This essay covers the emergence of culture in a community, the qualities that allow for its continuation and adaptation, and its aim toward the good of the whole, while serving the individuals that make it up. Language is the first to reveal itself as the building blocks of a community, only then can it subdivide into the family. Although families can survive individually it is not optimal for the success of our species, we must rely on the collective effort of the community for support. Together these families come to similar values and select leaders amongst themselves. These leaders are the personification of their language, and wield influence to shape their collective future. When a community grows too large to effectively trade and barter for materials using language they employ a currency as a symbol of inherent value. Money is more fundamental to the human project than written language, the first things written down were receipts for wages of Mesopotamian workers in 3400 B.C., and the Mesopotamian currency predates these receipts by 1600 years. Together language, influence, and wealth make up the three tenets of Tradition; we'll work to develop these tenets, understand how they reveal themselves in our community today, and use them to bring about positive change for ourselves and the nation. As always, I’ll start from first principles and move quickly to get at the heart of the matter.
The individual is initially thrown into an external objective world; the family introduces a child to the world and how it operates. Since the family is an extension of the community, the child is already immersed in the customs of a greater whole. A community builds relationships with each other and forms a common understanding of particular things-in-the-world. These things are viewed by a population in their average understanding, meanings and feelings are essentially handed down to us by the many. These particulars hold a more common understanding through closer relationships (e.g. families, businesses, cities, nations, & cultures). As a population grows more closely related to one another a pattern of discourse emerges to best reflect shared experiences. The individual incorporates themselves into the consciousness of the community by mimicking its communication. Thus, the understanding of experiences have attached themselves to discussion prior to what is being spoken about. While interfacing with the world, it has been partially revealed to us, and in turn remains obscured by the concepts we’ve previously accepted. We hesitate to accept the natural world as it presents itself, confused by the a priori concepts of Tradition, which obscure our immediate perception. The world only becomes real when we externalize ourselves through work, imprinting meaning on the otherwise random events of nature. Using work, an individual draws the particular out of the universal state of nature, realizing himself in the process, and creating value for the community. A blacksmith produces tools for carpenters and chefs alike, who use them in their work, creating a reciprocal relationship with intrinsic value. We initially confront the world as it exists physically, but come to realize its essence reaches beyond the material world. The community allows an individual to offload their reasoning of the world on its traditions of language, the State, and wealth, an aggregate of the common good they recognize. As the human species separated themselves from Nature they took on unnatural habits to distinguish themselves from what is accidental. Etiquette is unnatural and demands work and attention to maintain it, with it we break ourselves from animalistic patterns. We started by cooking our food, and began using utensils to physically distance ourselves from our animal needs. When we’re finished with the meal we push in our chairs to distinguish ourselves from those that don't. Picture the days of powdered wigs and valets, cultured individuals must become artificial, beyond nature, in order to master it. Social circles form their own etiquette to separate themselves from the ‘out group’, this continues to the level of nation, as represented by our habit of standing during the national anthem. By adhering to the traditional etiquette you aim yourself toward the community’s theological good. While the individual molds themselves to the demands of the tradition, they are, at the same time, establishing an immaterial ideal in the actual world, by making the abstract beyond a reality. The work one performs sheds its particularity, and becomes more or less a measure of will power. Particularity becomes powerless, its purpose and content strains to maintain itself as individual, and instead dissolves into universality. It is not the specific job you hold but in what sphere you contribute. The beyond will power aims toward is referenced by what is ‘Kind’ to it, a German expression which holds a notion of honesty, and good intention, or a ‘good of its kind’. Culture is defined by its ‘kind’ because we aren't capable of grasping the whole of its essence in a particularity, like wise, we’re unable to fit the particular into culture because it only reveals a portion of its entirety. The purpose and content of will power belongs solely to the universal substance, which the human project hasn’t been able to wholly define. One elevates themselves above others in the community by incorporating traditional norms in their lives. A natural hierarchy forms based on the individuals’ effort to embody the traditions they live within, subverting personal impulses, becoming educated in cultural practices, the sciences, & popular