisms for the broad valuation of a single thing have been dismantled or fundamentally transformed? Maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees by not calling “material conditions,” but it seems to me social media only accelerated these very slowly dwindling values that no longer had a source. Or, education has become so specialised that the expert gains no social capital and can neither understand nor be understood by any other outside his field. “Polymath” doesn’t mean as much “broad education” as “the ability to stay away from screens” and “self-control.” What great values will arise in a social media world where social signifiers are largely artificial and falsifiable?
I’m just lately concerned with the feeling that no one much cares for anything anymore and wondering how I’m supposed to, either. If all the ancient social valuations disappear, how does anyone dedicate themselves to anything without finding it pointless? The reason the for the decline in e.g. the youth playing instruments is not that the kids are lazy and stupid, but because great signs of meaning have broken down into much smaller ones. What’s next?