The Dumbing Down of American Culture

As a parent and as a citizen, I have long been concerned over what I perceive to be a decay in American culture. And the crux of the problem is life as experienced by our children. A life that is increasingly filled with advertisements, video games, computers, lousy movies and sedentary activity, and a seemingly incessant need for stimulation. Now I know that I am neither a sociologist nor a cultural anthropologist, so my views might not possess the legitimacy of my discussions concerning Wall Street or technology. That said, I did spend my childhood in a different era and am experiencing first-hand the environment in which my children are growing up today, so I am not completely without valid reference points or data. But mine is not a call for the abolition of the things that my children are experiencing today, but a better balance among them and activities that promote creativity, social interaction and physical and spiritual health such as reading, imaginative play, listening and playing music, creative writing and outdoor group activities. And I am deeply concerned that American culture has lost its way, and in the process has created a bifurcated society that further divides us along class lines. This is not my vision of America.

The catalyst for this post came from an abridged version of a commencement speech carried in the July 19th Wall Street Journal, delivered a week ago at Stanford University by none other than the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia. While I generally consider myself to be a pretty good writer and reasonably capable of getting my point across, Mr. Gioia's speech is so beautifully written and well-considered that I feel anything I could say would pale in comparison to its brilliance. A few of the more memorable points mentioned include:

The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. There are so many other ways to lead a successful and meaningful life that are not denominated by money or fame. Adult life begins in a child's imagination, and we've relinquished that imagination to the marketplace.

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But we must remember that the marketplace does only one thing -- it puts a price on everything. The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us.

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In a time of social progress and economic prosperity, why have we experienced this colossal cultural decline? There are several reasons, but I must risk offending many friends and colleagues by saying that surely artists and intellectuals are partly to blame. Most American artists, intellectuals and academics have lost their ability to converse with the rest of society. We have become wonderfully expert in talking to one another, but we have become almost invisible and inaudible in the general culture.

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We need to create a new national consensus. The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.

This is not happening now in American schools. What are we to make of a public education system whose highest goal seems to be producing minimally competent entry-level workers? The situation is a cultural and educational disaster, but it also has huge and alarming economic consequences. If the U.S. is to compete effectively with the rest of the world in the new global marketplace, it is not going to succeed through cheap labor or cheap raw materials, nor even the free flow of capital or a streamlined industrial base. To compete successfully, this country needs creativity, ingenuity and innovation.

It is hard to see those qualities thriving in a nation whose educational system ranks at the bottom of the developed world and has mostly eliminated the arts from the curriculum. Marcus Aurelius believed that the course of wisdom consisted of learning to trade easy pleasures for more complex and challenging ones. I worry about a culture that trades off the challenging pleasures of art for the easy comforts of entertainment. And that is exactly what is happening -- not just in the media, but in our schools and civic life.

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If you don't believe me, you should read the studies that are now coming out about American civic participation. Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.

The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out -- to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group.

What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility.

Art is an irreplaceable way of understanding and expressing the world -- equal to but distinct from scientific and conceptual methods. Art addresses us in the fullness of our being -- simultaneously speaking to our intellect, emotions, intuition, imagination, memory and physical senses. There are some truths about life that can be expressed only as stories or songs or images.

Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens, enlarges, refines and restores our humanity.

I find this incredibly alarming, mainly because I have a hard time envisioning the way back. Sure, my kids have video games (DS Lites, to be exact), occasionally watch Boomerang and see the once-in-a-while crappy movie (which still annoys me). But my wife and I find ourselves aggressively managing their consumption of video games, computer games and video content in an effort to maintain balance in their lives. I can't tell you the feeling of watching my children experience art and literature first-hand; it is almost magical.

When we were in Paris last month we took our boys to the Musee Rodin, which has an amazing sculpture garden just perfect for viewing with children. My little one was extremely excited by the sculpture, making observations about how certain statues appeared to be related to one another (which, in fact, they were) and providing his theories concerning the artists' motivation. Though he is only six there was a purity of thought and a clarity of expression that brings tears to my eyes, completely unfettered by preconception or bias. And when I was at the luggage return at JFK one day later, a fellow traveler said to me "You were at the Rodin yesterday, weren't you? I recognize your boys; they had such interesting and insightful things to say about the sculpture." I felt like hugging him. I couldn't have been any more proud.

The problem is, we are not representative of the general populous. We live in New York City, one of the world's great cultural hubs. We are blessed by having parents with artistic and musical skills and interests which were instilled in us as children. And we have the resources to travel and expose our children to different peoples and cultures. And it is even hard for us to fight society's pressure for our children to conform, which means playing lots of video games, spending lots of time on the computer, viewing a bevy of low brain-food movies and other intellectually bankrupt activities. This is not a hopeful sign. I only hope that our subsequent Federal administration can take Mr. Gioia's assessment into account, because he is right. And this isn't simply a call for re-emphasizing the arts for art's sake, but a call to protect the spirit of creativity and intellectual challenge that is ingrained into what it means to be an American. At least the America that I know.

 

Comments

[artist, anonymous]

Yes, I agree, and you wrote this article beautifully.
I am a musician and I am not mainstream. I have no interest in copying anyone from the mainstream media and my music is very difficult and took years to develop. I support people who are not mainstream and not being supported by the masses. Almost everyone I speak to can barely converse on a deep and intelligent level, and they constantly talking about sluts, whores, drug addicts and degenerates as though they are their heros, and wondering why I don't aspire to be like them. I am suprised how many people just follow along!

