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Does anyone know a word for understanding of something 'to be stripped of meaning'?
It can be an English word or any other language.
Other phrases I've used to search: 'to be robbed of meaning' or 'to be depleted of meaning.'
The closest I've come in English is desacralize but that is more in a religious sense. I'm seeking an understanding in a cultural sense. Not just meaninglessness or emptiness but a violent stealing of that meaning. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.
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'to be robbed of meaning' or 'to be depleted of meaning.'
Well, Aorto, I think the worst thing that could happen to anyone, short of physical torture unto death, is to be stripped, shorn, of one's dignity, unjustly, deliberately, mercilously, callously.
So I would say the word you are looking for is "dignifile".
A stripping of another person's dignity in this manner would be a "dignifilement", as dishonorable and debased and cowardly as any physical defilement.
A "defacement" is a defilement which strips only skin deep, Aorto. It does not strip to the soul.
Likewise "desecration". It is a strike at the soul which cannot penetrate the soul.
A "dignifilement" ruptures the soul.
To recall a word from last's weeks selection of AWADs, a forceful, unjust, malacious or sadistic stripping naked of another person's dignity is a diriment of their dignity. Hence, dignidiriment. Revised 1/26.
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aorto, help me crystalize the concept..
do you mean a reduction to the absurd, robbing of any value:reductio ad absurdum?
or maybe to strip or simplify and distort the meaning: bowdlerize
or to remove or detract from (its meaning) intentionally: weasel
or to purposely confound: spiflicate ;)
or simply to render worthless: stultify, disworth
I don't expect that it's any of these, I'm just trying to zero in.
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From Dr. Bill [wwh]:
for aorto's word, I coined 'dereify'. Couldn't find it in any dictionary, but a number of sites were using it in approximately sense aorto desired. Think it would fly?
[Why not, wwh. Let's give it a try!]
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I'm not sure that we have a single word in English for 'violently stripped of meaning'; tsuwm's stultify comes pretty close. But if a phrase will do, you might try "disemboweled of its meaning".
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one synonym for reify is materialize.
is "dematerialize" what is wanted here, aorto?
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It would be good to know a couple examples of specific context. I understand that you're not looking for 'stripped of meaning' in a religious context, but for something stripped of meaning in a cultural context. Your 'robbed of meaning' is good.
Can you give a couple of examples of what in the culture that you've been thinking about that have been robbed of meaning? Very interesting question! And the responses are terrific! The only thing I thought of immediately was simply 'lost all meaning.' But 'stripped of meaning' and 'robbed of meaning' are both clear images. Context will help a lot. Thanks.
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Everyone here is great!!!! Better than my Thesaurus, that's for sure.
I think the closest I've seen would be 'stultify' or 'desecrate'. I think 'desecrate' comes closest.
My seeking strays into philosophy a bit due to some of the premises but the idea is more along the lines of our continued homogeneity (speaking from the United States) that we see and, by extension, ultimate bankruptcy of culture as a whole.
'Culture' is really anything other than us. As we lose culture in this country, we move on to other countries. A logical progression seems to indicate that at some point in the future, 'culture' as such will cease to exist. We will all be the same.
Meaning implies a distinction, almost the antithesis of homogeneity. In our homogeneous culture, meaning is leaving. It is being surrendered or even stolen by a conglomerate force that drains the meaning from it, leaving us homogenized, sterile, empty, meaningless.
I suppose this would mean 'nihilism' but nihilism is not the term I'm after in regards to depletion of meaning in this manner.
I'm not sure if that helps and I'm not sure if there is an English word for it. Sometimes words or phrases from other languages ('reductio ad absurdum' is definitely on the right track).
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> thesaurus.. stultify.. descecrate
küçük düsürmek* (abase, bring into contempt, debase, degrade, depreciate, detract, disparage, give affront to, give smb. the wall, humiliate, lessen, lower, make smb. feel small, run down, score smb. off, snub, stigmatize, stultify, take smb. down a peg), hakaret etmek* (defame, desecrate, give affront to, insult, outrage, revile, revile against smth., revile at smth., slight, vituperate), hakaret* (contempt, contumely, cuss word, defamation, epithet, hotfoot, indignity, insult, invective, opprobrium, outrage, revilement, slap, slap in the face, slight, slur, snub), gücendirmek* (badger, chafe, disoblige, displease, gall, give offence, give offense, give umbrage, huff, miff, offend, pique, tread on smb.'s corns, vex)
*Turkish terms
NB: these as given all seem directed at someone or something, but most can be generalized and/or conceptualized.
