The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
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- Illuminarch Nicholas
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The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Here is the beginning of the article "Culture and Illuminarchy":
To view more of the article "Culture and Illuminarchy", click here.Salutations!
With the beginning of the Columns of Erudition Series of illuminarchal writing started with the article previous (Science and Illuminarchy), I’d like to keep the ball rolling with the next in line: Culture and Illuminarchy; I have decided to save the ultimately more controversial and most interesting aspect, religion, for last.
Culture is arguably the oldest of the 3 Columns of Erudition. Whether we traversed the African grasslands 10,000 years ago or had the breath of life instilled in us by a divine being, culture has been with us from the beginning. In writing this, I was perplexed: I had to define the term “culture” as is applicable in the writing piece. So, in teaching in a fairly Socratic way, I’ll ask you that:
What is culture?
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- Scott Alexander
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Your essay begins by defining culture as "everything" and as "anything that we as a species and community have created, incorporated, or even invented a word for".
Then it goes on to say things unsupported by that definition, like "think of how many artifacts we’d still have if culture was taken into consideration and the Pharos Lighthouse was still standing, instead of the fallow eyesore of a fortress that replaced it?" See the problem? If culture is just "stuff people make", then the Citadel of Qaitbey is just as cultural as the Lighthouse. You could shred every work of art and literature in the world and recycle the scraps to make paper cups, and there would be no way of saying that the paper cups were any less "cultural" than the lost artifacts.
So the essay sort of equivocates around the world culture - it starts by giving a definition, and then it abandon that definition and switches back to working off intuitive beliefs about the word. But that means it's not an argument supporting a conclusion at all, just a laundry list of "here are what the common beliefs about culture are, please believe them." That bogs it down in contradictions like first asserting everyone has culture including societies that try to repress it, and then saying that societies without culture are doomed (as if such a thing is possible!)
So what is it exactly that makes the Lighthouse more cultural than the Citadel of Qaitbey? Not aesthetic value; I'm a fan of Islamic architecture and like the Citadel better than the "my phallic symbol lighthouse is bigger than your phallic symbol lighthouse" unsubtlety of Ptolemy - and there's no objective criteria that can decide between our two views. Not mere age - the Romans razed an older, much less impressive amphitheatre to build the Colosseum, but it's hard to view that as desecration of culture even though the other one was older. And not fame - if fame were the only determinant of culture, a quick check at Google trends would suffice to prove Justin Bieber is more culturally important than Confucius. To genuinely define culture would be to identify the factors that make the Lighthouse culturally superior to the Citadel (which I agree that it is) and which apply in the general case to other questions of cultural import. That's my challenge to you; after you give your answer I might share some pre-formed thoughts of my own.
Anyway, this same trouble with equivocation may be part of what bothers me in the last part with the quote block. I am not entirely sure I am interpreting it right, but the thesis seems to be "Some people might say some culture is bad, because Roman and Nazi culture was about killing people and stuff. But that culture contains the seeds of its own destruction, so it's all okay and all culture is good after all."
I have a number of objections to that. First of all, rotten culture does not always contain the seeds of its own destruction. Lots of rotten culture continues just fine today and is even on the increase - more people are slaves in the present day than at any time in the past, including pre-Civil War.
Of those rotten cultures that were destroyed, few lost because they were too militaristic. In fact, history often records the opposite - militaristic societies like the Mongols destroying more cultural societies like the Abbasids. The Meso-Americans and their "kill everyone or the sun will go out" spiel were one of the scariest cultures around, but they ended not because their people abandoned their bloody-mindedness, but because an even bloodier and more genocidal culture came and killed them.
History has moved in a generally positive direction, but part of that is because we are judging ages by the standards of the early 21st century (so of course the early 21st century will come out looking best!) and part of it is because of relatively non-cultural factors like the progress of science and technology. I doubt the existence of a magical moral force that moves cultures in a positive direction.
Second of all, culture is not self-aware and self-evolving, any more than the Social Security Administration is self-aware and self-evolving. Yeah, the Social Security Administration can do stuff and make (occasionally) good decisions, but that's because it's a concept abstracted over the actions of thousands of its human employees. Culture is the same. When the US shifted from a mostly pro-segregation culture to a mostly anti-segregation culture, it wasn't because "culture" changed "its" "mind". It was because lots of individual human beings fought tooth and nail against segregation, and lots of other human beings had the intelligence and presence of mind to realize the anti-segregation arguments were correct. Yes, there were higher-level emergent processes at work, but they all operated off of human intelligence. To ask people not to judge a culture because culture will correct itself is to cut off the very mechanism by which culture corrects itself.
