- A disgruntled French intellectual on “deculturation” sounds a lot like MAGA;
- Shorter items about how a mother died due to Georgia’s abortion ban; how conservatives see everything they don’t like is a judgement from their God; how Trump supporters are subject to motivated reasoning and confirmation bias; Paul Krugman on how Trumponomics is even worse than “trickle-down” economics; about Trump’s superlatives and hyperbole; how Trump believes his own hype; and how Trump brags about reactions from an audience that wasn’t there.
NY Times, Joshua Rothman, 17 Sep 2024: Is Culture Dying?, subtitled “The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that “deculturation” is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences.”
Heh. Haven’t read this yet, but it’s easy to imagine what he might claim. The solution would be about scope, and understanding inevitable change.
The writer tells how he grew up without understanding that his particular cultural milieu was not shared by everyone. Or, once he grew up, that it meant something different to other people.
Oddly, the culture around me seemed to get more communicative as I aged. One day in 2019, I walked into a trendy Malaysian restaurant—Kopitiam, in lower Manhattan—and found the food of my childhood presented as cool, even chic. Enjoying it apparently meant something beyond enjoyment; beautifully photographed on Instagram, it signalled both the rising fortunes of Southeast Asia and the possibilities of one’s own personality. …
Getting to the point:
We all get a little cranky in middle age; maybe growing disillusioned with culture is just a natural part of being a “mid guy,” as my six-year-old puts it. But in “The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms,” Olivier Roy, a French political scientist, argues that culture, in general, really is getting worse; in fact, the whole world is undergoing a process of “deculturation.” Roy believes that a range of abstract and apparently unstoppable forces—globalization, neoliberalism, postmodernism, individualism, secularism, the Internet, and so on—are undermining culture by rendering it “transparent,” turning our cultural practices into “a collection of tokens” to be traded and displayed. Culture used to be something we did for its own sake; now we do it to position ourselves vis-à-vis other people. For Roy, this means that it’s dying.
So how is this different from MAGA? The feeling by conservatives that their way of life is being overwhelmed by outside influences? That their very identity is at risk? I’m as sympathetic to lost traditions as anyone. But isn’t this simply about *changing* culture? Culture hasn’t been frozen for hundreds of years.
The essay goes on: how to Olivier Roy the ‘culture wars’ are just evidence of the ruins of culture. “Roy finds deculturation everywhere.” Meaning, old assumptions are being challenged? One more sample:
Deculturation is what happens when Culture, which is bigger than you, is replaced with a system of revisable cultural codes. Roy writes that it’s the product of “desocialisation, individualisation, and deterritorialisation.” On a practical level, he means that more of us are bowling alone and working from home, perhaps for vast multinational corporations that exist in no particular place. Yet Roy also sees more abstract changes in our “imaginaries.” In the past, he argues, people found meaning in “grand ideologies”—Christianity, Marxism, the American way—or based their existences on the unquestioned habits of a traditional society.
Yes, yes: things change: there are no longer “unquestioned habits.” Adjust. Think in bigger terms. Get over it. The world isn’t all about you.
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Shorter items.
- Salon, Amanda Marcotte: Georgia’s abortion ban killed a young mother. The Christian right now blames the victim, subtitled “Anti-choice activists argue that if Amber Nicole Thurman had submitted to forced childbirth, she’d still be alive” In other words, since she didn’t do exactly conservatives told her to do, she deserved to die.
- Right Wing Watch: Joel Webbon Says a Kamala Harris Presidency Is the Judgment of God for Our Sins. Everything religious conservatives don’t like is a judgment from their god.
- Politico: Michigan Republicans flock to Trump: Some see ‘the hand of God’ in action, subtitled “Many Trump supporters are attributing his survival to the divine.” Motivated reasoning; confirmation bias. Nothing demonstrates, to me, the lunacy and intellectual vacuity of the religious faithful more than their veneration of Donald Trump.
- NY Times, Paul Krugman: Trumponomics: From Trickle-Down to Upside-Down. From the article: “But Trumponomics, which increasingly seems to center on tariffs — which are, by the way, taxes — as the answer to all problems really is unadulterated nonsense.”
- LA Times: Opinion: Nobody’s ever talked the way Trump does. It’s like no one before. Or so it seems. About Trump’s addiction to superlatives and hyperbole.
- The Atlantic, John Hendrickson: Trump Goes Home a Martyr, subtitled “The former president believes his own hype—now more than ever.”
- Independent: Trump claims audience ‘went crazy’ for him at his debate with Harris – but there was no audience. He’s delusional. And his fans don’t care.
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Most mornings I reread, polish, and copy-edit my post from the evening before. If this comment is still here, I have not yet done so for this post.
