Notes on "The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism", Daniel Bell
I'm trying to figure out how I want to go about taking notes on things I've read. Really, I should do it in the act, but circumstances do not always permit. If nothing else, I should write something, to comprehend (or attempt to) a work on my own terms.
I'm starting here with Daniel Bell's The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. It's a collection of essays on the topic of the title, but in the foreword he clarifies that it's more about those of bourgeois society. Most of these essays were written in the 70s. I've only read through the first one as of yet, so that's all I can touch on so far.
I think instead of a start-to-finish summary it will make more sense to me if I just pluck out some of the interesting aspects for now, perhaps to guide a re-read.
He identifies himself as a conservative w/r/t culture early on (as opposed to a liberal w/r/t politics or a socialist w/r/t economy). What he starts to get at, by my read, is that Modernism as a cultural phenomenon (and bourgeois culture generally) has replaced being with self, restraint with indulgence, religion (and a consequent stabilizing tradition) with irreligion (and via the destruction of tradition, a state of groundlessness for humanity).
I lack an understanding of modernism or the modern, generally speaking. I kind of get it through context -- in some contexts -- but in the realm of culture I am just not very familiar with artistic movements. So I lack a solid grasp of what distinguishes pre-modern, modern, and post-modern, whether in literature, visual art, music, that sort of thing.
Regardless, I think what he's proposing up front is that there have been a number of shifts towards individualisms: abandonment of religion, abandonment of tradition, pursuit of independence, pursuit of whims. And that these shifts have created a world that is lacking in cohesion or even coherence, that lacks meaning, that is lacking in solid enough ground for one to find firm spiritual, social, perhaps even intellectual footing. I think this hits even harder in the light of the development of oft-incoherent spaces on social media, though I wonder if he could have even predicted that at all.
"I write not of the events of the decade but of the deeper cultural crises which beset bourgeois societies and which, in the long run, devitgalize a country, confuse the motivations of individuals, instill a sense of carpe diem, and undercut its civic will. The problems are less those of the adequacy of institutions than of the kinds of meanings which sustain a society."
There's still a lot to dig into in the first essay, even. This train of thought is just what jumped out first. I get how a broader culture or cultures could set themselves down such a path. And I certainly understand the reasons one would have to reject any or all religion, and most of our traditions as well. I think there's a lot there that just does not work, or cannot work (and certainly cannot work in the ways they have been twisted to serve political or economic ends).
But I do sympathize with the idea that the effective destruction of the past, or the alienation/severance of one's connection with any broader society or culture... that that can result in a directionless, incoherent, hedonistic way of life. I feel that. I've experienced that. I don't think the solution is to just bring it all back, as attempted by e.g. the ideas and practices of the "tradcath" or "tradwife", which do not and cannot truly replicate a particular way of life. Regression is no salve (I should dig into this more). And I'm not sure we can just create something from nothing, either. Even if you could get a lot of people on board with wanting to follow a created religion, I don't think it sticks if it lacks a genuine human experience (as Bell notes).