Twilight of the Cultural Omnivores

Earlier this year, I read an article on NPR’s website called “In Praise of Cultural Omnivores” that referred to a study by the National Endowment for the Arts showing that cultural omnivores—people who enjoy both high and low culture—are on the decline. The article struck a chord with me because I realized that I am a cultural omnivore—I just never knew what to call myself before.

The study, “Age and Arts Participation: A Case Against Demographic Destiny,” examines whether age and generation have a strong correlation to arts participation. The results are a little complicated, but one thing is clear. Cultural omnivores are disappearing, as are highbrows, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree:

“Omnivore representation declined from 15 percent in 1982 to 10 percent in 2008. Highbrows represented just over 7 percent of all respondents in 1985 and 1992 and then declined to 5.3 percent in 2008.”

Much of the literature on these trends tends to focus its worry on the future of traditional highbrow art forms like classical music and ballet, but what worries me in addition to that is the inability or unwillingness of people to cross cultural lines either by ascending or descending through cultural strata.

The NPR article mentions “social status,” but doesn’t explore in much depth the possibility of a connection between wealth and cultural activity. The study also merely brushes against this disturbing possibility, by drawing a connection between higher education and greater cultural participation. In an America with an ever smaller wealthy set, a disappearing middle-class and growing poverty, many people simply cannot afford a night at the opera and they have less access to spheres of influence that would make them want to go to the opera.

Economic conditions—material conditions, to be Marxist about it—may to a certain extent impose constraints determining what people enjoy, but I feel as if at the same time more and more people choose to limit themselves to the perceived dictates of class. Many feel that to enjoy high culture you must be an expert or a snob. If you want to enjoy wine tasting, you must know all the etiquette and be able to wax lofty upon the bouquet or you might as well not even bother. If you want to enjoy classical music, you must be able to facilely discourse upon the sublimity of Brahms’s A German Requiem. It’s never okay to dabble and learn, you must be that guy who knows it all, so it’s better to stick with low forms of culture, which are easier to come to grips with.

I do not, however, really buy that the distinction between high and low art can be determined as a difference between genres or media. The distinction should be one of quality. I find a lot of literary fiction, for example, to be pretentious and uninsightful, while no small amount of genre fiction shows much greater craft and perspicacity into human nature. Likewise, much comic book art today—even the superhero stuff, not just underground or indie comics—is innovative and engaging, whereas the spaces set aside for current visual artists at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is generally ho-hum.

Omnivores have grasped this. There is significant value in all forms of art and sometimes the highest experience is to be had with the lowest art form, making it not so low after all.

I am glad to be an omnivore, and while I would hesitate to say that you should be one, too—for making omnivorous cultural behavior a moral imperative would be the kind of snobbishness detrimental to the omnivore’s cause—I would encourage anyone to be one. It is always good to broaden one’s horizons.

President Obama Way Behind at the U.N.

President Obama’s approach to foreign policy is often described as “leading from behind.” This style of leadership is unsatisfactory for some who see it as suspiciously like doing very little, but I have generally cut the president some slack when critics express frustration with his reluctance for bold action. This week at the U.N., however, saw him trying to lead from so far behind that he was just plain behind.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s call for U.N. recognition of Palestine is commendable as a bold and peaceful effort toward concrete progress in a old conflict. Israel occupied Palestine in the Six Day War of 1967 (which wasn’t a war with Palestine) and then stayed. To this day, Israel has continued to establish new settlements in Palestinian lands and since 2007 has maintained a blockade of Gaza that has caused widespread poverty, joblessness and hunger. Palestine should have full state status, and apparently most of the world is willing to grant it now—everyone but Israel and the U.S.

When President Obama addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, he used his usual conciliatory rhetoric, accompanied by his this-is-common-sense-folks tone of voice, to reaffirm his support for eventual full statehood for Palestine, while also urging Palestine to delay its call for full membership:

“I am convinced that there is no short-cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N.—if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side.” 

His words must have sounded hollow to everyone in that hall. Abbas is offering him a chance to make real progress—but by no means a final step—toward peace in the Middle East, real progress his previous efforts have failed to produce, and he’s passing it up.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy, meanwhile, has shown admirable leadership. In expectation of this conflict, he opened the General Assembly with an actual constructive suggestion. His comments, while they came before President Obama’s, seem designed as a response to them: 

“True, this peace will be built by the Israelis and the Palestinians. No one else can do it. And no one can claim to impose it on them. But we must help them.” 

