Preserving a Culture

To say that we learn economics in order to learn to read Shakespeare for pleasure is making a cultural argument. The study of economics is part of a larger intellectual culture, one in which we build models of the world in order to understand the world. The cultural argument is that Newton, Austen, and Smith were all building models, that thinking about those models is both enjoyable and illuminating, and that when you can learn from both Dickens and Ricardo, then you can enjoy learning from Shakespeare.

A vital part of this argument is that there is something about this culture which is worth preserving, worth handing down to the next generation. To see why it is worth preserving culture, we first need to think about what it means to have a culture. Enter T.S. Eliot.

“Notes Toward the Definition of Culture” is one of the essays in Eliot’s Christianity and Culture. The essay has seemingly modest aim: to define the word “culture.” Being by Eliot, the essay roams widely into all sorts of obscure nooks and crannies, but if you have ever read any of Eliot’s poems, you would expect nothing else.

The crisp definition of culture is:

Culture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living. And it is what justifies other people and other generations in saying, when they contemplate the remains and the influence of an extinct civilization, that is was worth while for that civilization to have existed.

That is a marvelous description of a culture in two ways. First, it is a rather accurate way of distinguishing our culture from the other aspects of our lives. Second, it gives a means to categorize a culture as a good culture or a bad culture by letting the future be the jury.

Culture comes in at many levels. There are the historical relics (Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby); the European imports (Hamlet, War and Peace, the Mona Lisa); the modern blockbusters (Marvel, Harry Potter); streaming TV (The Queen’s Gambit, Real Housewives); music (Bach, John Williams, Lana Del Rey and Dr. Dre); the holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, July 4);and the mighty trio (NFL, NBA, MLB). High culture, low culture, and maybe even something in between.

What is important is a structure of society in which there will be, from “top” to “bottom,” a continuous gradation of cultural levels: it is important to remember that we should not consider the upper levels as possessing more culture than the lowest, but as representing a more conscious culture and a greater specialisation of culture. I incline to believe that no true democracy can maintain itself unless it contains these different levels of culture.

The challenge for the modern age is thus not to ensure the existence of culture. The Kardashians will always be with us. Neither the NFL nor Marvel is on the verge of vanishing. The challenge for our age is to preserve high culture, to remind people that just because you like J.K Rowling, you shouldn’t skip discovering the joys of Dante.

There is a popular misperception that high culture is some sort of church demanding strict obedience; Thou shalt not speak ill of Shakespeare. While there is inevitably a relationship between the religion and the culture of a society, in both cases there is an acute need for debate and discussion within the hallowed inner chambers. Eliot’s comments on Christianity and culture apply equally to the discussion about the Great Books and music and painting.

Christendom should be one: the form of organisation and the locus of powers in that unity are questions upon which we cannot pronounce. But within that unity there should be an endless conflict between ideas—for it is only by the struggle against constantly appearing false ideas that the truth is enlarged and clarified, and in the conflict with heresy that orthodoxy is developed to meet the needs of the times; an endless effort also on the part of each region to shape its Christianity to suit itself, an effort which should neither be wholly suppressed nor left wholly unchecked. The local temperament must express its particularity in its form of Christianity, and so must the social stratum, so that the culture proper to each area and each class may flourish; but there must also be a force holding these areas and these classes together. If this corrective force in the direction of uniformity of belief and practice is lacking, then the culture of each part will suffer.

Another way of framing the challenge of our age is making sure there are enough people in the next generation to carry on that endless conflict between ideas in the sanctums of higher culture, to carry on the battles against heresy and work out the orthodoxy of the age.

High culture is ever at risk because the forces of low culture are like the sea eternally crashing upon the rocks. No matter how strong the rocks are, the sea will never stop crashing against them; but there is no guarantee the rocks will persevere against the forces of the sea. Sometimes a culture will crack under the strain; and the question for future generation is whether the culture produced anything still worthy of veneration.

Teaching people about the glories of high culture is not (or at least should not be) saying that mass culture is unworthy of attention. I, for one, thoroughly enjoy superheroes and the NFL. Mass culture does indeed fit Eliot’s description of being part of the thing that makes life worth living. But nether WandaVision nor the 2021 NFL Draft will be the thing that future generations look back on and say “It is good that such a civilization existed.” The legislation passed by Congress in 1885 is not what we remember about that year; we remember Huckleberry Finn, and we remember it because it is worth remembering. The challenge for education is now what it has always been, to hand down that culture so that Huckleberry Finn will never be forgotten.