[Rob]

Roger,
Great post. It reminds me of a study done on rats years ago where they had electrodes implanted into the pleasure centers of their brains. The rats could activate the electrodes by hitting a lever. That is all they did. They hit the lever, ignoring food, sleep, and everything else.

Businesses and in particular media businesses have figured out how to tap into that pleasure center, and have hooked us so that we can't get enough. If you read quotes from the dawn of the web, everyone talked about it's usefulness for education and technological advancement. Instead, the main uses have been porn, music, celebrities, and to gratify our own narcissism.

In some ways, it sucks to be smart in today's world, because the things you are interested in get drowned out by the crap that caters to the masses.

[TT]

Posts such as this one are why I find myself to be a devoted reader of your blog. Thank you for drawing attention to that speech.

[Madhusudhanan Sampath]

Hi Roger

A rather personal question :

May I know what methods you follow (other than just 'aggressively managing...consumption') to help your kids ?

As the father of a 14-mth old, I have been getting concerned about the things mentioned in your post...I might be from a completely different culture/background and hence might approach this very differently...but some general tips would be really helpful..

Thanks
Madhu

[cfageek]

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

[Tony]

I enjoy reading your blog. You have an unusual way of thinking and talking through things that make me think. I don't find many people that can actually make me think of something new that I hadn't already entertained at least once and also to be quite correct in their thinking. I just wanted to thank you for showing me that some people actually still think things through.

[Andy Swan]

Your post has a ton of truth to it, but I think it focused on a symtom (lack of art) while missing the more accurate and politically incorrect culprit:

Divorced parents and/or both parents working 60 hour weeks and literally leaving children to entertain and educate themselves. Stay active in the the DAILY life of your child and you can be 100% sure he will not grow obese, be addicted to video games (or worse), or look to thugs with bling as role models.

BE the role model. Parents are in control. Shifting the blame to some ficticious "societal force" is exactly the kind of responsibility rejection that children are learning and imitating in their own approaches to entertainment, learning and fitness.

[Interested Observer]

Roger,

Your posts seem to have a more personal bent lately.

Anyway, I would like to respond to your post today...

I graduated from St. John's College in Santa Fe New Mexico. St. John's is a "great books" school. There are no electives. All courses are required, and everyone takes, essentially, 4 years of math, 3 years of science, 1 year of music, 4 years of language (attic greek, and then french), and 4 years of philosophy/literature. All of the books are original texts, and are irreplaceable parts of the canon of western thought. We read euclid for geometry, newton for pysics, kant and liebniz for systematic philosophy, etc. The courses move chronologically, starting freshman year with the greek intellectual revolution and ending senior year with einstein, in the 40s and 50s.

Though the school, in my opinion, has innumerable virtues, the greatest one is that all the material the students read--and end up poring over in papers that do not use secondary sources, and discussing in seminar classes--has been run through the gauntlet of time. Its greatness has been challenged, and proven, again and again. That is something I think the movement in referenced in your post above lacks. Modern art, in a subtle way, lends to the disposability of our culture by lauding the fashion of the day and congratulating the artist simply for expressing himself, rather than demanding that he engage himself and his audience on a deeper level. This cycle feeds on itself and the quality of the art deteriorates until people lose interest, and the art becomes more interested in itself than its subject. I believe this is what Mr. Giora is talking about when he speaks of a culture of artists and intellectuals who have "lost their ability to converse with the rest of society."

In the end, what I'm arguing is that a movement toward art and culture, while certainly a good thing for all involved, cannot be blind and headlong, or it will fail because its subject (modern art) is ephemeral, and people will lose interest in the art because of it. The sculpture your children marveled at was a timeless piece of work, not some collage in a SoHo gallery. For every Bob Dylan there are 10,000 idiots with guitars and ineloquent feelings, which is unfortunate, because Dylan is a great example of how an artist who produces profound, challenging work can be heard and loved on a massive scale.

I wish I could flesh this out more. Hopefully someone will expand on and better explain the points about which I'm right, and discard or discredit the things about which I'm wrong. I don't want to be a curmudgeon. I just think this is an important issue and we must tread carefully, lest we end up in the same place we were before.

[ADAM P]

Roger

very meaningful and insightful introspective on the current climate of social interest and focus.

I was just thinking about this today after watching "Dirty Dancing" the movie and thought that life used to be so much morew wholesome and less manic in terms of competing for our time/eyeballs/attention

Obviously evolution and technology bring with it more access to information and products that can distibute information at a quicker and more robust pace, but it would be nice to think that there's still hope for a backlash against the forced garbage that the media/tabloids/hollywood serve to us (CASE IN POINT: PARIS HILTON AND/OR LINDSAY LOHAN...OH G-D!, SAVE US). Perhaps we can bring back a just a little of those tradiitonal values from a more simple and better era (choose any decade before the turn of the millenium) ....SUMMER CAMP ANYONE?

[michael]

Well said, but I think you need to differentiate between passive entertainment (movies, TV) and active entertainment (video games, internet). The internet has become the new social meeting spot for today's youth, and video games that challenge the mind abound. The trick is teaching moderation, or balance.

Not all change is bad.