Cultural Entropy

It seems that Western culture has peaked, and sadly, it did not occur in our lifetime. Am I the only one who despises the pathetic excuse we have for culture today? There is a tragic tendency in society which has been gaining momentum for several decades, which we might loosely call the doctrine of “access for all”. If culture were a building then it is quite reasonable to build a lift or wheelchair ramp as well as stairs. But culture isn’t a building. Culture is about being raised, improved, having ones experiences heightened and ones mind stimulated. It is not about catering for the lowest common denominator; if it were, tabloids would be considered serious, respectable journalism. Rap and hip-hop are apparently superior to opera and ballet because they are accessible, where as the latter are aristocratic and flouncy. What is actually meant by ‘accessible’ in this context is puerile, simplistic and asinine. People are no long wanting to engage with culture, and we face the prospect of a generation which is oblivious to the need to. They want it flashed at them as a succession of vulgar images and excessive expletives whilst they sit back with their TV dinners on their laps. Heidegger would characterise such activity as “idle seeing”. This is the want for something novel to stop us from becoming board, something to occupy us; but it is an ephemeral way to interact with the world. It requires little to nothing on our part. The most rewarding experiences are those which demand something of the one experiencing them; passivity is not a mode of experience.

Successive governments, though the blame largely must lie with the current Labour rabble, have encouraged a policy of trying to push as many people into university as possible. Mr. Blair wants something like fifty percent of all school leaves to go on to study at University. Why is it so hard to see that this devalues the system? The Labourites have this terribly noble yet completely fictitious idea that all people are equal. Equal before the law – yes – this is true; equal in terms of intellect, skills and interests – no – and neither do they all have the capacity to be. It is as if they actually believe that all people are born entire blank, like clay which the State, headed by the arch-potter Blair can mould into whatever it likes. But this attitude completely negates the humanity in each of us. Everyone is born with inherited and naturally given talents and dispositions. These shape and control the paths we will tread. But no, Mr Blair is going to make us all equal, like nice happy drone worker ants, and if we don’t like it, or it doesn’t (as inconceivable as it is…) work, then he’ll force it on us and we’ll learn to love suffering him. In the final evaluation, what the well meaning liberals cannot understand is that human beings are not all equal, because they are not all the same.

“To be original is to be in some way be different from others. Hence, to be original is to violate equality” (1-330, ‘We’, Yevgeny Zamyatin)

I had an informative but depressing discussion with my personal tutor recently. I intend to stay on post-grad and do an MA, and perhaps even a PhD, because I am that enthralled by my course. As he pointed out though, the way Government is battery farming university graduates, attaining a 2.1 is really almost a given, and so degrees are loosing their worth, just like A Levels and GCSEs have; if you drop the standards ever more earthward then its hardly surprising that more and more people, who should be failing, wont. The result of this is that now, if you want to distinguish yourself from the crowd, having an MA is starting to become a necessity. The greater tragedy is that whilst university admissions are at a peak, language and science departments have to close. So exactly what courses are people taking? Yet another sign of this state of cultural entropy is the burgeoning number of non-academic courses being taught in universities. This should not be misunderstood – it is not that I wish to propagate snobbery between intellectually demanding and not so demanding courses, it is merely that some courses currently being taught are not university material. They belong in colleges and vocational training facilities; universities are meant to be temples to academia.

The rapid decay of our culture is further illustrated through the standard of our literature. It is terrifying to see how small people’s vocabularies are. If there is a single word in this article that you don’t understand, (assuming you are of university age or older), then I should be ashamed to be you. The English language is perhaps the most beautiful of all languages. It is rich in history; a fine tapestry woven of influences from a myriad of cultures. Yet people seem to now only consider language as needing to be efficient. Whilst its basic purpose is to communicate, there is more to it than that. “Language is wine upon the lips” (Woolf). The euphony of a well constructed sentence, where the grammar, meter and choice of adjectives are all in harmony is musical. Writing is an art, just as much as painting, dance or sculpture. If communication alone is all that matters, when what purpose do poetics serve? If all that mattered was communication, then the advent of the camera would have been the death knell for painting, but it was not. Would these adherents of base language also be willing to suggest we restrict the artists’ palette to black and white? Are we to do away with gastronomy and cordon bleu cooking when we have the technology to replace them with a nice little pill that contains all the vitamins and nourishment we need each day? The truth is that pandering to our capricious aesthetic needs does nothing to promote efficiency, just in the way housing developers as intent on using every last inch of ground to build on, unable to comprehend the value of open space. But the sensations and stimulations garnered from an eloquently penned stanza of verse or prose is entirely equal to those we are imbued with by a magnificent painting or breathtaking symphony. None of them have immediate value; there is no capital to be made from them. These qualities cannot be traded like so many barrels of oil, and so many people disregard them as frivolous and unnecessary; but consider:

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art . . . it has no survival value; rather is one of those things that give value to survival” (C.S. Lewis)

Unlike many critics who have commented on the state of language, I see no reason to blame it on the phenomenal popularity of SMS (in common parlance ‘txting’). SMS is far from the first short form of communication, shorthand and Morse code are just two examples of language reduced to its most basic, efficient form. It has been cited by some that language, like all things, evolves, and that those who would maintain its standards are pitting themselves against the tide of progress. What they fail to understand is that evolution is the process of improvement, and they are confusing it with atrophy. The debasement of language does nothing to improve it, merely to slowly devolve it.

