Euphemism war

I think I may have left a rather huge hole in a rather large argument I’d rather not have when I referred to “the culture” as a euphemism last night.

When I was a kid, the word “culture” meant what my dictionary says. Rather than laboriously copy it, here’s a photo:

There is a Wiki post on the subject. It is over 14,000 words long, and it contains so many divergent definitions and permutations of culture that the word cannot be pinned down with any degree of specificity.

What this means, simply, is that “culture” has become another one of those weasel words, meaning one thing to one group, and another thing to another. It can mean whatever the user of the word might want it to mean. Often it is used as a sort of “trust cue”  by politically like-minded types who know what they mean when they say they want to “save the culture.” I hate to generalize, but I have noticed that most of the people who say they want to save the culture do not mean keeping up orchestras and art museums.  They are usually concerned about things like stopping homos from getting married, stopping women from having abortions, stopping teenagers from looking like sluts or slobs and having sex, stopping Hollywood from making dirty movies and from brainwashing citizens with leftist political drivel, and preventing “welfare culture” from spilling over into and infecting their sons and daughters.

In a broad sense, these things are all part of “the culture,” but they really don’t have much to do with what the word meant when I grew up. They are, of course, cultural features of certain people in certain places in this country. Whether that makes them dominant features, I do not know. That there is such a thing as “welfare culture” is very unfortunate, because it is a taxpayer-funded culture of entitlement, and it is unlikely to go away without major trouble. However, entitlement culture is not limited to welfare culture. It is economically driven, based on the simple principle that when you give people money, they will expect it and demand it. Welfare culture did not create welfare; it was created by it.

Trashy attire, promiscuous sex, and trashy films and music are like junk food in that some people like them, and others don’t. These things are all tastes. What I have never been able to understand (and here I admit once again that I am clueless) is why people get so hot and bothered by other people’s bad tastes, when what they should be doing is worrying about their own. It’s like the people complaining about junk food and McDonalds. Is anyone made to eat it? Is anyone made to see whatever garbage films or listen to whatever alleged music gets cranked out? Aside from rape, is anyone forced to have sex? You would almost think that some of the complainants are upset over the choices of their own children, as if they were forced to buy them junk food and had no choice in their taste in clothing. Is that it? Is the complaint that “other people” are in control of tastes? Are they?

The reason I can’t understand it is that I like to think my tastes are my own, and I honestly do not believe I am a victim of McDonalds, or the Beatles, or Alfred Kinsey, or Herbert Marcuse, and I frankly resent it when people tell me that I am.

A bigger concern is the notion that “the culture” is like some vast machine that controls everyone, and that if different people are “put in charge,” it can be made to operate correctly. Unfortunately, there are certain “controls.” Hollywood does exist, and it has a long — and in my view unfortunate — history of having been a quasi-governmental culture organ. (I think this accounts for much of its self-important arrogance.) Schools and universities exist, and children are forced to attend at the lower levels. If I had a child, I would never send him to a public school, and I would like to think that I could raise him to appreciate things other than trash, to be able to spot Hollywood propaganda, and dismiss it for what it is, but who knows? Are we talking about me and the kids I never had here? Or are we talking about other people and their kids? Am I supposed to be responsible for and concerned about people who are neither responsible for or concerned about me? Isn’t that communitarianism?

I like to think culture is an individual thing and not a group thing. Sure, there are groups, but once they get to define “their” “culture,” the results can be stultifying. Like “multiculturalism.” Another weasel word mainly used by activists who want to tell people what to do and whom to vote for.

I’d hate to think I have to choose a euphemism and get behind it. I so loathe group think and identity politics.

Or are some forms of identity politics better than others?