• Amity
    5k
    The culture "war" happening here is happening everywhere.Paine

    Well, it could be argued that so-called 'culture wars' have been happening since time immemorial.

    We solve it together or fall under the same sword.Paine

    Poetically drastic. How 'together' can the human race be?

    Societal and religious divisions are all part and parcel of political battles as to who is right or best to lead a country. Even the term 'cultural war' is disputed:

    Politicians like to provoke them, academics like to analyse them. Yet most people don’t even know what they’re all about.
    [...]
    Dominic Sandbrook: “What is certainly true,” he says, “is there are moments in history when disputes about history, identity, symbols, images and so on loom very large. Think about so much of 17th-century politics, for example, when people would die over the wording of a prayer book.” The same applies, he believes, to any number of periods, including the arrival of the permissive society in the 1960s, in which there is an attempt to establish new mores.

    For Holland, the term culture war has a stricter meaning, relating to the German word Kulturkampf, which described the clash between Bismarck’s government and the Catholic church in 1870s Prussia. It is therefore specifically a dispute between religious and secular forces. Certainly if we look at America, where the modern incarnation of the culture wars was first identified, the conflicts over abortion and gay marriage have been fought, at least by one side, from an explicitly religious perspective.
    Guardian - Social History - Culture wars
  • I like sushi
    4.8k
    Well, it could be argued that so-called 'culture wars' have been happening since time immemorial.Amity

    I think it is just called Culture ;)
  • Amity
    5k
    CultureI like sushi
    Thanks for opening another can of worms: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/culture
  • I like sushi
    4.8k
    I think Stanford falls down in areas like this. Leave it to anthropological studies to decide! Let the lawyer and legislators quibble over justice and that kind of nonsense :D

    Culture is what animals (humans) do when they are together. It is our common understanding and/or regulatory scheme (axis mundi).

    The best definition I have seen is from Geertz (even though it is actually a definition of religion) as it sums up humanity pretty darn well ;)
  • Paine
    2.4k
    Poetically drastic. How 'together' can the human race be?Amity

    Guilty, as charged and point taken. As another poet said, "the more that things change, the more they stay the same."
  • Amity
    5k
    Guilty, as charged and point takenPaine
    Ach, I knew ye were being a playful wee deil :naughty:

    "the more that things change, the more they stay the same."Paine
    Hey, steady on! We're in danger of falling into the hole of transcendental unity. :monkey:

    Alphonse Karr's quote "The more things change, the more they are the same" encapsulates a profound truth about the cyclicality of life and the underlying unity of all things.Socratic-method - Alphonse Karr - quote meanings and interpretations
  • Paine
    2.4k

    I can agree with Karr while entertaining Baudelaire:

    I have to say that, for some years now, the world has shown itself somewhat improved in this respect. The value that amateur collectors attach these days to the pleasant coloured engravings of the last century proves that a much-needed reaction in public taste has occurred; Debucourt, the brothers Saint-Aubin, and many others have been entered in the dictionary of artists worthy of study. Yet they represent the past; it is to the painting of modern manners that I wish to address myself today. The past is interesting not only for the beauty extracted from it by those artists for whom it was their present, but also, being past, for its historical value. It is the same with the present. The pleasure we derive from the representation of the present is due not merely to the beauty with which it can be invested but also to its essential quality of being present.

    I have before my eyes a series of fashion plates, commencing with the Revolution and ending, more or less, with the Consulate. Those modes of dress which appear ridiculous to unreflective people, serious people without true seriousness, have a dual charm, both artistic and historical. They are often very fine, and executed with spirit, but what to me is every bit as important, and what I am pleased to find in all or almost of them, is the morality and aesthetic of their age. The idea of beauty Humanity creates for itself, imprints itself on all its attire, rumples or stiffens its clothing, rounds out or aligns its gestures, and even, in the end, penetrates, subtly, its facial features. Humanity ends by resembling that which it aspires to be. Those engraved forms can be viewed as works of beauty or ugliness, of ugliness as caricatures, of beauty as ancient statues.
    Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne

    Not exactly nostalgia.
  • I like sushi
    4.8k
    Which passage? I read that book a couple of years ago.
  • Paine
    2.4k

    Section 1, Beauty, Fashion, and Happiness. Third paragraph.

    Here is a link:
    Baudelaire, Le Peintre de la Vie Moderne
  • I like sushi
    4.8k
    :up: I have the book, will look tomorrow. Thanks
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