Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (120367)	6/16/2005 7:16:27 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793896

But on the other hand, serious culture matters less now than it did then, and artists and intellectuals have less authority. Has he been to a Border's book store or Barnes and Noble lately? I mention these chains because they are chains, you can find them all over America, and they're chock full of every kind of book and magazine you can imagine, including serious magazines devoted to art and philosophy. This was not true in 1961, when Time and Life were dominant sources of news and culture. I know what he's talking about, but he hasn't put his finger on it yet. After WWII, people who went to college on the GI Bill were trying to learn how to live in a different social class than the one they were born into, and they imagined that upper-middle class people (nobody admits to being upper class) actually went to operas and read philosophy, so they tried to live that way. More accurately, they tried to pretend that they lived that way. In fact, it wasn't genuine culture, it was pretentious. Middlebrow was ersatz. Learning enough about an opera from Time magazine to talk about it at a cocktail party is ersatz. There are still people who actually like opera, and there are still people who actually read philosophy. But social climbers aren't expected to pretend that they do anymore. I don't think that's a bad thing. Anyway, you can still read about opera and philosophy in the New Yorker.