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I think what I'm looking for (or even invent) is a word for the process by which meaning is stripped, especially when it is stripped from a culture.
Think of imperialism or colonialism and its imposition of will, although the loss I'm thinking of is more subtle, and gradual, an intangible force with no apparent cause that is depleting the meaning.
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ah, erosion then, in a figurative sense.
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This is pretty close: 'anomie'.
According to Emile Durkheim:
"Under exceptional circumstances, when society is disturbed by abrupt transitions, it is incapable of regulating man's passions, it is then in a state of anomie."
Wolfgang Jilek, in studying the Coast Salish Indians off the coast of British Columbia and in studying other groups, has coined the term 'anomic depression', defined as such:
"This concept is introduced to denote 'an affective, psychophysiologic and behavioural syndrome developing in reaction to alienation from aboriginal culture under Westernizing influence.' The syndrome derives from experiences of anomie, relative deprivation and cultural identity confusion."
While these are sociological terms that carry with them deeper meanings in that context, this is the result of the process I am referring to.
I am wondering if there is a specific term for this process.
Please pardon my obsessive tendencies. Sometimes there is only one word that will do and you'll know it when you hear it.
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'an affective, psychophysiologic and behavioural syndrome developing in reaction to alienation from aboriginal culture under Westernizing influence.'
I have seen the term "coca colanization" used to describe this force, for that is what it is, a "force".
Another metaphor derives from plate tectonics. The dominant [Western] culture 'grinds' out the cultural identity of everything in its path.
It is a grinding down to a cullet, a pulverization of identity. What would you call that, Aorto?
What you have in the end is not a people or an identity, but a cullet. Hence, a culletizing force or influence.
I assume the word you are looking for would come from the studies of plate tectonics. Those grinding, scraping, crushing, pulverizing forces must have a name.
Perhaps "shearing". The shearing away of a cultural identity as in:
cataclastic metamorphism: Takes place in an environment where intense pressure due to shearing is common, as in a major fault zone.
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First out, arto, if we are to extract a word from the whole of things for the purpose of functional communication we need to be clear about what exact attribute we need to abstract.
If you consider a culture to be static then you have to talk in relative terms, in that all cultures are in a continual state of transition from within by the natural interactions of the breeding group and the ever changing interactions with the environment or from without through the interactions and interventions of outside human groups.
As this is the case then your word must only have value in communicating sharp degrees of disintergration because the thing we call culture is arbitrary at best.
Can you more tightly define what it is you want?
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Thanks for all your replies. I'll have to dig into cullet a bit. I suppose you are correct about a culture being in constant flux. However, and perhaps I am a bit cynical here and jaded by apocalyptic issues, I am thinking of the current cultural malaise we are in. It is not so much that the culture is static, per se, but the fact that 'culture' seems to indicate something 'other'. The reference point for 'other' is anything that isn't whitebread American.
McDonaldization was a term coined a few yeares ago for the process. Example: rock and roll songs I grew up with are now used in commercials that have nothing to do with the song; in fact, the commercial, in many cases, is the antithesis of the song. Ozzy Osbourne's 'Crazy Train' (every mother's nightmare when I was a kid) used in an Oldsmobile commercial. I mean, c'mon.
Anyhow, it is this force that is grinding out homogeneity and meaningless drivel. I'm exaggerating for effect here but our buildings have no character, our ads lack any originality, our movies and songs are all remakes and all our telephone inquiries are touch tone and computerized; worse, movies are all computer animated and our songs are all done on computers. No need for instruments, no need for live actors.
Maybe there really is no term for it. But it is that drive towards efficiency and ease that is causing all of this because, in doing so, creativity has no place here. Creativity seems to be understood now in a materialistic sense as an innovation in maximizing this efficiency.
I'm not sure if that helps or not!
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, if I may, with:
'Culture' is really anything other than us. As we lose culture in this country, we move on to other countries. A logical progression seems to indicate that at some point in the future, 'culture' as such will cease to exist. We will all be the same.
