In other words, people want access to socially-dominant individuals. It's probably some sort of backwards instinct that doesn't serve us very well these days, given that for each of the top 100 people in anything, there are a million people who want that "access", and obviously only an infinitestimal fraction of them are going to get it—and living closer to those top 100 people (or even going to events they hold) won't really increase their chances of doing so, any more than living in the capitol city of a monarchy means you'll get to meet the monarch.
It just stands to reason that the more oeople you have in an area, the greater the diversity and intensity of interests, which we call cultyre. My hometown definitely doesnt have a Bat'leth martial arts class, but you can find it in a big city. Thats why you get such an influx of artsy types to places like NYC because no one ia into their art where they are from
It's quite possible to square traditional urbanism's affection for multiculturalism and an affection for artistic and culinary excellence, but it takes some nuanced language to express why those aren't in conflict.
Embracing cultural elitism while denying it linguistically doesn't really help make the argument.
First, let's be clear with our terms here. "Multiculturalism" is a heavily loaded term. Despite its Judeo-Christian heritage I would argue that the United States does not operate as a multicultural nation-state. Rather, it is more of a ethnically diverse unicultural society in that the population to a broad degree does share a common language, certain American beliefs and values, and have a unique optimistic view of the future that I've found rare in my travels...the so-called "melting-pot". A good example of a multicultural state is Iraq where multiculturalism is clearly established in policy at the federal level as the Kurds, Shia, and Sunni live in an uneasy alliance, separate into ethnic ghetto-states/territories with relatively little inter-mixing, and have vastly different agendas for the future of their country (Kurds wanting to create their own state, etc.)
After rethinking it, I believe that population density is only correlated to the amount of culture, not the cause of it. Cities like Taos, Santa Fe, and Santa Cruz have a high degree of appreciation for the arts despite being outside dense, metro city centers. I believe that openness and tolerance to unfamiliar ideas is the driver behind culture. It is also a necessary requirement for diverse urban centers, which is why you find a large amount of culture there, including the small town cultures that emigrants bring with them.
The easiest way for me to put it is this: No matter how small where you come from is or no matter how esoteric your interests are, there is some sort of meetup for all the things in a LA or NYC.
For your kind of things. In NYC, it's harder to find great snowboarding clubs, demolition derbies, Baptist churches, bass fishing, tacos, and BBQ places. I've been to a mule rodeo before. Haven't heard of something like that in LA.
Not all of those things are my bag of chips, but they're all "culture". Some "culture" either requires less population density or hasn't found a foothold in the coastal mega-cities for whatever reason.
Harder to find than where? A number of the things you mention are limited simply by geography (snowboarding, bass fishing, etc.) I'd wager that you'll also find a decent amount of taco and bbq places compared, to say, Utica. There appears to be a number of Baptist churches in NYC according to google.
When I talk about LA, I'm speaking more generally about the county and its surrounding areas...There are mule rodeos around a half day's drive from LA. You are right that some culture typically requires lower population density, but you usually find some form of it in mega-cities due to emigration.
But the best way to live differs from culture to culture -- and I'm not convinced that the rural South has the same kind of ideal as the North, which means I came on too strong earlier. What does the Celtic or Celticized world's high culture look like...?
Point taken that you like small town culture, though.
I don't especially. I appreciate it. And I appreciate urban culture. I just find the "everyone knows cities are better" meme is really inaccurate.
It's weirdly dismissive of other cultures as well, which is weird considering how much urban centers want to value diversity. People will read 30 page New Yorker pieces about Botswana or listen to an hour or pan flute music before way before they'll take time to acknowledge that there's culture in Tennessee that's worthwhile, even if it's not their cup of tea (which should be obvious because Nashville, but not everyone's as well-heeled as they think they are).
Having lived in small towns, big cities, and desert planets.
People are "savage" because they like different things to you such as country music? If so, you're an incredibly narrow minded and shitty person. If not, please elaborate.
Different cultures have different norms of human perfection, and pursue different things; this fits Spengler's (the real one's) idea that a culture has a core proposition. Within a civilization, high culture is a culture's full expression of itself; it seeks out and engages with the contradictory or self-defeating parts of its values, and tries to advance the culture's understanding of what perfection is and how it can be attained. (What the postmodernists call deconstruction, and Gardiner called "high parody," is a fundamental part of this process.) Low culture is mindless entertainment; it doesn't try to shape its consumers in any positive way, and certainly doesn't advance the society's understanding of its ideals. Middlebrow/bourgeois culture tries to be high culture and fails -- but typically fails intentionally. (To be at the forefront of understanding is prestigious but uncomfortable, and the middle class wants prestige but not discomfort.) Mass culture is typically low, since low culture sells, but can rise to middle or high. Low culture, and occasionally middlebrow or mass culture, can produce things that high culture finds interesting and takes up -- and high culture can similarly cross-fertilize downwards. See Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe for some very interesting discussion of this, which was more common then than it is today.