talking points. We use wealth to measure the degree an individual has successfully achieved this. The amount of wealth an individual acquires is reflective of how accurately they invest themselves in the community using etiquette and language. Wealth is the substance of an individual life, by virtue of someone being-for themselves. The individual secures wealth for themselves when the will power they exert is recognized by the community, this newfound wealth remains at the disposal of the individual. Currency becomes analogous to language, as it’s shared by a community and is for the good of the whole, while remaining in the sole ownership of an individual. Although wealth is immaterial and devoid of any intrinsic value, it is the embodiment of labor and activity of all. The individual goes to work for himself and in turn works for the good of all. When the individual spends his wealth he is distributing its good to the rest of his community, thus, by the individual being-for-themselves they are at the same time contributing to the universal good of the community. Wealth on its own doesn’t allow experience of the universal whole but is transitory, and can only be enjoyed independently. This human tool breaks down the barriers of language and personal influence, it provides a standard of influence across all relationships, becoming a universal good available to everyone. The community flatters the individual with money to show respect and acknowledge their place in the whole. Due to the self-serving nature of wealth however, it can disrupt the balance of power in the community and must be moderated through the State. The State regulates the actions of the whole, limiting and defining the essence of the universal within the community. The State is made up of individuals that subvert their own wills and desires for the good of the community. It is this universal will power made real, the absolute ‘heart of the matter’ in which individuals find their essential nature expressed through laws. The individual that plays a role in the State finds it to be stifling to their individuality, and relies on the wealth it provides them for personal enjoyment, or being-for-oneself. The relationship between these two positions, influence, the State, being-in-self, and personal wealth, being-for-itself, is what guides the community toward its theological good, for a healthy culture must be good for the individual as well as the whole. Eventually an individual climbs the social hierarchy using common language, and wealth, becomes the embodiment of the community’s traditions and is crowned their monarch. They are distinguished by name, the particularity of language, brought down from the universality of the many. Through the monarch, the State is drawn out of the abstract universal and is given a voice. A valued monarch receives the accolades of his subjects, financially and in flattering language. Although the title ‘monarch’ comes with negative connotations, it's a neutral term that has operated successfully for thousands of years. It has a number of qualities that make it reliable: they act as a unifying symbol for the community and serve above the level of partisan politics, its mortal requirement adds stability and continuity, finally, they serve as the locus of tradition, granting stability to a nation with rapidly changing demographics. The monarch’s pathology is removed by remaining monarch until death, if they do not serve until death, they reserve opinion and will to benefit their life outside of office, instead of acting for the good of the community. Our primary concerns come from the absence of democratic representation, however, monarchs remain beholden to a broader social network, who use wealth as a proxy for truth seeking in the same way their populace does. In fact, most successful companies that produce innovative ideas operate as a monarchy, e.g. Jobs, Zuckerberg, Musk, & Bezos. These operators focused their will power in an industry during its infancy, escaping the regulatory control of the material world. The state, who adjusts painfully slow to current conditions, for good and bad, have not yet made policy that limit the financial influence these few can aspire to. So far we have outlined the conception and structure of Tradition, how it becomes self-certain, and the positive qualities that can be drawn from it. Traditions confront an individual as a force of Nature, who clash against this monolith with the abstract quality of their mind. The mind, by its being immaterial, allows for infinite renewal, contrasting itself from the rigidity of the natural world and Tradition. The individual is the epicenter of self & other, irrational & rational, and pure & actual, the balance of these forces becomes the objective of life, its incredible scale threatens to alienate us from the whole of the human experience. A person develops their intellect by how they maintain this balance, coming to understand their relationship to the actual world and their universal self. The intellectual apprehends Tradition as an external object, understands its influence, and rejects the parts of tradition it finds disagreeable, externalizing themselves with language in the process. This cycle of renewal births Culture. It is because an individual can throw out all meaning, their influence and wealth, their recognizable use of language, and the option to show discontent for the status quo, the monarch, that allows the individual to wholly free themselves for their work, potentially staking their life in the process. It is the absolute inversion of the universal, of what we stated up until now, that