Is Chris Hedges right? — Do "societies that kill their cultures kill themselves"?

08 May 2017

The question

Do "societies that kill their cultures kill themselves," as Chris Hedges has proposed?

I wonder whether this is true.

Chris Hedges is my favorite seminary-trained philosopher-journalist

After writing a stake-through-the-heart of this year's apparently uncharmingly superficial 44th Daytime Emmy Awards, he observed that:

There were once gradations of culture. There were once broadcast news programs that took journalism seriously. There were once talk shows that focused on books, political philosophy, economic theory, art and ideas. There was once a literate public. This is gone now, replaced by a vast burlesque.

Almost all the shows on television today . . . are about presenting a performance. Emotions replace opinions. Complex thought is banished. All solutions are simple.

We are never challenged. It is comforting, amusing and reassuring. But it is cultural death.

Societies that kill their cultures kill themselves.

For samples of inanity that go beyond those that Hedges refers to in his essay, watch the Emmy video that his article links to, starting at 1:13:13.

Is Mr. Hedges' conclusion accurate?

I have doubts.

In my tentative preliminary estimation, high grades of culture — as Hedges implicitly defines them — usually have only comparatively trivial effects upon societies' historically taken directions. At least with regard to alleged democracies, intelligently communicative culture is generally overwhelmed by dumber popular ones.

My historian's guess is that the popular variant, however originated and manipulated, determines social direction. This means that intelligentsia do not matter much, especially when they disagree with cultural trends.

The United States is a good example of what I mean

We Americans like to pretend that "we" have historically been about nobly great and freeing ideas. However, virtually the entirety of our history demonstrates the ignoble reverse.

The Founders' social organization played out in enslaving, killing and stealing for profit. There is little intelligent or moral (in the ways that Hedges means) in the record. Today's allegedly dumber culture acts identically.

It does not appear (from this) that the existence or absence of an intelligent culture much distinguishes the actions of "before" and "now" America.

If that's true, then . . .

If I act identically, whether culturally smart or dumb, why would survival outcomes differ?

Are other peoples' perceptions the key to social survival?

Is having an appealing intellectual camouflage the difference between worldly triumph and demise?

Hedges does not say or imply so.

The moral? — Power corrupts and cultural gradations do not matter in the process

I agree with Hedges on one point. Some societies are smarter and more ethically graceful than others. And our American agglomeration is very arguably not one of these.

However, that said, historical probability would probably dump those allegedly more intellectually appealing cultures into the same "dumb pool" as ours, had they the physical and economic power that we do. Power corrupts.

Societal termination ("cultures killing themselves") seems to depend more upon:

(a) comparative numbers of bodies, mounds of lucre and predictable overreach

than it does on

(b) the presence or absence of intelligent cultural levels.

Reality is more barbarously primitive than Hedges appears to imply. Social survival is more about numbers, technology and force, than it is about cleverly debated high level ideas.

In short, I do not think the presence of an intelligentsia's supposedly vibrant culture has much to do with a society's survival.

Admittedly, existence of an intelligentsia certainly does have something to do with what some people remember about the past. We do like to pretend that we are not barbarians. We pluck attractively high-minded ideas from the past to costume ourselves like angels. Then we parade these thoughts, usually while violating every one of their high-minded elements.

In my tentative assessment, Chris Hedges' applauded gradations of culture are costumes and not often meaningfully more. I am therefore not convinced that "societies that kill their cultures kill themselves" in the sense that Mr. Hedges appears to mean.

Whether this sociological nuance matters depends upon your assessment of (a) the likelihood that the United States can alter its decency-destroying course — which is Mr. Hedges' goal — and (b) via which means.

It is likely that a self-aroused "rabble" will have more reformative clout than a revived intelligentsia.

PeteFree.com

Is Chris Hedges right? — Do "societies that kill their cultures kill themselves"?