"Culture" historically means "high culture": the thrust towards self-improvement, plus the continued refinement of what exactly you're trying to self-improve towards. This sounds uniquely Western (especially modern Western -- "Faustian" in Spengler's terminology), but you see the same process in other parts of the world, especially in East Asia.
The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture -- so perhaps it's unreasonable of me to condemn poor rural areas for not participating in it. Or perhaps not? It's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available.
Regardless, it's high culture -- or at least middlebrow culture, which is regrettably easy to mistake for it -- that reverend_gonzo was lamenting lack of access to.
That whole discourse assumes things about actualized humanity that cannot be taken as granted. Who's to say that earning a simple living, caring for a family well, and being virtuous isn't perfect in itself? Who's to say that seeking pleasure and avoiding pain isn't a form of perfection? Who's to say that the human perfection isn't a distraction from the commands of a perfect deity?
> The catch is that you can't engage in high culture without access to high culture
That presumes that "high culture" can't be simple, commonly available, or digitally transmitted. It also presumes a one-size-fits-everyone kind of culture and not a more atomized, long-tail description of how cultures are formed, evolved, and maintained.
In more concrete terminology, why should large orchestral pieces be high musical culture? Maybe perfection is really about inclusion, peace, and affection. In that case, a receptive crowd, a guy with a guitar, and some lively tunes is all you need. Or even just a good playlist.
And that's why I push back against all the "life is clearly better in mega-cities" attitude. It's a zero-sum game to only evaluate culture in relative terms. I don't think we're doomed to live in a world the poorest and least connected wallow in cultural poverty and the wealthiest and best connected are privileged with cultural riches. I think life is simpler and better than that.
I'd say that the high-low-middle-mass divide is universal, but the goals that a given high culture aims for are different from civilization to civilization. This includes West European (including New England) versus Celtic (more or less including the South, descended mostly from the Anglo-Scottish Borderers and the West Country).
In the particular areas you're asking about, though, I see contradictions. Being virtuous doesn't have much of a history of being compatible with seeking pleasure and avoiding pain; but being virtuous is a form of human perfection, in fact the one that Aristotle would endorse most readily, and I fail to see how following God becomes easier if you're less able to follow Him. As for earning a simple living, well, look at the website you're on and its long history of destroying the ability to earn them...
On the second point, though, I feel misrepresented. I explicitly said that "it's not just mass culture that the Internet makes available" -- although if you don't share the goals of a given high culture, there's no point in participating it. What does a Celtic high culture look like? Such a culture definitely existed in the Middle Ages, especially in Ireland, but it's been on ice for centuries...
In music, an orchestra can just plain produce sounds that a guy with a guitar can't. There's also more of a filtering effect, which tends to weed out junk... but bigger and/or more formal music don't always mean better music. Music theory can become a burden, and the pentatonic scale is extremely expressive for something that has half the notes of twelve-tone scales; the Irish session is a different sort of thing from a Western quartet or band, with a different set of objectives. And music is something it's good to participate in, which is something in the guy with guitar's favor.
Still, whatever a Celtic (or Quaker? or who knows what else) high culture might look like, there's not much participation in it in the US countryside, certainly not in any organized and visible form (although a lot of cultural activity of all sorts is on the Web these days). I feel like Western high culture leaves a few things out, but I'd rather be around someone else's culture than around cultural passivity -- although Western culture has a horrible case of the middlebrows here in the US. (Has it always? I wouldn't rule it out.)
But if you want to specifically say that life isn't better in the mega-cities: I like urban living, especially walking to work. Of course, that gets challenging and expensive even in the mega-cities; the US needs more walkable areas, more narrow streets, and more trains, subways, and commuter rail. Rents low enough to raise families in the cities wouldn't hurt, either...
I was listing various philosophical ideals, not optimizing humanity myself.
> I'd rather be around someone else's culture than around cultural passivity
You say that, but much (most?) cultural optimization has a religious component. The countryside in America is very culturally active, especially on Sunday mornings. And the "cultural ideal" of Protestants necessarily requires accessibility and even imperfection.
Taken to an extreme, but still an American example, there are the Amish. Their cultural ideal is, more or less, rural simplicity. To the extent that they need to iterate or collectively think about their culture, they do. They just don't need patronage to achieve their more straightforward cultural goals.
So to circle back to my original point, can we say they are uncultured? Or lacking or failing at "high culture"? I don't think that's accurate or fair. At least not objectively.
Everywhere has culture. You just didn't like the one you were in.
In tiny towns, the culture looks more like running around in the woods, country music, 4-H club, and church potlucks. That's a culture, even if you don't like it. And, besides, in the internet age there are plenty of farmers' daughters that get really into oil painting or Korean TV or opera. Producing great culture is harder without a local community, but it's not like there's no access to culture in small towns. They're binge watching Iron Fist just like all the other geeks.