Cultural Wantons of the new Millennium

Abstract

ABSTRACT In Culture and Agency (1988/1996, CUP), I distinguished between the ‘Cultural System' (C.S.), namely all items logged into the universal cultural archive, and ‘Socio-Cultural' (S-C) interaction, namely how we persuade others ideationally. This paper charts major changes in the C.S. since circa 1980 when a new generative mechanism developed - the synergy between globalized capitalism and digital science. Consequently, (i) cultural change became intensely morphogenetic; (ii) was increasingly treated as a marketable commodity, (iii) perpetrating the scam in which cultural goods (aka. Intellectual Property) lose value if freely shared. The concomitant changes in the S-C emphasized (a) its distracting effects for personal reflexivity, because the ‘presentism’ of SNMs fostered popular cultural wantons, (b) with damaging consequences for traditional social movements, and (c) encouraging Fake News from the political and economic elites, since it is less sanctioned and sooner forgotten than previously, but is more influential. Such elites are now cultural wantons themselves.