defines pure Culture. These opposing worlds of Tradition and Culture are directly proportional to each other, and must remain mutually opposed to grant significance to the other and themselves. Tradition is the commonly accepted reality by the community, made real through laws, whereas culture is made up of particularities that struggle to maintain any relation to each other. As something descends into particularity, it becomes more alienated from what is similar to it, but increases in aesthetic value. This is revealed in the world of art, as works of art are subdivided into medium and genre. The ideas that dominate a nation are difficult to define, as they are lost in the abstracted universal between Tradition and Culture. Part II This Tradition/Culture dialectic takes on characteristics of the Master/Slave dialectic, which I’ve previously discussed. The master is found in Tradition which reigns over the community through the State, wealth, and language. Culture plays the role of slave, for it is the denial of tradition and the a priori influences an individual is immersed in. Culture is wholly reliant on a stable, well-defined tradition to allow itself the freedom to definitively break the rules that Tradition upholds. Tradition maintains its truth by the self-certainty granted by the community through their collective aims and motivations, demonstrating the master/slave dialectic. It can not rely on captive subjects for honest feedback, and is only tested when confronted by free and novel ideas. For this same reason it is difficult to determine when culture passes into tradition. It is this very opposition that forces ideas to grow and develop. Mardi Gras is successful in St. Louis due to the city’s strong Catholic traditions. The neighborhood it takes place in, Soulard, embodies the soul of the city’s heritage in its architecture of French row houses, providing a venue to act against the purity Catholic dogma demands. The holiday is on the eve of the Easter season, a time of fasting and meditation, a singular internal struggle. In response, Fat Tuesday is the celebration of gluttony and the other, we join our community in the streets creating a culture of our own in the process. Another example: The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and cultural movement in Europe from the late 17th century to the late 18th century. It was characterized by an emphasis on reason, scientific method, and individualism, and a rejection of traditional authority. The Catholic Empire was the most dominant monarchy in Europe from 1000 A.D. until its dissolution during the Napoleonic wars in the early 19th century. The Enlightenment was able to flourish due to its opposition against the Roman Catholic Empire. It took a hundred years for the scientific inquiry produced by the Enlightenment to replace the traditions formal religion supplied us with, and may not be capable of doing so fully. When Nietchez stated, “God is dead”, in 1882, it was not a secular victory but the confrontation with what our highest aims should be. The death of God is a tragedy, the human race is now forced to exalt earthly ideals to what is beyond man’s capabilities. The truth is no longer found in something beyond, represented by heaven, which we can objectively strive toward but is imminent. Life has lost the Christian quality of redemption, and its cycle of rejuvenation. The ethic of redemption was poorly taken up by the scientific method, and used as a world building tool. We can only be disappointed with the condition of the world, for we are unable to strive for anything better than our current State. Without philosophical opposition a community collapses into a monoculture, who is unable to adapt and transform. The struggle comes when applying it to the person, as of late we’ve had difficulties defining what wrong is, or if it exists at all. Leaving our community to aimlessly search for something to codify our national identity. What makes the American project significant is our denial of the tradition of a monarchy. The American colonies distinguished themselves by rejecting English Imperialism, and substituting it with American Imperialism, a culture of capitalism, which optimized the accrual of wealth. The western community recognized the utility of democracy, accepted it, and paid tribute to the U.S. by recognizing our currency, using English as the dominant business language, and in favorable trades. Our largest material exports: fuel, industrial supplies and capital goods, can’t compare to the cultural influence we’ve enticed the world with; American Culture(TM) is our greatest export. The American system allows monarchs to still reign at all levels of a community, until they come into direct confrontation with federal powers, either militarily or financially. Additionally, we employ a panel of monarchs to govern the Supreme Court, where the rights of individuals are upheld and expanded. The late 19th century had a slew of billionaires that rose to prominence; Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, & Carnegie hacked the truth seeking properties of wealth and, during the industrial revolution, pushed it to an unstable point, resulting in the Great Depression, for wealth no longer represented material reality. The stabilization of these forces came with the election of President FDR, who ostensibly reigned as monarch for twelve years, and used his influence to guide the nation to security. He was neither voted out or stepped down from his position, but passed away as president, fulfilling the monarchical requirement for mortality. Post World War 2, the American ideal was a