The annual Turner prize is a showcase for entropy. A room with a light bulb alternating between on and off does not inspire anyone. The purpose of art in any form should be to provoke a reaction through stimulation of the senses the medium plays to. Epilepsy is not a desired reaction. Do not be misled into thinking art needs to be beautiful, that is a fallacy. Art needs to reach out and say something to the very depths of our being. It should stir us; it should induce an emotional response from within. Not all emotions are pleasurable or positive, so not all art will, or should, be beautiful; and after all, beauty is the most subjective concept. My favourite artwork is “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by Sir Frank Dicksee. Why do I adore it? Because it speaks to me of more things that I could possibly recount in this article. The look Dicksee has captured in the faces of two protagonists is so very emotive. The attention to detail is exquisite. The colours are vibrant, the scenery so verdurous one becomes lost in it. Contrast this with a light bulb on a timer switch – the only reaction this generates in me is one of laughter at the thought people are actually taken in by this meaninglessness. But “Ah” cries the overpaid art critic or the would-be philosopher “isn’t meaninglessness actually a form of meaning, one of nihility?” No, is the simple answer. Meaninglessness is the negation of meaning. It is nothingness, and nothingness is precisely that without meaning. We may speak of the meaning of life, but not of the meaning of death because death is by its nature the annihilation of everything, meaning included. Dicksee’s execution is in itself astounding. I am no art critic, and I cannot paint myself. Yet I am still able to appreciate the immense talent that is required to create masterpiece such as this. Even in other styles of painting, such as surrealism, which taking the example of Dali can often seem grotesque, the genius of the painter’s skill still shines through independent of whether you actually like the work or if it connects with you. What I lack in artistic skill I perhaps compensate for in electrical competency. I could rig circuit with a light bulb and some manner of timing device, much as Martin Creed did in his winning Turner prize disgrace. Creed comments “Meanings are made in people’s heads”. This is true, we interpret what our senses tell us, attempt to rationalise the data and find a purpose in what we experience; succinctly quipped as:

“It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors”. (‘The Picture of Dorian Grey’, Oscar Wilde)

But an artist creates a work with intention. Whether it is to communicate an idea, or capture a moment in time, there is an underlying intention. In Creed’s case, even he doesn’t know what the meaning of “The lights go on and off” is.

Elitism is a word that people love to use. If there is snobbery in society, it is not the educated looking with a sneer down on the rest of us; it is rather the uneducated scoffing at what they see as pretentious. Perhaps we should dub this reverse-Elitism? It is easy to mock what you don’t understand, and easier still that which you fear, for fear is born out of a lack of understanding. Admitting that you don’t know something is to humble oneself, and this penitence is a virtue which long ago fled our society.

If I were to tell you that the painter I referenced two paragraphs back was of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, I would expect people to brand me as being Elitist, pretentious, even precocious. What are we saying by this? That I am more erudite in certain fields than you? This is apparently a sin. To differ from the given, expected norm is somehow criminal in this day. The current issue of KRED (UKC Student ‘Newspaper’) nicely illustrates this point, which, paraphrasing a front page article says “the snow gave students one more thing to overcome in addition to their obligatory hangover, as they tried to make it to lectures”. Mr. Cheese’s article on this very site covers the same ground. You’re a student so you have to be a borderline alcoholic. You drink because you’re expected to, and because everyone else is; and here was me thinking we were humans not lemmings. If you don’t engage in this bacchanalia (and consequential saturnalia) then you’re in some way not a true student. It is this tramline, blinkered idea of what one should be like which is haemorrhaging culture. We have reached a point now where objectivism, confounded by political correctness has taken such a hold over us that no one dares to stand up and say “um, no, actually, the contents of my colostomy bag have more meaning that that £40,000 ‘artwork’”. The fire at the MOMART facilities which immolated a good deal of the Saatchi gallery was a blessing for genuine culture. The loss of every work by modern, pseudo-artists such as Hirst and Emin would still not come within a light-year of the significance of losing just one work by Constable or Monet. Sadly though, arson will not redeem us. To tackle the disease in our culture we need to stem the source by enlightening people as to the value inherent in genuine artistic expression, not by merely administering treatments for the sickness’ outward manifestations. How exactly we are to do this is still an enigma, and until it is resolved, those of us who can actually see what is becoming of culture must stand by powerlessly whilst it slowly exsanguinates to death at our feet.

By E Hallam