Meaning implies a distinction, almost the antithesis of homogeneity. In our homogeneous culture, meaning is leaving. It is being surrendered or even stolen by a conglomerate force that drains the meaning from it, leaving us homogenized, sterile, empty, meaningless. Let me say first that I am not thinking that you are necessarily wrong and I am necessarily right. We are only talking opinions, after all!  But several things came to mind as I read your posts, the first being: are we sure there ARE truly disparate, distinct, cultures? I should think that pretty much any culture that has access to television and now the internet has at least a likelihood of taking on parts* of what they've learned about. I guess my main difference with your opinion is along the lines of what someone else said, about society and culture constantly changing. Change is pretty much guaranteed, one way or another. (Aside: I happen to be a person who overall does not deal well with change; as I was told recently, "Life goes on, Jackie". Well--it's true, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!) But--just because a culture changes, it doesn't automatically follow that what it has become is worse--just different than it used to be. Some individuals may not like what has happened, but...whatever the changes, there IS still some sort of culture. Homogeneous culture does not necessarily equate to NO culture. *Another question is: at what point do you decide that "culture" is lost? When some of the people begin to give up their native dress? When some of them begin to speak English (to say nothing of the question of the different kinds of English)? How many? .001%? 20%? 75%? What about their business practices? When the first McDonald's opened in Moscow, did that mean that Russia had lost or begun to lose its culture? What about now, as they struggle with free enterprise? You mentioned looking alike; what about buildings? Frankly I don't think it's likely that one Wal-mart opening in England (sigh) means that they're going to rebuild everything in modern-warehouse style. I believe I got the gist of what you were saying; I confess to having a black-cloud sort of worry for several years now that in the not-too-distant future the entire world will be in the hands of just two or three companies; but I believe and hope that we're both wrong on that. There are still quite a few folks all over who are strong advocates of retaining separate (cultural) identities; and, optimist that I am, I think society as a whole will eventually learn to work and live together without insisting that we all be the same.
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Jackie, here are some words that have helped me to crystalize my thinking on the matter of getting on with it. I have a dear friend who has always said, "life is about doing stuff." More recently, cynics have.. well, redirected this: stuff happens. This has led my friend to ask, from time to time, "why is life so hard to live with?"
none of this, of course, provides any real answers, but then what does?
but we digress.
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Jackie,
Excellent points you bring up. Opinions always welcomed.
I too hope that my doom and gloom prediction of things will not come to pass. However, living in the heart of the Midwest in America, I am inundated with it. Where I live is quite literally a test market for a huge amount of these companies. We might even be living in the epicenter of this McDonaldization.
Perhaps it is this concentration of this process where I live and the fact that any traces of identity (perhaps identity is a more accurate word than culture) are rapidly being absorbed. Homogeneity run amuck. We have many in town who have fought this progress but it is futile. They simply do not have the economic strength behind their passion to retain a sense of identity. Sadly, so much identity these days is being defined against it, yet it is still the force causing (or, perhaps, acausally) definining identity.
So the force, as I see it, is not life-affirming. I am sure someone at some point said that one Wal Mart in my hometown will not destroy identity and culture either. I firmly believe that one Wal Mart in England may be a sign of things to come if there is no resistance to this force. Perhaps it is unique in America. I personally do not believe so. I think you may see an increase not so much in warehouse style business practices but in the standardization of life on many levels. While the impression is that we have many choices, in reality we have few choices under the illusions that multiple brand names, packages, etc. are all under the banner of - as you noted - two or three large companies.
Where I live, Wal Mart has created its own culture. Perhaps what is most ironic, to me anyhow, is that not only has it really wiped out local culture, it has created its own culture. Teenagers hang out at Wal Mart on Friday night! It will someday, if it hasn't already, created its own language.
So it is a subtle form of imperialism, a virus that doesn't so much change a culture from without but transforms it from within.
Which brings me to another paradox: a truly homogeneous culture would actually BE a culture would it not?
Anyhow, maybe I'm looking for a more technical term for McDonaldization. I hate to use that word to describe the force because to use the word makes the user victim of the very same force it is trying to describe. Argh!!!
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cultural cringe cul·tur·al cringe noun
Australia sociology feeling of cultural inferiority: a sense of embarrassment caused by a feeling that your national culture is inferior to others
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Lixiviate:
1) To wash or percolate the soluble matter from.
2) To extract a soluble constituent from (a solid mixture) by washing or percolation
Metaphorically speaking, this is pretty good. I propose:
Lixiviation: the process of washing away the soluble matter or soluble constituent from (i.e. substance, meaning, identity) of culture.
Usage: 'McDonaldization is a form of cultural lixiation.'
