The Community of Culture

La Soledad, Carlos Saenz de Tejada

When we speak of "culture", we are often referring to a sort of status quo, the condition of education, technology, science, and the arts that we experience in our daily lives. We often refer to "culture" as if it is something without agency, something "out there", without considering our own participation in its formation. It may be for this very reason that we often fail to challenge our own actions, our own way of life, our stock viewpoints -- we see culture as an accumulation of practices and values that may be verbally dispensed and objectively discussed, but which have little interrelation with the manner in which we order our existence. 

Notwithstanding, the word "culture" carries certain connotations. We make judgements about culture because it may contain positive or negative elements. It may be a "culture of death", which is an oxymoron for, according to the frighteningly powerful Google machine, our usage of "culture" derives from

• Middle English (denoting a cultivated piece of land): the noun from French culture or directly from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’; the verb from obsolete French culturer or medieval Latin culturare, both based on Latin colere ‘tend, cultivate’ (see cultivate). In late Middle English the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and from this (early 16th cent.) arose ‘cultivation (of the mind, faculties, or manners)’; sense 1 of the noun dates from the early 19th cent.

Hence, we comment upon practices that are retrogressive for culture, that facilitate the accession of the inhumane, the violent, the brutish, the ignorant. (Recently, Brett McCracken commented upon the attitude in American culture (another oxymoron? not always) of "fame for fame's sake" and the prostitution of art for recognition of the ego (e.g. Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, etc.).)

If we make assertions of value in reference to culture, then we recognize that humanity is responsible for culture, and thence that we are individually responsible, for our part, for the state of culture. We recognize, too, that "culture" is not merely a label for what is, but a concept defined by continual movement toward excellence in all things human (e.g. education, technology, science, the arts).

Matthew Arnold, the 19th century British critic, describes culture as "the pursuit of light and perfection", and explains that "light and perfection consist, not in resting and being, but in growing and becoming, in a perpetual advance in beauty and wisdom" (Culture and Anarchy).

Immediately great names come to mind: Plato, Homer, Virgil, Dante -- the list goes on. The list goes on indeed ... but why do these cultural monoliths stand so solitary against the dark background of history? Why does not a great host of luminous figures swarm around them, equal or greater to the tide of human depravity and squalor?

The modern world is not devoid of cultured minds: Karol Wojtyla, Walker Percy, Arvo Part, Krzysztof Kieslowski. Yet they stand in almost diametric opposition to the crass flashing of famous names in headlines and on the little black boxes of misinformation that constantly invade our homes. Their names are not heard so loudly nor so very often as those which strive harder and harder not to be forgotten like  the finite novelty of autumnal leaves.

Perhaps because they are taproots, hidden and essential. One must dig to find them, and one must get dirty. And one must not leave the soil disturbed.

Why is the community of culture small? The community of culture is the community of the human. The human calls these facets of himself "culture" in order to distinguish them from the spoiling diction of faddism that pervades postmodern society. The human must constantly distinguish himself from that which fades. The human does not fade.

You often hear older people, when they mention the names of actors, films, musicians that no one else knows remarking upon how this particular knowledge dates them, how it is a sign of aging, a movement toward obscurity, disconnection from youth. But the youth are equally old if they speak of what their parents do not know or do not care to know.

The old betray their youth by not caring about Kardashian or whoever's next on the altar of sensationalism. The youth betray their age by caring. To be human is to learn and cling to excellence. That is a perpetual youth, a perpetual becoming, an ever-widening beauty.

And so our culture may be called a "culture of death" in many ways, one being that it clings not to the excellent, which is universal and enduring, but to the ephemeral, which is just that.

If you find yourself lonely in such a milieu, consider this.

Are you infatuated with the esoteric (pride)? Do you wrap yourself in fantasy to deny reality (e.g. the infamous MMORPG, niched obsessions, etc.)? Do you choose to be? Or are you lonely because the way of enculturation is difficult -- the road obscure, the company often silent, the goal something as seemingly unattainable as sainthood?

It is not merely the place of cultural icons to effect culture. It is the way of culture -- the way of the human -- to come out and speak, to stand one's ground among others and assert whatever merited authority one may possess. To share and to accept, certainly, but to be firm in the right.

At the base of the mountain is the battle against physical endangerment, which allows no possibility for culture. The battle against the enemies of culture (e.g. sloth, sentimentalism, political platforming, etc.) ranges in a thicker wood at a higher tier. It is even more essential to the becoming of humanity. Undoubtedly, it is a gift to be here. But it is a curse if we fail our nature and submit to the mediocre strummings, cooings, and ooings of pop folk or the abstract unartistic assertions of obscurantist "postmodern" writers or directors. They wrap the status quo in mysterious trappings and bring despair in the unveiling. Artist's shit (Cf. Duchamp).

There is always a subculture trying to be avant-garde. It is always subculture.

So let your heart be abused. Seek the shifting sifted community of culture that wants to be as best it can. People of culture see the world in its wholeness. They decry and forgive and bring in lost sheep. They acknowledge their own silly sheepishness. But they never stop striving after every ounce of unounceable eternity. They are sometimes artists, sometimes laymen, sometimes clergy, and often on low salaries. But they always try to get the world to listen with the lovingest things. At the same time, they do not reduce truth, beauty, goodness. They do not put pearls forth to be trampled by swine.

Critics called director Eric Rohmer's La Collectioneuse boring. They could not see it.

I therefore encourage you, my friends, not to forget the unity of all things, and how what is separate must be brought together, how the world fights itself but nevertheless tends to communion. To wait is not so bad as to despair and lose oneself to postmodern animalism. Do not fall to easy emotions. Be vigilant. If it were easy it would not be itself. Increase in the virtue of finding loneliness -- beauty awaits the contemplative and forbearing mind. Find and give the lovingest things. You may die cold, quiet, and alone like God.