a good read from the flyover blog on culture and whatnot in america and beyond:

"The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics," Gioia said. "It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us."

How did we get to this point? Gioia places blame squarely on the writers, artists and thinkers he wants everyone to celebrate. Since the 1960s, academics have gotten good at taking to each other about arcane ideas but bad at talking to the general culture, a position also argued persuasively by Greg Sandow in his provocative (his word) assessments of the future of classical music.

One of things that academics have gotten good at talking about among one another is the ideology of multiculturalism. This was touched on briefly in a recent Times piece by Edward Rothstein concerning the ubiquitous indifference to the plight of orchestras and the decline of classical music among average Americans.

"Why, in other words, should we care?" Rothstein writes. "After decades of arguments asserting that different cultures just have different ways of expressing themselves, that distinctions and assertions of value are tendentious, and that Western art music deserves no pride of place in a multicultural American society, it may be that even the problem is no longer clearly seen."

read on here.