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lixiviate
interesting. I've not had occasion to actually use this word; but doesn't it have mostly positive connotations, in that you're either purifying something or trying to extract the good stuff for use (say, gold)?
it's closer than corrupting or defiling or defacing which all have the element of pollution; but it still doesn't evoke the action of throwing out the baby with the bath water that you seem to want.
here's some synonyms that might clarify my point:
purge, expurgate, elutriate, lixiviate, edulcorate, clarify, refine, rack
the shared element of all of these seems to be removal of something unwanted
elutriate - to purify
expurgate - remove offensive bits
rack - remove the dregs (from wine?)
edulcorate - to sweeten
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edulcorate
I will be awake, probably for a very long time, tonight, trying to figure out how to use this word on the bench tomorrow morning. Drat!
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The definition for leaching is almost identical: to part with soluble constituents by percolation (kind of like we do with coffee).
The root of lixiviate is 'lye'. Water was passed through wood ashes and the resulting constituent part removed was lye. While it is a caustic substance on its own, lye is used in the making of soap. Something unwanted is found useful.
If we look at McDonaldization as a hot liquid percolating over our culture, what is ultimately removed by this process is that which we generally recognize as 'culture'.
I'm not quite comfortable calling McDonald's a culture, although in a technical sense I suppose it is. For the sake of argument, it isn't.
While the other words associated with lixiviate seem to carry the conotation that the removal of something negative, the end result is something useful. With a literary or imaginative twist, if those traits that indicate a culture are lixiviated, what is removed can perhaps be seen as a negative of the homogenizing force.
In this case, would it lixiviate it, market it and ultimately homogenize it?
In this case the lixiviation process is attempting to squeeze out those parts that are marketable. Instead of lye, what is extrapolated would be things identifiable as 'cultural' or 'subcultural' or 'countercultural'.
Even Woodstock had corporate backers. It would not be long after Woodstock that tie-dyed t-shirts were sold in department stores. Hippy culture lixiviated.
We squeeze out the culture and are left with a shell of something that once was deemed to have had substance. What is left is imitation.
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I think there's a chemical process involved in lixiviation that doesn't transfer well here. leaching alkaline salts with lye, or someting like that. but if you like it, it's yours. : ) http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/
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So, Father Steve, did you manage to use your newest word toys? I'm thinking that you could have batted 3 for 4 in imposing a sentence:
Mr Smith, I intend to elutriate society by expurgating your client; however, I will edulcorate this judgment by refraining from filing a judicial objection to eligibility for parole.
By the time either counsel processes this statement, it'll be too late for objections, since you'll have adjourned and left the bench for lunch. How's that for efficient?
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I accomplished nothing as marvelous as Sparteye's suggestion. I DID state, on the record, at the taking of a plea of guilty, that it appeared to me that the prosecutor had edulcorated his offer, when compared to the initial offer made at arraignment. I was greeted by a tableau vivant of uncomprehending yet inquistive faces ... which suggested success!
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I was greeted by a tableau vivant of uncomprehending yet inquistive faces ... which suggested success!
SWEET!
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And bravo!
Edit--ack; just got the SWEET ref. [call me slow e]
What I really want to know is: how did the court clerk spell the word?
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Say aorto, what you ask for is a term to describe a cultural process that has maybe a semantical political function, but not a proved function in fact. Hypothetically, perhaps such a word would be useful, but I doubt it. With today's consensus understanding of the nature of madkind's ever-changing culture, such a process has no standing in the cognitive thoughts of those who think deeply of such matters , so, unless you yourself can demonstrate the reality of the transformation that you wish to name, your new name will quickly be rendered clutter; but if you can make your point, then you can certainly name it as you please and all will be happy. So if you please, please make your point about MacDonaldism.
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Forgive me, Aorto, if I am being presumptuous in interjecting this response: "McDonaldism" and "Coca-Colanization" are really the same thing, but "Coca-Colanization" has a longer history in the vocabulary of cultural studies. Here is a good review: Coca-Colanization (koh.kuh-KOH.luh.ny.zay.shun) n. The spread of Western (especially American) culture throughout the world. Also: Coca-Cola-nization, cocacolanization. Example Citation: "Things have changed a lot over the years," said Jean-Philippe Mathy, a native Frenchman who teaches at the University of Illinois and authored "French Resistance: The French-American Culture Wars." "The youth have been great consumers of American clothes and products, ever since the '70s," Mathy said. The ongoing opposition to "Coca-Colanization," as it has long been called, comes mostly from French cultural elites and "what's left of the radical left," he said. —Scott Leith, "Coke makes an art of selling in France," Cox News Service, August 26, 2002 Earliest Citation: What has been called the creeping Coca-Colanization of the world has been the major U.S. business story since World War II, with international activity now accounting for one-third of all U.S. corporate profits. —Joanne Omang, "A New Form Of Protectionism," The Washington Post, July 23, 1978 http://www.wordspy.com/words/Coca-Colanization.aspI understand Aorto's interest is in looking beneath the process to the impact which the process is having on the pysche of the peoples who are being transformed by it. And I think Aorto is looking even deeper than that. She is looking at the impact the culletization of these cultures is having on our own culture. Aorto is asking a very important question: Are we, as the dominant culture, not losing something ourselves by culletizing all of these other cultures? [It has, in fact, turned in upon itself as it is now culletizing our own culture. This is Aorto's point about 'Wal-Mart culture', which should be a contradiction in terms, but, revealingly, isn't a contradiction at all. But 'Walmart culture' is really the absence of a culture, not a distinct culture itself.] What Aorto is getting at, I think, is something more profound, more insidious, than "McDonaldism" or "Coca Colanization". It is the transformation of civiilization itself, universally. For the McDonald's and the Coca Colas and the Wal Marts of the world are only propelled by commerce. "McDonaldism" is not a malignant force in and of itself, of course. For that is what these ubiquitous, multi-national entities are: businesses. What Aorto is getting at, ultimately, I think, is the transformation of civilization itself -- into what? Perhaps into a culletization, a cullletization of all cultures into something which possesses no culture. Where is the soul in that, themilum? If I have it wrong, I'm sure Aorto will straighten me out soon enuf. :) P.S. Why do I assume Aorto is a "her". I'm not sure. There is a sensitivity in Aorto's voice which I associate with a feminine perspective. It is a fact that women are usually the care-givers in our society. Most people give what they feel [like giving].
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" P.S. Why do I assume Aorto is a "her". I'm not sure. There is a sensitivity in Aorto's voice which I associate with a feminine perspective. It is a fact that women are usually the care-givers in our society." ________________________________________________________ No Plutarch, don't flatter Aorto, he is only a man. A woman doesn't have time to worry about the abstract ramifications of cultural transmutations, she is too busy living life as it is. Sadly it is a man's plight to fuss and quibble over such trucks and trifles, it keeps them from being underfoot. Wanna bet?
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Wanna bet?And what do you propose as the prize, themilum? One of those bottles of wine named after the most prominent ladies in our midst? BTW how many ladies have signed up for those labels? :) On second thought, Aorto is definitely infusing this Board with new blood rich in himoglobin. And "Aorto" is the masculine form of "aorta". You are so clever themilum. You never cease to amaze.
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Plutarch,
Wow. You expressed it better than I did. You really cleared up a few things. One statement made a bigger point: It is the transformation of civiilization itself, universally.
I really believe that we are living in a new age. It used to be that world conquering civilizations eventually faded. Rome and Greece, for example, conquered the world (which, in hindsight, was obviously not the entire world).
However, with globalization as an economic term, we are speaking of the entire world. Burger King in Baghdad. KFC in China. We see the trend.
Here's an example. My spouse is from Jamaica. We all know the cliche, the 'Ya mon' which brings to mind Jamaicans with dreadlocks. Aside from the fact that it is mispronounced by everyone, the cultural meaning is lost.
This is the process: a business, for example, whether it be a tourist agency, a record company, a movie producer, whatever, recognizes this unique tidbit of culture that is distinctly Jamaican.
So this essence is extracted (which is why the word 'lixiviation' is really close to what I'm after) and is marketed out of context. Even if the context was known originally, all we know now is that it is from Jamaica; what we fail to understand is its genuine cultural context. The meaning has been eradicated. It has been extracted, drained and depleted.
It's kind of like our pharmaceutical industry: extract the essence of one plant, market it and don't worry about the side effects.
Universally, in an absolute linear sense, this process could do the same for everything that is unique, everything that makes cultures distinct and unique. I remember going on a cruise and we went to one of those manufactured islands owned by the cruise lines. It was hideous. My spouse and I busted out laughing. They were trying to duplicate the superficials of Caribbean culture but it was manufactured, safe, neat and absolutely meaningless. If there was meaning, it too was manufactured. No cultural context other than huts on a beach. It was horrible.
Manufactured meaning?
The transformation in an absolute sense is the abstraction of meaning, the depletion of culture as a whole, where everything is an but imitation of culture.
Paradoxically, 'the absence of culture' is a culture itself. And a culletization of culture is good; culture is eventually being grinded slowly to a pulp to the point that even the pulp will be found wanting of a meaningful essence, relegated to the dustbins of history.