Sarkozy proposes upgrading Palestine’s status from observer entity to observer state, with a one-year deadline for Israel and Palestine to reach an agreement. He probably wants to avoid escalating violence and instability in the region that might be instigated by a U.S. veto of Palestinian statehood in the Security Council, but I suspect he also views Obama as a friend, an embarrassing one who is behaving poorly and requires a little help not looking any more foolish than he already does.

Peace in the Middle East will come when the U.S. decides to stop sponsoring Israel’s occupation of Palestine and sends a clear signal that it will brook no more nonsense on this issue. The Obama administration should seize upon the opportunity presented by Abbas’s proposal to stop lagging behind and get caught up with the rest of the world.

Reflections on the Necessary Evil of Government Today in the United States of America from the Viewpoint of a Hypothetical Situation in a Pamphlet by Thomas Paine

Earlier this year, I read Common Sense by Thomas Paine. In this short work of revolutionary reason is a passage in which its author presents a hypothetical scenario imagining the pristine development of government, with the suggestion that any rational government would preserve similar principles. I was shocked to find that the American system of government today falls far short of these principles.

 
Paine imagines a small group of people who find themselves isolated “in some sequestered part of the earth” in a “state of natural liberty.” It isn’t long before they realize that they need to help each other out if they are to survive. Thus, they become a society. At first, this society is harmonious, but inevitably disputes arise and government becomes necessary for laying down the law. While the colony is small, everyone can participate as a rule-maker, but eventually their society grows and there are too many people, so they have to elect representatives. The idea is that these representatives come from the people, legislate in the interests of the people, and will before long leave government and return to the people, allowing new representatives of the people to step in—so that “the ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS.”
 
Paine says that this is the origin of government and that “the simple voice of nature and of reason will say it is right.” I do think it makes sense, but the form of American government today does not closely resemble the fraternity described by Paine in certain key aspects.
 
Paine’s hypothetical situation allows for anyone and as many people as possible to get into government, but today you must be rich. In recent years nearly half the members of Congress have been millionaires. What’s worse, only those with the weight of vast amounts of money behind them can get the ear of the government. We all know about the lobbyists that course through Washington’s halls of power and how presidents appoint fat cats to key positions, but the American political process is disgusting with money. An example: As part of his 2012 campaign, President Obama plans to have intimate dinners with ordinary citizens . . . who pay $38,000 for the honor. 
 
Another characteristic of the government described by Paine is the regular turnover of the elected, yet in our government, the elected often stay in for decades. A couple obvious examples are Strom Thurmond, who was Senator for South Carolina for 49 years, and Ted Kennedy, who served nearly 47 years as a Senator from Massachusetts. Our politicians are professional politicians who, once they get in, do everything in their power to stay in until retiring time. Even if they did at some point spring from the people, they have little intention of ever returning to them. We should not be surprised then if Washington’s interests are not those of the rest of the country.
 
In Paine’s proto-government, everyone participates, either as a voting member of the government while the colony is still small, or as a voter once the community must rely on elected representatives. Yet, in America today, large portions of the population face obstacles to voting. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is that the working class . . . has to work. The working class often cannot take time off, even for sickness, without some difficulty. Absentee balloting is available, but registering beforehand is just another obstacle in a process that should have very few.
 
All of these problems have what should be easy solutions: establishing campaign spending limits, setting term limits, and making election day a national holiday. Many modern democracies have exactly these practices in place. The primary obstacles to instituting such policies here are political—our politicians don’t want to do anything that would make them less well off, hand voters to the opposition, or put them out of a job.
 
We don’t have to do something just because Thomas Paine said it was a good idea, but we should if what he says makes sense. And tell me, doesn’t it?

The Common Dynamic Underlying 9/11s

Today marks ten years since the attacks of September 11, 2001, so the airwaves are full of memorials and analyses, but something I find missing from all the talk is recognition that 9/11 does not belong only to America.

One used to hear foreign casualties mentioned, but I have not this week. A total of 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks that day. Of the 2,977 casualties (excluding the hijackers), 372 were from other countries. Twenty-eight were Muslims from European, African, Asian and Middle Eastern nations. I lived in Sapporo, Japan at the time of the attacks. Twenty-four of the casualties were Japanese. And we must not forget that today’s most violent party of God has unleashed multiple attacks on other countries since. The Madrid train bombings, London transport bombings and various attacks in Pakistan come to mind.

Three Chileans died in the attacks ten years ago. September 11 was, however, already an infamous date in  Chile, for it was on September 11, 1973 that a C.I.A.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in favor of a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. The regime began in the blood of hundreds and went on to kill thousands and torture tens of thousands. I remember reading in The Japan Times about Pinochet’s arrest in Britain under universal jurisdiction and the ensuing controversy when he was released on medical grounds. One article showed a large caricature of the general, his oversized head framed by the cap and collar of his military uniform and surrounded by skulls. He returned to Chile in March 2000, just months before al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen.

I mention this first 9/11 because looking at the two together provides a broader perspective. The essence of a 9/11—which, of course, doesn’t have to fall on that date—is a conflict between liberal democracy and its enemies, be they megalomaniacal leaders like Richard Nixon in Washington D.C. or Islamofascists in the deserts of Afghanistan. There is an us-versus-them dynamic in the second 9/11 and the struggle against terror since, but the us with which we should be identifying is not just America, but at another level is any who side with free and open societies.

According to this dynamic, while new towers on the WTC site will be a nice symbol, the best way for us to strike at them is to embody our highest values—refusing to turn intolerant of Muslims here at home or supporting Muslims in their battle against dictatorship in Libya, for example—by siding with the parties of liberty, whatever their nationality.

Psst!—We Are All Marxists Now

“The revenge of Marx begins now.”

     --Masahiro Mita (translation from Japanese mine)

Those on the Right today are quick to call those said to be on the Left Marxists, and those on the Left are quick to deny it. In American politics, “Marxist” is an insult and Marxism is the bogeyman. I always think this is funny, because as far as I can tell, everyone believes that most of this bogeyman’s most fundamental concepts hold true for America today. We are all in some ways Marxists, we just use different terminology.

The first thing anyone ever learns about Marx’s thought is his belief that societies split into two opposing groups, with one always having the advantage. In the Middle Ages, those two groups were the lords and serfs. Marx called the two groups in the capitalist societies of his day the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the class that possesses the means of production and the proletariat consists of those who do the work. Today, we talk about the haves and the have nots, and just as in the dichotomies of times past, one group has all the power and wealth, and one group has precious little.

Another fundamental concept of Marxism is the accumulation of wealth. Marx noticed that the bourgeoisie employs its money to make ever greater amounts of money for itself, while conditions for the proletariat tend to worsen. This is no different than what we today describe as the growing gap between the rich and the poor. Report after report for years has described a middle class falling in ever greater numbers into the ranks of the poor, while the rich become the super rich. A quote from a recent article by Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair:

“The upper 1 percent of Americans are now taking in nearly a quarter of the nation’s income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.”

The wealth is accumulating, comrades.

And a great part of Marx’s greatest work, Das Kapital, is dedicated to describing exploitation of labor, terminology which has survived unchanged to our own day—long hours, little pay, no benefits, wretched work environments, and so on. You know the litany of workplace horrors visited on employees by their employers, because they are all too common in America today. Some of the worst conditions may have improved here thanks to regulations (although companies often avoid these regulations by setting up sweat shops overseas), but workers continue to undergo continuous degradations at the hands of their employers.

In Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism and Syndicalism, English philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) discussed the ways that Marx’s philosophy had fallen short, among them the way capitalist societies were demonstrating a graduated class structure rather than two starkly different classes and the absence of working class revolutions in most capitalist nations, and these criticisms are valid, but it seems to me that Marx got an awful lot right. British literary theorist Terry Eagleton appears to agree, since his latest book is called Why Marx Was Right. 

But I am not just saying that much of Marx’s analysis of capitalism holds true today, but that everyone—from politicians to news analysts to businessmen to the “average American”—seems to have drawn many of the same conclusions, they just don’t call it Marxism, don’t want to call their beliefs by what has become a dirty name, or don’t know that that is what their beliefs are called.

The form of today’s economic and social dialectic may be different than it was in the 19th Century, but the content is essentially the same. And while revolutions may have failed to appear or to take hold, it is well past time that we lend an ear (a critical ear, of course) to this thinker from the past, whose voice has in many ways proven prescient, and look for a means to address the inequalities of our day.