I'll just add one more paragraph on a possible first step to solving the equivocation problem. Consider two different ways of using the world "culture" - culture(1) being the values of a society, and culture(2) being the material, literary, and artistic artifacts of a society. In this case, we can rightly say that Nazi culture(1) was bad and should be destroyed, but Nazi culture(2) should be preserved for historical interest, except insofar as doing so would also protect Nazi culture(1). I think this helps sort out the whole "is it okay to be against culture?" problem.
Then it goes on to say things unsupported by that definition, like "think of how many artifacts we’d still have if culture was taken into consideration and the Pharos Lighthouse was still standing, instead of the fallow eyesore of a fortress that replaced it?" See the problem? If culture is just "stuff people make", then the Citadel of Qaitbey is just as cultural as the Lighthouse. You could shred every work of art and literature in the world and recycle the scraps to make paper cups, and there would be no way of saying that the paper cups were any less "cultural" than the lost artifacts.
So the essay sort of equivocates around the world culture - it starts by giving a definition, and then it abandon that definition and switches back to working off intuitive beliefs about the word. But that means it's not an argument supporting a conclusion at all, just a laundry list of "here are what the common beliefs about culture are, please believe them." That bogs it down in contradictions like first asserting everyone has culture including societies that try to repress it, and then saying that societies without culture are doomed (as if such a thing is possible!)
So what is it exactly that makes the Lighthouse more cultural than the Citadel of Qaitbey? Not aesthetic value; I'm a fan of Islamic architecture and like the Citadel better than the "my phallic symbol lighthouse is bigger than your phallic symbol lighthouse" unsubtlety of Ptolemy - and there's no objective criteria that can decide between our two views. Not mere age - the Romans razed an older, much less impressive amphitheatre to build the Colosseum, but it's hard to view that as desecration of culture even though the other one was older. And not fame - if fame were the only determinant of culture, a quick check at Google trends would suffice to prove Justin Bieber is more culturally important than Confucius. To genuinely define culture would be to identify the factors that make the Lighthouse culturally superior to the Citadel (which I agree that it is) and which apply in the general case to other questions of cultural import. That's my challenge to you; after you give your answer I might share some pre-formed thoughts of my own.
Anyway, this same trouble with equivocation may be part of what bothers me in the last part with the quote block. I am not entirely sure I am interpreting it right, but the thesis seems to be "Some people might say some culture is bad, because Roman and Nazi culture was about killing people and stuff. But that culture contains the seeds of its own destruction, so it's all okay and all culture is good after all."
I have a number of objections to that. First of all, rotten culture does not always contain the seeds of its own destruction. Lots of rotten culture continues just fine today and is even on the increase - more people are slaves in the present day than at any time in the past, including pre-Civil War.
Of those rotten cultures that were destroyed, few lost because they were too militaristic. In fact, history often records the opposite - militaristic societies like the Mongols destroying more cultural societies like the Abbasids. The Meso-Americans and their "kill everyone or the sun will go out" spiel were one of the scariest cultures around, but they ended not because their people abandoned their bloody-mindedness, but because an even bloodier and more genocidal culture came and killed them.
History has moved in a generally positive direction, but part of that is because we are judging ages by the standards of the early 21st century (so of course the early 21st century will come out looking best!) and part of it is because of relatively non-cultural factors like the progress of science and technology. I doubt the existence of a magical moral force that moves cultures in a positive direction.
Second of all, culture is not self-aware and self-evolving, any more than the Social Security Administration is self-aware and self-evolving. Yeah, the Social Security Administration can do stuff and make (occasionally) good decisions, but that's because it's a concept abstracted over the actions of thousands of its human employees. Culture is the same. When the US shifted from a mostly pro-segregation culture to a mostly anti-segregation culture, it wasn't because "culture" changed "its" "mind". It was because lots of individual human beings fought tooth and nail against segregation, and lots of other human beings had the intelligence and presence of mind to realize the anti-segregation arguments were correct. Yes, there were higher-level emergent processes at work, but they all operated off of human intelligence. To ask people not to judge a culture because culture will correct itself is to cut off the very mechanism by which culture corrects itself.
I'll just add one more paragraph on a possible first step to solving the equivocation problem. Consider two different ways of using the world "culture" - culture(1) being the values of a society, and culture(2) being the material, literary, and artistic artifacts of a society. In this case, we can rightly say that Nazi culture(1) was bad and should be destroyed, but Nazi culture(2) should be preserved for historical interest, except insofar as doing so would also protect Nazi culture(1). I think this helps sort out the whole "is it okay to be against culture?" problem.
Last edited by Scott Alexander on Thu Jan 20, 2011 11:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Scott Alexander | Autokrator of Archipelago (What is Archipelago?)
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
This forum is solid, concrete and undeniable proof of Godwin's Law. It is astounding.
