We Feared Monoculture and Now we Have No Culture

What is culture? Culture is the shared values that bind us together. It is primarily the art the we experience.

In a world where everything is functional, there are too many influencers, and an excess amount of culture. Rather than leading to a cultural renaissance, it has led us to having nearly no culture at all.

Monoculture

Some of us are old enough to remember when experts in culture feared monoculture because of television and other forms of mass media. Back in those heady days in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, much of culture was controlled by a handful of record producers, book publishers, studio executives, and television programming executives. Because most people had access to the same stuff and through the same channels, American culture often had a certain consistency to it that is virtually unknown to us today. When popular TV shows were on the air, everyone watched them, at the time they were on, and then talked about them the next day. Casual conversation could be filled with what happened “last night” on Dallas, Dynasty, Seinfeld, Friends, Roseanne, or other popular shows watched by most people. Music was no better. Groups of people listened to certain genres, but if you were into pop, there was a slate of artists that most people listened to and talked about with their friends. The same story…