Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture? • Hacker News Board

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#31

Post by js8 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:25 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #17

There’s always been a lot of cultural stuff, but the key difference is the reduction of shared culture. 30-50 years ago if you wanted to read enough to contextualise The Waste Land [1] it would require a massive amount of ‘high culture’ from earlier centuries (and not just in English). Nowadays it would still be a huge amount of work though perhaps would not require trips to obscure German libraries. But 30-50 years…

You're making an interesting analysis, but it seems to me this "reduction" you talk about is just an illusion that comes from a vastly increased choice (it's much easier to find niche stuff thanks to Internet). And perhaps because we actually long for shared culture, and now see this fragmentation much more clearly, there is a feeling of being overwhelmed by it.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#32

Post by true_religion » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:26 AM UTC

YeBanKo wrote: post #22

DeathArrow wrote: post #6

For me culture means Michelangelo, Umberto Eco and Shakespeare, not House of Cards, Girls, Squid Game.

How is Shakespeare different or better than let’s say Girls or Squid Game? I think it is exactly what it was, Girls and Squid Game of its time. Michelangelo is definitely out of this world. My favorite of his works is Pietà. Every time I looked at it for half an hour and just could not believe the realism. However, while Renaissance was great foe find arts, there is a lot of mediocrity. We are looking at the best, th…

Well on the one side there are artists (e.g. Shakespeare) and on the other side is art (e.g. Squid Game).

I understand their reasoning in that classical auteur style works can be more culturally powerful, especially if they are old enough to serve as an example for their time periods. However, it’d be better to compare Michelangelo to any of the millions of sculptors who lived in the 500 years after him. Shakespeare can be compared to Broadway playwrights or movie screenwriters.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#33

Post by high_5 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:26 AM UTC

dan-robertson wrote: post #17

There’s always been a lot of cultural stuff, but the key difference is the reduction of shared culture. 30-50 years ago if you wanted to read enough to contextualise The Waste Land [1] it would require a massive amount of ‘high culture’ from earlier centuries (and not just in English). Nowadays it would still be a huge amount of work though perhaps would not require trips to obscure German libraries. But 30-50 years…

Agreed. The subcultures started this trend in the sixties and now they are accelerating this trend since any subculture can mimic the sense of a shared culture with the closed circles of internet media/social networks. We're building filter bubbles ourselves, having less and less time for understanding, leading to suspicion and in the end conflict with subcultures perceived as threat to our way of living.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#34

Post by tgv » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:29 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #6

For me culture means Michelangelo, Umberto Eco and Shakespeare, not House of Cards, Girls, Squid Game.

The problem with calling entertainment low culture is that it cheapens the original concept while still trying to get the same appreciation and respect for it. Perhaps we should forsake the word "culture" and call it "art" again. And no, "House of Cards" is not art.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#35

Post by wott » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:34 AM UTC

trabant00 wrote: post #5

How one can misspell "entertainment" as "culture"? And the answer is clearly yes, the west consumes too much of it. The stress leads to distraction gluttony which leads to detachment from the real life which leads to stress as one can hardly navigate efficiently the social hive when his mental picture of it is taken from movies, shows, social media, etc.

Before I saw your post, I was indeed about to ask "When did the word 'culture' replace 'entertainment'?"

In my country, where the same phenomenon happened ('divertissement' is now labelled 'culture'), I would say it was less than 10 years ago, perhaps closer to 5 years ago for a systematisation of the use.

During Covid-related lockdowns and other limitations, it reached new highs: how dared we limit access to the vital need which 'culture' is, how dared we forbid 'culture' people ('culture' producers (!)) to work for some time, and so on.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#36

Post by midasuni » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:35 AM UTC

js8 wrote: post #16

trabant00 wrote: post #5

How one can misspell "entertainment" as "culture"? And the answer is clearly yes, the west consumes too much of it. The stress leads to distraction gluttony which leads to detachment from the real life which leads to stress as one can hardly navigate efficiently the social hive when his mental picture of it is taken from movies, shows, social media, etc.

How can one not include entertainment into culture? The word "culture" always had two meanings, a. what people in some collective do and b. "high culture", the stuff that is somehow supposed to reflect on human condition.

Doesn’t “celebrities eating bugs” reflect on the human condition?

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#37

Post by gonzo41 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

trabant00 wrote: post #30

bryans wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion that this is a "western" problem is both baseless and bizarre. https://www.statista.com/statistics/454772/number-social-med...

You can dissect the western claim and find problems with it, you always can with any generalization. Or you can find it accurate enough as westerners have the time and money to spend on entertainment compared to the rest of the world. Suggestion for nitpicking: tell me about Japan.

Or any part of wealthy Asia, The Indian Middle class and Europe. The grass is always greener!

I would also think, that trying to keep up is the overloading thing. It's like walking into t a library and thinking you have to read all the books.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#38

Post by high_5 » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:37 AM UTC

Yes, there is too much meaningless culture which is mere entertainment disguised as culture. But this is just a reality of living:

All things are wearisome, more than one can say.

The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”?

It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

- Ecclesiastes 1,8-11

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#39

Post by thom » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:38 AM UTC

I have some sympathy for a media studies professor who appears to have no option, but I’m baffled why people are watching shows they don’t actually like. You don’t have to keep up with stuff just for the sake of keeping up. I log in to Netflix for weeks on end and see nothing new that appeals to me. Music is more reliable, and I’m incredibly grateful to music recommendation algorithms for finding me at least one new artist a week. I don’t sweat listening to their entire back catalogue and integrating it into some gestalt artistic identity to break out at parties though, I just like knowing it’s all there.

Re: Overloaded: Is there simply too much culture?

#40

Post by javajosh » Tue, Nov 23, 2021, 8:41 AM UTC

There's too much of everything. Over the last 20 years everyone rushed to get everything onto the internet, so it's noisy, messy and can be overwhelming if you aren't careful. Personally, I like to subscribe to Netflix for 30 days a year, catch up on stuff, and then cancel my subscription. Same for Amazon Prime, HBO Max and Disney+. I feel lucky that I never got used to Spotify, because it means I save $11/mo that I can use to buy CDs from artists I know I like (and YouTube/KEXP/KCRW is far better at surfacing excellent music anyway). So I end up with CDs in the car, and listening to Youtube at home. It works. As for TV shows, most of them suck anyway.

I blacklist websites that I feel are bad for me using /etc/hosts, but I still consume too much news. I was thinking about this today and how to alleviate it without hiding my head in the sand. Honestly a weekly news magazine like The Economist would probably be enough.

Ideally I'd have a tool that lets me react once to a given news item and then track it over time, filtering out repetitive or meta news (especially news about other people's reactions to the news), show me only substantive changes over time, and ideally with a weight that (geometrically) increases with proximity. What is humbling is to realize how easily led we are, how things that seem so important, so vital, end up just...forgotten when the news dies down. It's actually quite scary when you think about it, almost as if your reactions to things aren't quite your own! This tool would help recover that control.