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Tarjei Einhornsson - Grand Marshal of The Nordic Union
Zand Gozâr - Grand Vizier & Satrap of Kumarastan, Kingdom of Babkha
Tarjei Einhornsson - Grand Marshal of The Nordic Union
Zand Gozâr - Grand Vizier & Satrap of Kumarastan, Kingdom of Babkha
Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Eh, it seems to me that Nazi Germany just happened to be the most handily available example to illustrate the point he was making. I mean, hell, Nicholas had already mentioned the subject, that's pretty available if you ask me. Neither mention of Nazi Germany had anything to do with a reductio ad Hitlerum of anyone's argument.
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- chrimigules
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Not Godwin's Law, because the usage of "Nazi Culture" is not for an ad hominem attack. In fact, its usage seems quite justifiable, in the way it's used in Scott's argument.
Very nicely written, Scott, but... weighty? Not really a criticism, I suppose. Felt worth reading. More than what it was in response to, I'm afraid.
Very nicely written, Scott, but... weighty? Not really a criticism, I suppose. Felt worth reading. More than what it was in response to, I'm afraid.
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Sorry, my use of Godwin's law was incorrect. Chrimigules and I discussed it and we came to the conclusion of:
einhorn: but either way, my "assertion" is mainly just the overuse of hitler and nazi germany for arguments and point making
chrimigules: in most cases, perhaps, but in this case, it seems justified
einhorn: but either way, my "assertion" is mainly just the overuse of hitler and nazi germany for arguments and point making
chrimigules: in most cases, perhaps, but in this case, it seems justified
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
I would similarly agree that, generally speaking, Hitler comparisons are rife.
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Not sure whether Scott's argument came out in favour of cultural relativism or against it.
Or perhaps I didn't read it thoroughly enough. Probably the latter.
Or perhaps I didn't read it thoroughly enough. Probably the latter.
Very probably because the world has a larger population nowadays than pre-Civil War. I'd contest the fact that a larger proportion of people across the world nowadays are slaves than back then (which is what I assume you meant), but then that begs the question what one counts as slavery (not sure to what extent Debt Slavery would have been seen as a form of slavery back then. Could be interesting to read up on.)more people are slaves in the present day than at any time in the past, including pre-Civil War.
Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Mhmm
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Never-mind relativism - I think Scott just demolished Hegel as an afterthought to correcting some sloppy thinking.Maximos wrote:Not sure whether Scott's argument came out in favour of cultural relativism or against it.
Or perhaps I didn't read it thoroughly enough. Probably the latter.
Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Sooo....the absolute dissolution of Hegelian philosophy was an ad hoc philosophical romp through the garden? Tres bon.
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Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
When I see a wall of text so concise it has guard towers, death strips and rabid guard dogs like Scott's generally seem to, I smile and nod in approval.
Solid chap.
Solid chap.
Re: The Vitality of Culture: "Culture and Illuminarchy"
Mostly I just don't like stuff like
That's without getting into the fact that you've basically assumed what I was thinking and told me I was doing it wrong, without me being able to defend myself in the slightest.
I think you have a good thing going with the whole essay writing thing, Scott comments notwithstanding. But you might want to work a bit on your tone.
Edit: oh, and I guess if I'm going to get into the subject matter, wasn't the Lighthouse of Alexandria, much like basically every other ancient cool building, destroyed by earthquakes? The wiki article on the subject implies that it was in complete ruins by the time the Citadel of Qaitbay was built. Does a pile of scattered rocks that was once in the shape of a neat lighthouse really have more cultural value than a fortress that isn't all as bad as you claim to look at?
I'm not reading this to be bossed around told when to read and when to stop and ponder great truths. I've already considered the subject - I'm reading this because I'm vaguely interested in what other people have to say on the matter. If one can't by without powerpoint slide theatrics then one doesn't have a strong enough grasp on their own point for it to stand on its own.Please don’t move on until you have struggled with this for a few minutes; if you don’t stop to consider or think, then you probably have missed the point of the entire Illuminarchal Manifesto. So, before you Merriam-Webster or Oxford Dictionary “culture”, just stop and ponder. If you’ve experienced anything close to what I did, then your mind is probably overflowing with answers and examples, and you are fallaciously attempting to find some grand unifying factor that ties them together.
That's without getting into the fact that you've basically assumed what I was thinking and told me I was doing it wrong, without me being able to defend myself in the slightest.
I think you have a good thing going with the whole essay writing thing, Scott comments notwithstanding. But you might want to work a bit on your tone.
Edit: oh, and I guess if I'm going to get into the subject matter, wasn't the Lighthouse of Alexandria, much like basically every other ancient cool building, destroyed by earthquakes? The wiki article on the subject implies that it was in complete ruins by the time the Citadel of Qaitbay was built. Does a pile of scattered rocks that was once in the shape of a neat lighthouse really have more cultural value than a fortress that isn't all as bad as you claim to look at?