In the third part of a seven-part limited series, we look at how arbitrary choices are at the core of culture Eldridge Cleaver, author of 1960s prison memoir Soul on Ice [https://amzn.to/33VIxUm] and Minister of Information for Black Panther Party, grew up in rural Arkansas. There he| Culture: An Owner's Manual
Fads are nothing new, but an online-first culture has made raw trendiness the primary cultural value, which is moving the base of cultural production away from the U.S. Amanda Mull, Bloomberg: The Social Media Machine is Spitting Out Weirder and Weirder Results Mull’s article is a solid primer| Culture: An Owner's Manual
Thoughts on Chuck Klosterman's The Nineties: A Book and the lived experience of the Nineties, a particular decade I. Remembering the Triumphalism About two months before the world's most terrible people flew planes into the Twin Towers, I joined the staff of Tokion magazine in the Lower East Side. Tokion’| Culture: An Owner's Manual
Today the earnest progressive lyrics of 10,000 Maniacs feel extremely dated, which may help us understand why "resistance" in 2025 has become so bogged down in aesthetic rather than political concerns For all the Nineties-revivals and frequent cultural callbacks to REM and The Pixies in the 21st century, I| Culture: An Owner's Manual
A healthy cultural ecosystem provides the maximum number of artistic works that are useful and stimulating to the widest range of people. In the second part of this three-part series, we look at how aesthetic experiences arise from the introduction of novel and complex stimuli, and how a diverse ecosystem| Culture: An Owner's Manual
The "culture" of a society isn't a blob of random human activity, but an orderly ecosystem arising from the interactions between particular subunits. To maintain ecosystem health, we must reject the cynical “poptimist” framing of culture as a mere vehicle for entertainment and commerce and instead promote the benefits of| Culture: An Owner's Manual
Culture is made of humans, and A.I. doomsdayers haven't explained why we'll all fall in love with A.I.-made creative work, when there is so much evidence to the contrary In the late 1950s, East German teenagers often tuned into Radio Free Berlin to hear contraband Elvis Presley| Culture: An Owner's Manual
There is no need to shoehorn the complex process of cultural change into pre-existing biological theories, especially as Darwinism doesn't explain why we change styles in our own lifetimes Over the last 45 years, hip-hop has preserved its core conventions — rapping instead of melody lines, an emphasis on rhythm over| Culture: An Owner's Manual