I think the telltale sign is that we recently experienced a 70s revival. Disco and bell bottoms came back. It seems as if the 80s are soon to be upon us again. Then the 90s. What happens when we catch up to ourselves?!
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What happens when we catch up to ourselves?!If that ever happens, Aorto, there will be hope for us. You are such a treat, Aorto. What an infusion of fresh blood! [Himoglobin or Heroglobin - you have been cleverly opaque about that, referring only to your "spouse". Themilum must be tearing his hair out. :) ] Yes, the extract of some trace [or not even a trace but a facsimile of a trace] which is marketed as the genuine whole [holus bowdlerus], like a perfume. Like "J Lo" perfume. Or the one they named after Elizabeth Taylor. And Britney Spears has her own perfume on the market. I don't know the name because all I see is the face. Selling a scent with a face. Where is the sense in that?* In the perfume category, Aorto, the trace is not a facsimile. It's a facesimile. * Indeed, where is the soul in that? Where is the soul in any of that? We may have to put the remnants of some of these genuine wholes into zoos, Aorto, so people can go to these zoos to find out what civilization is all about. Going back to your original question, Aorto: What happens when we catch up to ourselves?!T. S. Eliot answered it best, did he not? "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." And perhaps T. S. Eliot also gave us the single word you were looking for, Aorto, when you started this thread. Does anyone know a word for understanding of something 'to be stripped of meaning'?What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
--------------------
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London UnrealThe Waste Land [1922] http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html If T. S. Eliot were writing "The Waste Land" today, what cities would Tiresias name after "London", I wonder? I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs
Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest—
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Plutarch,
The quote from T.S. Eliot almost brought tears to my eyes. Here I am perusing dictionaries and thesauri and, low and behold, the voice of the poet from the din. Sigh...
The notion from Themilum that there is a consensus understanding of 'mad-kinds' ever changing culture ties right into the notion: the actual idea of a consensus. A consensus understanding of something can only be rendered such by a power elite (or someone who deems themselves so). By stating such as an absolute, you've actually lixiviated dissent. Insert smiley face, I don't know the code.
While I may not be considered a deep thinker, I am observant. What I have observed is that there is a Burger King in Baghdad. We (speaking from the soil of the U.S.) export our excess waste. As the U.S. is composed of cultures from everywhere else, this is perhaps the one thing that could be considered 'culture' in the U.S.
My spouse used to work as a buyer for Macy's. The buyers would travel all over the world, looking for those unique little cultural icons, bring them back and mass produce them. Eventually, those little icons ceased to have meaning. They were just 'exotic' imports from somewhere else. It continues to happen on a larger scale today. The transformation is currently taking place.
The term 'gentrification' is close from a sociological context. The people in the poorer parts of a city have cheap real estate. Artists move in because it is cheap; it becomes 'hip' and suburbanites go urban slumming, causing property values to rise. The poor can soon no longer afford to live there. That is a process with a name.
I think the reality of the transformation as process is the fact that it is happening. Insidious, yes. If we take it to a logical conclusion in a complete and absolute linear sense, it is not too difficult to envision the end of culture as all will be the same.
'When everyone knows good as good, this is not good.' Tao Te Ching
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'When everyone knows good as good, this is not good.' - Tao Te ChingBullslip! Culture is a device like the mechanical structure of colonial corals that enables groups of individuals to continue through time much better than a single biological unit. Need I go further? Your nostalgic notions are misplaced.
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Agreed, actually. That is why the loss of culture is so detrimental.
Culture: the integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thought, speech, action, and artifacts and depends upon the human capacity for learning and transmitting knowledge to succeeding generations.
What happens when the only thing to pass on (i.e. culture) to succeeding generations is a trip to your local Wal Mart? What refuge have we, what asylum can we take from the homogenous zone?
Postage stamps used to have important leaders and politicians: stamps now have Daffy Duck and movie stars.
Television shows now make reference to other television shows, not from years past but shows currently running along with them.
It used to be taboo for advertisers to mention other competitors. Now advertisers blast other competitors no holds barred.
We're seeing the last remnant of any semblance of culture (if we can, in fact, call it that!) in American society. The small town, red states are soon to be eviscerated. Oh, the apocalypse is upon us!
But seriously, I found an interesting quote: we are headed toward "a Disneyfied existence with one global culture." Guess there are lots of other goofballs like me out there. More importantly, we are inbreeding, forced to use corporate terms to describe the very same process I'm railing against. Quite the conundrum, thus the obsession to find a word outside of this process to describe it.
