Spotlight on Obscure Rural Characters

Schweig! wrote:

I understand culture as an umbrella term for accomplishments of mankind in the fields of technology, visual arts (instead of performing arts), law, morale, religion, economics and science.

Folk art is something to be preserved, too, don't get me wrong.

We are talking apples and oranges. I meant culture in the sense of the values, conventions, and social practices associated with a given group of people. Thats probably the most common use of the word in the USA. You mean culture in the sense of a society's accomplishments and advancements, which is something totally different.

hancock.tom wrote:

Schweig! wrote:

I understand culture as an umbrella term for accomplishments of mankind in the fields of technology, visual arts (instead of performing arts), law, morale, religion, economics and science.

Folk art is something to be preserved, too, don't get me wrong.

We are talking apples and oranges. I meant culture in the sense of the values, conventions, and social practices associated with a given group of people. Thats probably the most common use of the word in the USA. You mean culture in the sense of a society's accomplishments and advancements, which is something totally different.

I don't think you are too far apart. Schweig's definition is broader, but you both have law, religion and morals in there. It could be that many Americans define culture like Tom, and that Europeans tend to include arts, as in the German term Kultur or the British use of the word cultured. It is maybe nearer to civilisation in the American sense. But that's all semantics.

Steve and I have this long running culture war going and I enjoy that.

Pseudointellectual may be right that there is an urban liberal elite, but the conservative rural elite is also still very much around in the US and it is a very potent political force so I don't share the sense that the u.l.e. controls the US. True though that anti-modernism is not unique to late 19th century Germany. It has been a very strong political force in most countries at least up to the 1970s. Look at the Catholic Church in the Spanish Civil War, the French Right in the 1930s (and during Vichy), the gentlemen of the American Old South, the strong control of conservative Christian Democrats in Bavaria and the Dutch countryside, the 1870 Papal bull and the present day struggle in Italy over euthanasia, the Polish clergy. And that is only in the west.

Interestingly the rural conservative elite has been very good adapting modern tools to their own ends. See how the Meji Revolution of Japan created an advanced militarist state, where the old daimyo clans still control industry and much of the political landscape to this day. Or the success of US 'moral majority' politics in using talk radio, (reli-)TV and the blogosphere. Not to mention the use of internet, mobile phones, international aviation and finance by Islamic anti-modernists.

On the other hand, the use of these tools still 'perverts' them. So modernity (conservative or liberal) still wins. So far.

Jur wrote:

On the other hand, the use of these tools still 'perverts' them. So modernity (conservative or liberal) still wins. So far.

The Modern Regime will destroy itself and likely take much of the world with it. You know who will be laughing then?

Festus Haggin: