Culture is not the fine arts, but the stench of a people.
[size=150]What is culture?[/size]
Philosophy and art are not the production of a people but of people i.e. of people that are not characteristic of their people, and as such, they do not represent those people.
Surely it’s odd to suppose someone great like Shakespeare represented the people of England, when in reality they were probably more akin to swine, wallowing around in complete banality, than to anything remotely impressive. I guess, if he’s to represent any culture then it would be the culture of literature and the mistake would be to think that “a people,” i.e. a nation, produce such culture as is found in the arts.
Culture is the external life that we flaunt with such enormous power and influence. Something man has tried to wrap himself in because it is controllable and manageable.
Philosophy and art is the inner poverty side brought to light. The truth, the nature and essence of life exposed for all to view.
Culture is the ethos of a people. And you’d probably be very surprised to learn exactly how Shakespeare appealed to the people of his time and how he was received by the people of his time. Language changes and what was word play then is no longer word play. What was very topical then has been forgotten. The typical audience in Shakespeare’s time was rowdy, yes, but they were informed and covered a wide spectrum of the populace–from orange girls to dignitaries. Shakespeare wrote to please his audience and he did. That his work has survived is evidence of both the universality of his themes and his craftsmanship.
Of course Shakespeare was popular. He unavoidably carried the odor of the filth from which he dragged himself from, and the swine could appreciate this scent due to it being their own. But, I seriously doubt he wrote in order to please his audience. He was a creative genius. He wrote because he had to.
Regarding the bolded type. People, i.e. the common lot, the average, do not create an ethos, nor is an ethos just some kind of fairy dust that just settles into place, ethos, or laws are created by certain people, the lawmakers, those in power. Ethos’ are generaly created in order to keep the common-lot in check. You might think it is their ethos but it is only so because it is a standard in which they have permitted themselves to be cast into. Like sheep allow themselves, not that they have an option, to be herded into a pen. The powers-that-be are of a different type than the people they lord over. Two kings of different countries have more in common than they do with their subjects. They share more culture with one another than they do with the peasants farming their land.
Smears - yes. Although I can only comfortably explore the crags of a community with a like-mined fellow. Be they native or not. Although native is mostly necessary.
Kriswest - They’re one and the same. They just aren’t constrained by territorial boundaries.
In any case, William Shakespeare was likely an invention, the product of several people conspiring to generate ‘the world’s greatest playwright’. This notion that he was lauded by the working classes of his time appears to be bullshit. Commonly believed, but bullshit. redicecreations.com/radio/20 … 111115.php
Culture and art are one and the same. Neighbouring communities don’t have definitive differences, only subtle ones. Like how the same cloud can cover multiple “towns.” It can be light over one town, dark over another, and barely perceptible over another, yet it’s still one and the same cloud. That’s culture.
No, they’re not. Art may derive from culture, but they are two separate things. For example, slavery in the US produced a slave culture which, in turn, produced slave ‘art’ in the form of music. The Persian culture produced art and architecture that is definitively Persian–it defines "The disposition, character, or fundamental values peculiar to a specific person, people, culture, or movement… (the Free Dictionary) in this case, the people of ancient Persia. Tribal art in Africa differs from tribal art in the US, because they stem from different cultures.
I don’t really understand what it is you’re trying to get at, Trevor.
I see culture as bench-marks of achievements worn like badges with pride - many countries lay claim to cultural achievements that are not even their’s, so how accurate a picture it paints is questionable… well, to me anyway.
Trevor until you become a welcomed part of a community, you only see that difference you describe. Infront of your closest friends and family you behave one way. In front of acquaintances and strangers you behave another way. Communities do the same thing. You don’t see them until you are accepted as one. And no culture and art are not one and the same. That is like saying the parent is identical to the child or a branch is the tree.
Culture is the history of a people and since this world no longer pays any attention to history it’s no surprise that it is void of culture entirely.
Of course since we have globalism were on that path of getting rid of a variety of cultures in the creation of global culture which is the end goal of many present day elites.
I have some sympathy for this, but his thinking came out of his culture. He was a genius, so he could produce new metaphors and literary forms on this base, but he was not Japanese nor was he building from a japanese foundation. Also he was popular with the people you are calling swine. They got many of his jokes and we caught up in his stories. He wrote for them (and for himself and for those who could go deeper than the average theater goer) but if he was not of their culture they would not have been moved in the ways they were. The rhythms of his language came out of the rhythms of the spoken language, a language like any other made by people on the ground - the swine - along with geniuses also. He mixed high and low language and he was obviously listening to everyone. His metaphors come out of the culture and professions and objects of everyday life - so this too is building from a common culture - though one already mixed with elements of French culture and words mixed in with Anglo saxon ones.
Sure, other English people of that time could not have written what he wrote, but he was not outside the culture, just a very specific kind of expert within that culture.
Thanks, Moreno–To go on about Shakespeare, he took a lot of his plot ideas from older stories, particularly his histories. People were very familiar with the stories–they were part of the folk lore of the British culture. He wrote in iambic pentameter which closely mimics the rhythm of spoken English even now–probably even more so in Elizabethan times.
When Hamlet tells Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery…” he could either have been referring to a convent or a brothel. Both could make sense within the context of both the scene and the play as a whole. We’ve lost the brothel meaning, but the Elizabethans knew it. I really don’t see how people today can read Shakespeare without the OED or a dictionary of Elizabethan slang, along with a well-written biography of the Bard of Avon. Hamlet is a good example of how a poet can draw on himself for inspiration.
That’s enough–the thread is about culture and not Shakespeare.
Yes, I’ve not said he was completely outside the culture, I earlier said he carried the odor of his people. Its that smell which they can recognise themselves in in his works. But as a creative genius he is more perfume than stench.
If a culture (slave culture) produce an art (slave art), then how is to so easy to claim the two are seperate? The two are bonded together more than not.
Persian art/architecture does not define persian culture. Those things are created by the minority of a culture. And what is least in something is not what defines it. Of course, the arts of Persia, Africa, and the US, are going to be drastically different, but their geographical distance from one another is more explanatory of this. Look at the architecture of “Persia” with its neighbours and the differentiation will be less easier to make. As per my cloud metaphor above.
I’m not entirely sure what my point is. I guess to call an art “British,” or “Persian” is wrong. Nietzsche said something about culture being stolen by the state or some such…
To me it seems like his works are fulfillment of some of the possible greatness in that culture/language. A pinnacle of that culture, using its stories, rhythms, life and language potentials to make something.
As far as I’m concerned NIetzsche gave nothing to philosophy–if philosophy is meant to advance knowledge that helps improve humanity’s state of existence. Nietzsche may have given the world beautiful, but enigmatic, poetry which may or may not have bits and pieces of an individual philosophy within it. If he had any real, universal, philosophy, I can’t see it. But I’m pretty ignorant.
African art is African. Inca art comes from Peru. Native American art comes from native Americans. The “State” cannot ‘steal’ the culture of a people. It can only try to suppress it.