Perhaps eviscerate is a better word than lixiviate. Cultural evisceration; culturally eviscerated; evisceration of culture. That just might work.
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Oh, gosh, please don't throw away lixiviated culture quite yet! I have for the past few days been considering the similarities between the process and the washing away of cultures.
A movie I mentioned on Miscellany, "The Weeping Camel," shows just that sort of insidious lixiviation in Mongolia, at first focusing on families working their sheep and camels on the desert, and finally showing in a very subtle way the movement of television into a nearby town. One of the old ones senses the threat of television--images in glass, he calls it. And the shots of poles to carry electricty look so foreign on the desert where the sheep and camel herders live. The poles look like invaders and the motorcycles from the town look threatening, too.
But it is all subtle, insidious, creeping on the surface, but likely to snap the nomadic culture apart if it takes root.
Evisceration works, too, but it seems more like a bomb...not so subtle. Lixiviation seems as though it could work slowly, insidiously, like contaminated water leaching soil nutrients, a process so subtle, but sure, that it can go undetected for years before the damage is done and hard to turn back.
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from behind the curtain we hear two voices:Sherman, Set the Wayback Machine for 1964. Why are we going then, Mr. Peabody? We're going home Sherman, so we can see just how different things were then. But Mr. Peabody, you know that you can't go home again! That's only if you've read Thomas Wolfe, Sherman. Besides I want to revisit Herbert Marcuse, and you just can't find his books anymore. aside: It's getting so that it's hard to find many books... <another time, another place> We are in a large room with many shelves, all filled with books. Sherman selects and opens a book at random and, fortunately for the dramatic movement of our story, it is by Herbert Marcuse. Sherman reads aloud.The achievements and the failures of this society invalidate its higher culture. The celebration of the autonomous personality, of humanism, of tragic and romantic love appears to be the ideal of a backward stage of the development. What is happening now is not the deterioration of higher culture into mass culture but the refutation of this culture by the reality. The reality surpasses its culture. Man today can do more than the culture heros and half-gods; he has solved many insoluble problems. But he has also betrayed the hope and destroyed the truth which were preserved in the sublimations of higher culture. To be sure, the higher culture was always in contradiction with social reality, and only a privileged minority enjoyed its blessings and represented its ideals. The two antagonistic spheres of society have always coexisted; the higher culture has always been accommodating, while the reality was rarely disturbed by its ideals and its truth.
Today's novel feature is the flattening out of the antagonism between culture and social reality through the obliteration of the oppositional, alien, and transcendent elements in the higher culture by virtue of which it constituted another dimension of reality. This liquidation of two-dimensional culture takes place not through the denial and rejection of the “cultural values,” but through their wholesale incorporation into the established order, through their reproduction and display on a massive scale....
Just as people know or feel that advertisements and political platforms must not be necessarily true or right, and yet hear and read them and even let themselves be guided by them, so they accept the traditional values and make them part of their mental equipment. If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator – the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to It. As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth. Mr. Peabody interrupts.Yes, Sherman. Marcuse summed it up by saying, "the progress of technological rationality is liquidating the oppositional and transcending elements in the “higher culture.” They succumb in fact to the process of desublimation which prevails in the advanced regions of contemporary society." fade to black
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desublimation - a process by which things are undone that were previously sublimated on a higher level of the cultural scale
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It has been a very long time since I read Marcuse's An Essay on Liberation but I'd bet this quotation comes from it. Right?
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doubtlessly Marcuse borrowed from his own writings, but I gave away this source in the subject line: One-Dimensional Man. actually, I googled part of the excerpt and cut it from one of the three hits that came up.
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the loss of culture is so detrimenta
When you talk about Dylan, he thinks you're talking about Bob Dylan (whoever *he was). The cat ain't got no kulcha!
-- Anon F.W.
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[ It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.] _________________________________________ - Hurbert MarcuseYeah, yeah, yeah, the sky is falling. Herbie Marcuse and tswum should unwrite themselves their old man's lament and look around at a World exploding with portent of a most wonderful and amazing future. Listen, ancient ones, go back and sit in your dark safe caves and moan and wail the loss of traditions past their prime and whine and chant your youthful ole sayings that no longer have a ring. Be not afraid. Hope, spirit, and desire, are all hardwired into the human psyche and thanks for the fish.
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I think we have a winner (although I still like the metaphorical idea of lixiviation and its insidiousness).