rejection of communism, and the fear of authoritarianism. Electing FDR as president for four terms proved we were okay with a functional monarchy as long as it served the population. It wasn't until the rise of the Soviet Union and his death, in 1945, that we used our democratic means to pass laws preventing an individual from rising to a dangerously authoritarian position equal to the Soviet Union. By doing so we rejected our former self, under FDR and the Soviet Union in the process. The Cold War served us in the same way the Catholic Church served the Enlightenment, an established tradition from which to repel. Culture itself can be restraining to the population it serves, for there can be no culture without counter-culture. Today, much like the plastics we’ve put into our bodies, either intentionally or accidentally, our cultural climate has lost all essence of biodegradability, it is ever present thus unchanging. The refusal of death and redemption has animated cultural abominations who don't allow space for fresh ideas. The constant production of movie sequels or remakes is evidence of this. The culture we’ve willingly accepted has stifled any opportunity for a reimagination of cultural possibilities. All traces of counter-culture are consumed by social media platforms and distributed to us in palatable amounts. What appears as a diverse and welcoming online world is only diluting the aesthetic value of any particular movement, sterilizing its effectiveness in the process. We’re trapped in a consensus reality, where media platforms have funneled our collective conversation into narrow talking points. Google, Tik Tok and Twitter deliver a singular world view, reproducing what was most successful, leaving us trapped in a cultural death spiral. ChatGPT and other A.I. tools continue to narrow our world view by further filtering our web searches, eliminating any possibility for discovery, and limiting our potential to the average web browser. Any attempt to escape these thought tunnels is difficult to broadcast and are used as circular reasoning to grow the authoritarian presence in the U.S. We know the human project is capable of more, and we are ashamed of our ineptitude. My fear is not that our nation dies of a Great Freeze, where individuals become so separated that we forget what unites us, but that by rejecting the tradition of monarchy, in 1776, we have set the stage for an even more powerful authoritarian presence, who because of our representative democracy, remains disembodied, making it difficult to identify and overthrow. I see the true cultural divide lying between authoritarianism and libertarianism. For example, the debate over trans rights: the Right uses the power of the State to restrict the rights of individuals, the Left uses the same issue to enforce language laws, denying the being of the individual. The number of Americans this issue directly impacts is diminutive, but it is being forced on us daily, from seemingly all angles, keeping us from issues that galvanize a nation. If my advance towards authoritarianism is concerning we must recognize that the flow of wealth to the few has overshadowed the voices of the many, and the control and domination of the populace, through language, is equally dangerous. Both parties are aimed at taking autonomy from the individual, whether this is by the elected officials or a monarch through a corporation. The political parties we’ve grown up with have dissolved into an authoritarian monoculture which lacks any aesthetic depth, full of those who parrot the necessary language to get elected for its financial benefit. I believe the solution to our cultural drought is increased polarization, both politically and socially. By increasing political polarization in the U.S. we will see beyond the particular issues and recognize the bad faith actors who seek to loot from the cultural and economic excess produced by individual liberty. We often say this is the most divided our nation has ever been, however, the values our nation were founded on survived a civil war, which was rectified by another American monarchical figure, President Lincoln. Though I don't wish for the blood of my countrymen, by forcing our current political ideologies to their logical conclusion it forces them to state their beliefs and stake their life in the matter. All political beliefs will inevitably face opposition, those that are afraid of this confrontation are holding our nation back. Political polarization challenges individuals to think deeply about their political values and leads to the proliferation of diverse viewpoints and ideas, as different groups articulate their own values and beliefs. This can enrich the political discourse and lead to more creative and innovative solutions to societal problems. The American Tradition is grounded in individual liberty, if we lose sight of this, an imbalance of power in language, wealth, or influence will take hold, squandering our capacity to lead our civilization toward cultural prosperity. Cultural rejuvenation begins with the freedom of speech, with it we learn and grow from each other as a community. “In an attempt to reconcile the disparity between the mutually opposed ideas the tranquil consciousness understands the good and true to be a mix and unison of wisdom and folly, as much skill as baseness, has as many correct as false ideas, is absolute shamefulness and also perfect frankness and truth.” - G.W.F. Hegel
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Zachary MatthewsLiving among the ruins of a Gilded Age empire Archives
April 2023
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