The Meaning of Culture

Culture, for the purposes of this article and the kind of organisations we think with, is not essential to development, nor to meaningful existence, and especially not to survival.
Culture, as thus essentially conceived, is a luxury item.
As a wasteful by-product, why do we then take so much care over it? Why do we compete for its crowns? And waste so much time over such an essentially pointless pursuit.
On a base level (in the Marxist sense) it is a money-maker, rather like spice – an optional, profitable extra that sweetens and supplements the otherwise boring diet of life; a consumer-society-driven product of our conquest of basic needs.
Historically, who needed and sponsored music? The king, for his court and his marching bands. Who, besides the king, benefited? The players; the courtiers; the soldiers marching to death or glory… No-one else, for who would hear it?
But now, the pitch is levelled; we must all have music now.

We were supposed to meet at Jared’s on Sunday night to watch a movie together. The purpose? A quasi-social occasion: “Let’s all watch a movie together.” A Hollywood production costing millions to make and which would enjoin us to a ‘community’ of yet more millions of viewers around the world who had witnessed this same Los Angelian miracle.
But then Arlen called us over for a barbecue. Sizzling sausages on a sunset rooftop. Chat, beers, music, laughter.
The result? The gregarious ape pack chose a barbecue: “Let’s eat, drink and talk together.” Better. Why? Because it’s more social. Then we leave the kids together to watch a Disney movie instead of… Anyway.

Culture, as conceived in many essays, notably those of Theodor Adorno, is, in its industrial manifestation, a distraction. The ‘culture industry’ distracts us from the exploitation of our bodies and souls industry by the elites, etc. etc.
But we do ‘need’ (us needy, breedy apes) an addition to our basic needs, to stop them being repetitive – a pathological extra need, in a sense; the kind of ‘need’ like Ritulin or Prozac. Without such extra, additional ‘needs’ the human would grow depressed or cruel, His excess brain capacity unused, for want of la chasse (the hunt).
These, and similarly enriching things, are the ‘games we play’. Felinic, canid, simioid – that which we are all and less, sensorily – we like to play, to torture, to tease. Football (Sports is usually combined with Culture in government Ministries); Flirting; X Factor; Y Factor? Because: any competition is struggle of a kind and that’s life, kids.
Why did we choose barbecue over cinema?
We’re social.
“But” (objection): “Culture is social”.
Is it? How much is it a social activity? The Cinema Experience is like unto that of church; and collectively viewing that Hollywood film at Jared’s is no more social than listening to a sermon.

Do I, you may ask, thus reject everything I’ve been working for these last many years?
Yes! Proudly! It’s good to know the ship you are sailing in, even if you can’t get off.

How about Music: great for dancing (aka simulated sex).
OK granted, but…

Cinema/film – great for…
Avoiding sex?
Merely thinking about sex?
Can it, in practice, be a form of Brain sex?

What then overall is culture for, when we (misleadingly) divorce it from its economic base?
Communication.
Just as we add on ‘distribution of wealth’ to the ‘needs’ (essential features) of the modern state (after defence and extraction of taxes), so we can perhaps add ‘communication’ to the needs of the human.
But, as we have seen, a cinema (or worse, TV) is a poor communicative substitute for the social potential available at a barbecue.
Formula: Cinema < Barbecue for communication.

Objection!
Communication, at some level, is about transference of knowledge. It’s…
What do we learn from barbecue? Aside from how not to undercook pork cops?
Wait… (ASIDE)
It is precisely the pathology of the human-animal brain (i.e. viewed from a layman’s functional perspective) that makes the inessential essential. To seek functionality.
Clever people seem to cite nihilism as a justification for suicide or other –cides. Ergo, what they mean is “life has no meaning” = “life without this non-essential, non-survival-related stuff, is really no life at all”. What they mean by this is that “Culture is life” (as long we understand the definition of culture to include religion, etc.)
Obviously there is a vast definitional problem here. But a basic point is that humans have sought to explain this function or significance of culture, ever since they slipped from the trees and into the armchairs of Europe’s first campuses and fora.
In fact, what accounts for the endless accounts of culture? I have several books within easy reach of my cultured hands that discuss the meaning of culture, alone!

How does music fit in here, and aesthetics in general?
Music has its weird scientific effects, as yet unknown, but almost certainly based on patternised achievement mechanisms (oh here’s that flipping functionalist again), rewarding us with dopamine – hence its synergy with MDMA, etc.

Perhaps we should really reach for the base:
Ultimately, I may find pornography and horror the most rewarding items of culture.
The rest is only ‘the culture industry’; but better than an office job!
Now let me get back to work.