Desublimation: kind of like the theology of the Incarnation. Deity desublimed. Buddy Jesus.
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dear Milo, In no way did I advocate the teachings of Herbert Marcuse here. Nor do I believe anything that Ayn Rand put on paper. I still have some scribblings of both of these writers because they come in handy for moments like these; to wit, discussions about words. as to why I came to possess books by either of them, when I was but a callow youth we were encouraged to read everything. Does our "culture" frown on this now?! The extract of Marcuse I posted above was given as backgound for the word desublimation, and to show the parallels to the theme which has grown out of the original premise of this thread. Please take up your crusades with other parties if you must; but once again you bring your politics into these forums when we have repeatedly, since their inception, asked people to keep religion and politics for other venues which encourage them. It's quite true that you can glean much of a person's philosophy by what he posts here; but you should not expect others to submit tacitly or passively to the manifest proselytizing of your own. best regards, Michael
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>I think we have a winner
thanks for that, aorto.
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"...but once again you bring your politics into these forums when we have repeatedly, since their inception, asked people to keep religion and politics for other venues which encourage them." ~ tsuwm For tsuwm's eyes only. You others please
don't read below this line. --------------------------------------------------------
Uh, tsuwm, I am well aware that "you people" don't like "other people" to espouse politics on this board,
so I don't.
But now I begin to think that "you people" don't like other people's opinion.
Please explain to me what was even remotely political about my post
or else apologize to me in an open forum.
Thank you.
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Themilum doesn't need anyone to defend him, and if it had to be anyone, I'm sure he would prefer anyone but Plutarch. :)
However, themilum's views are no more "political" than the views of those, including myself, who theorize that Western society is desublimating or culletizing or otherwise debasing other cultures, if not our own culture, albeit without malign design.
Themilum is entitled to disagree with this postulation.
Considering that he doesn't subscribe to it, logically or otherwise, I think he has been most patient. Congratulations, themilum. :)
Themilum has infused his argument with his usual trademark wit and intellectual pungency. And that's OK too 'cause he's just themilum. And we're all a lot better off themilum's around here to straighten us out every now and again when we get too big for our britches.
Thanks, themilum. :)
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Herbie Marcuse and tswum should unwrite themselves their old man's lament and look around at a World exploding with portent of a most wonderful and amazing future.
Listen, ancient ones, go back and sit in your dark safe caves and moan and wail the loss of traditions past their prime and whine and chant your youthful ole sayings that no longer have a ring.
Milo,
I was quite upset that my post introducing the word desublimation was greeted with this response; no mention at all of my suggestion to the topic Is there a word for...? . In the heat of the moment I took this as a personal affront, completely failing to see any intended humor. For this I am truly sorry, Milo.
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Thank you tsuwm, I know you. But I also failed (as I had originally intended} to include in my post my opinion that your selection of the term "desublimation" was brilliant. As it was. I guess I got carried away with my own rhetoric.
Milo.
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I guess I got carried away with my own rhetoric.*
Wow! You guys are something else. Now I'm sorry I defended you, themilum.
But, seriously. You are a scholar and a gentleman, tsuwm. [You too, themilum.]
* Bin there a few times myself. [shock]
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Yes, desublimation was a brilliant move. It sunk right into my soul and provided rest. It was the right word.
On an aside, from the outside, your conversations are like reading the Dialogues of the philosophers of old. Refreshing, insightful, and loads of fun. As Wet Willie said: 'Keep on smilin.'
By the way, is there a page where I can get the codes to make the smiley faces? And the cool blue text?
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the FAQ, jsut the FAQ's-- its about 4 pages if you print it out.. but in I & A there is also a link to a page Max put together, with fine details like how to include ligitures, like æ (ae) or fun symbols like, ® , or ¿ to make posts interesting..
over the years, we've had a few computer naifs, and the instructions are very simple, (and well illustrated) there is a wealth of info.
there are some good tips too--most of experience users set our pages to view at 99 so we don't have to reload page after page to read a long thread.
AND because its sometimes impossible to load more than page 1 of an old thread.. (if you are set to read 10 posts per page, that is all you can see! if your setting is for 99 posts per page, you'll see 99--1 page is one page, no matter how large a page it is!)
for the same reason, if a thread reaches 99 posts, its continued in a new thread.
It not a 'rule'; you can post 150 comments to a thread, but.. there is a good chance in not to distant future, only the 99 posts will be accessable.. and 51 will be lost in cyberspace.
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