General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Coarseness and dumbing-down of our modern culture (cross-post) [View all]Igel
(35,362 posts)There had been a cadre of educated folk. Some were effete, many just "cultured". Then there were the masses, mostly uneducated. The ranks of the refined had been increasing. They were becoming more and more sensitive to more and more things.
After the Revolution educated people had to decide. They were either going to go more effete or more plebian. The pro-plebe contingent was the wise move. The effetes were typically destroyed in the 1930s.
This resulted in a "coarsening" of Russian culture. The uneducated masses suddenly had some education, but where told that their cultural norms were as good or better than the old cultural norms. This affected language, literature, films, and pretty much everything else.
Something akin to this happened to the new cultural elite in the early 1990s. The barely educated masses were still there, but a new cultural elite had managed to take top place. The democratization of the media swamped the old "new standards of speech" and culture.
Much of what's happening in the ME is similar. Iraq was cultured. But in educating the masses they weren't assimilated to the prevailing "secular" and "educated" culture. They were simply taught to read and do sums. There was again no buy-in, and they had a competing cultural norm--one that was more tribe-centric, religion-centered, and less tolerant. As most groups are.
Why should the US be any different? Classical music was an imposition by the educated classes on an "authentic" working class with its own, purportedly superior, cultural norms. Not making fun of people in wheelchairs or good spelling or not having 50% of your words be profanity is again an imposition by the educated classes on an "authentic" population with its own cultural norms.
And it's even worse if you're not the same skin color, because then your genetics make it impossible for you to even understand.
Obama has an edge to what he says. He's bicultural, and just as he's adopted AAVE as an active second dialect and is comfortable playing off of it he's also comfortable with other cultural norms, some of which he believes are superior.