
Forty Years of 'Civilisation'  - asciilifeform
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204574505170999959800.html
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tumult
_If you think Michael Jackson was a musical master, you've come to the wrong
shop._

Oh, blow me. Michael Jackson was an incredible musician. Have you actually
_listened_ to any of his music?

 _Four decades ago, Time magazine declared "Civilisation" to be TV's "most
distinguished (not to mention only new) cultural series" of the year. Those
words have a hollow ring today. For years PBS has been trimming back its high-
culture programming, partly because it doesn't do well in the ratings and
partly, I suspect, because such lofty fare has lost favor with the
intellectual elite._

I bet that, decades ago, the quality of AM radio programming declined as it
struggled for attention among people (especially younger ones) turning to TV.
It shouldn't be surprising that today, TV programming is racing to the bottom.

~~~
alexgartrell
Do you really think that Michael Jackson will have the permanence of
Shakespeare or Jefferson? Young people mostly don't care about [him] or for
his music, and he is unlikely to make the history books.

I agree with the spirit of your comment though, in believing that the linked
article was elitist beyond reason. Anyone who would describe western society
as contemptible because the "intellectuals" don't watch PBS needs to pick up a
book (just like the "intellectuals" have done). The information density is way
too low for someone with real stuff to do, which is why television is
relegated to relaxation time, where bandwidth is a non-issue.

[Edited]

~~~
AlisdairO
_Do you really think that Michael Jackson will have the permanence of
Shakespeare or Jefferson? Young people mostly don't care about or for his
music_

I have no real comment on MJ as a musician, but I just wanted to point out
that young people don't care about or for Shakespeare either, and haven't for
a long time. They overwhelmingly tend to feel that it is something forced upon
them that has little relevance to their lives. Obviously there are exceptions,
but they aren't exactly the common case.

~~~
maw
It's true that many young people don't care much about Shakespeare, but some
people come around to reading him later in life, voluntarily. For my part, I
haven't read much Shakespeare as an adult, but I have a poster about him and
his language framed and mounted on the wall behind me... I mean, I now read a
lot of stuff that I should (for want of a better word) have been reading in
high school and college (and Shakespeare is part of that canon) and don't read
much stuff I read when I was in high school. (It's true about the poster,
though.)

Jackson's style of music isn't really my cup of tea, but maybe the former
young people of the future will come around to him too, much as I came around
to listening to the Beatles.

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mrsfields
A small detail Teachout doesn't mention is that "Civilisation" was funded by
the British taxpayer, meaning it was a product of the socialism WSJ readers
despise so much.

~~~
jrmurad
So? "WSJ readers" might say that they'd _prefer_ "Civilisation" (or space
exploration, universities, development of the Internet, etc.) be supported on
a voluntary basis rather than by forced participation. That hardly precludes
them from enjoying the result.

May a grocery-store-meat-consumer, who is aware of the cruel treatment of
livestock, not be opposed to the methods by which his sustenance originated?
Would you criticize him (as a hypocrite?) for advocating change so that in the
future, hopefully, good things will have more ethical origins rather than
having "the ends justify the means"?

~~~
fnid
Would you prefer to have the means justify the ends? If you say, "Hey
capitalism is great." but it results in the destruction of our civilization,
then is that okay?

I just came up with that. Usually people say, "The ends justify the means."
But I've never known of someone to take it the other way. Thinking about it
that way though, it seems that is precisely what we do with Capitalism. We
know that greed is bad and leads to bad things, but we justify those ends
because the alternative means, that is, a bit of loss of individualism and
sacrifice of public property is, by capitalists, considered a severe
punishment to the self.

So we say things like, "Bankers destroying the economy is okay, because we
were more free until it happened." We say, "Environmental destruction is okay,
because only a socialist world could prevent it." We say, "Big SUVs and houses
and consumerism are good, because the government shouldn't interfere in
people's personal decisions."

But the end product of all that is a less habitable planet and less happy
place for future generations -- and not only future generations, but _these_
generations _in_ the future.

~~~
defen
While I disagree with you about capitalism, I think this concept of "the means
justify the ends" is a very interesting one. It seems to be providing a name
for a problem that befalls people on both sides of the political spectrum -
following an ideology to its logical conclusion, regardless of its actual
effects on the world.

------
Create
book is called The Great War for Civilisation after the inscription on the
back of my father's World War I medal.

After WWI the British and French created the borders of Northern Ireland,
Yugoslavia and the Middle East.

I've spent my entire professional career watching the people within those
borders burn.

For me it's all about linking history with the present.

\-- <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4393358.stm>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_for_Civilisation:...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_for_Civilisation:_The_Conquest_of_the_Middle_East)

[http://www.archive.org/details/RobertFiskWarGeopoliticsAndHi...](http://www.archive.org/details/RobertFiskWarGeopoliticsAndHistory)

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drinian
Author insinuates that all civilization comes from Western Europe. Worse, he
suggests that, somehow, the fact that the classic masters more or less
invented the arts of painting, writing, performance, architecture, etc. as we
know them today indicates that they lived in a more "civilized" period.

The fact of the matter is that, for most people living at that time, life was
nasty, brutish, and short (to borrow Hobbes' phrase). Wars were regularly
fought as a means of political gain, sanitation was unknown, religious
tolerance was sporadic at best, etc., etc.

Yes, the end product has been the greatest global civilization that the world
has ever known, but that wasn't how things started out.

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billswift
Actually neither mass culture nor "high" (literary/artistic) culture is really
defining Western civilization, their equivalents were/are shared by anything
that could remotely be called a civilization. The defining characteristics of
Western civ are individual liberty, capitalism (economic liberty), and
especially science. Science itself could be called intellectual liberty,
intellectualism bound not by class or bureaucracy, but controlled only by the
reality it seeks to understand.

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chipsy
Shows like "Civilisation" are based on a notion of high culture - to uphold
some things above others; the rationale for something being "high" tends to be
flimsy. It's a cultural meme - not necessarily bad or good, but highly
opinionated and in a way that embeds itself deep into our psyche. Recognition
of this kind of notion was the entire point of pg's "What You Can't Say."

~~~
jimbokun
Ironically, this specific notion of high culture has become the epitome of
"What You Can't Say."

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asciilifeform
Dear Editors,

Why was this renamed?

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dimitar
Where is the definition of Western culture? Also, civilization?

