America's Cultural Breakdown

 America appears to be on the road to cultural extinction, the eradication by public consent of culture of any true and profound value, that is. And if not total extinction, which is probably highly unlikely because of the sheer mass of popular entertainment material it produces, then surely it is in a steep decline and will undergo a profound diminshment. When a popular film critic died recently, the media exploded with eulogies. A day later a former poet laureate passed away and there was hardly a ripple in the news. When a man who writes about movies is deemed more worthy of media attention than a prominent poet then you know the mainstream culture is becoming more and more diluted and diverted into the shallows. Where are the deep currents of American culture that once flowed from the rich sources of the ancient past? Fading fast, I’m afraid.   

I wish I could be more optimistic. No doubt many intellectuals will dismiss my declarations as cynical at worst or curmudgeonly at best. Why can’t I be more positive? Because I have been a college teacher for 20 years at a wide variety of institutions and have witnessed among my students the erosion of multi-level thinking, the dismissal of both new and older ideas of great value, and the rapid narrowing of their perspectives. And they are the bellwethers, I’m afraid.

It is so tragically ironic that the young generation’s constant exposure to internet has not broadened their mental activity but rather made them less tolerant of carefully examining anything that does not fit into a preconceived format. And what is perhaps even more disturbing to me is that the internet has made complex human interaction and exploratory conversation a thing of the past.

The mass media has both fed into this mania and developed out of it. We have sound bites and visual snapshots. We have plenty of superficial information. We have crowd sourcing and mass thinking.  We have celebrity culture. We have tons of information. We have lots of noise and very little substance out there in Mass-Media-land. But America no longer has a genuine culture of true significance.  

NOTE: Ava Gardner said, speaking about herself, "Deep down I'm pretty superficial." Couldn't the same be said of American culture in the 21st century?