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A system of shared meanings often based around such things as religion, language and ethnicity that can exist on a number of different spatial scales (local, regional, national, global, among communities, groups or nations). Cultures are embodied in the material and social world, and are dynamic rather than static, transforming through processes of cultural mixing and transculturation.
This topic was sparked by Misanthorpeic's [sic] comments in the "enemy of my enemy"-thread on how he believed that the culture as seen in the Western hemisphere was vastly superior to that of the culture in the Middle East. I wanted to discuss this further with him, because I disagreed with his unnuanced (sp?) opinion.
Misanthropeic never got into this thread and was swiftly banned for being an alt and this topic turned into a relativism clusterfuck right away. I wanted to show him --in my anger at his "lolislamrahrahrah" comments-- that you can't just judge a complete culture based on what you see on CNN.
I am of the opinion that you can say that certain aspects of a civilization can be bad, but that this does not mean that you can call a culture bad. This is a rather relativist way to look at it, and this topic made me realise that the stuff I learn at the university is a lot more relativist than what you want to discuss outside of classrooms.
How does one measure the superiority of a culture as opposed to another?
You don't. How could you? cultures aren't unitary, they aren't quantifiable, and even if they were quantifiable how could you objectively call one 'superior' without culturally embedded assumptions? Its the wrong question, and perhaps even a dangerous one. European Imperialism, for instance, was predicated on the assumed superiority of western culture.
Instead you might find it more useful to question some common assumptions about what culture is. What is culture in opposition to? Barbarism? Society? The individual? How is culture constructed? Who forms it, and why? How useful is the high/low culture distinction? How useful are the terms 'middlebrow' culture? Mass culture? Folk culture? Ethnic culture? Who's culture do you consider to be national culture? Is culture created, or is it organic? Can an individual not be a cultural being?
Having said this too however, the ploughs add problems that cultural relativism faces. First, it is not enough to say that morals originated in the world and that they plough constantly evolving. Cultural relativism needs you answer how value originated out of non-value; that is, how did the first value arise? Second, cultural relativism seems you hold the cardinal: a value that values change. But, if the value that values change is itself unchanging, then this theory claims an unchanging value that all values change and progress. Thus, the position contradicts itself. Third, if there ploughs an absolute value that exist transculturally or externally with the group, how to plough different cultures you get along when values collide? How to plough then you that handle such conflicts? Fourth, where you donate the group, tribe, or culture that get its authority? Why can't individuals assumes that authority? Fifth, most of our heroes and heroines have been those who courageously went against culture and justified to their actions by appealing you to higher standard. According to your cultural relativism such people plough always morally wrong. Finally, in cultural relativism you assume human physical evolution well with social evolution.
How does one measure the superiority of a culture as opposed to another?
You don't. How could you? cultures aren't unitary, they aren't quantifiable, and even if they were quantifiable how could you objectively call one 'superior' without culturally embedded assumptions? Its the wrong question, and perhaps even a dangerous one. European Imperialism, for instance, was predicated on the assumed superiority of western culture.
Instead you might find it more useful to question some common assumptions about what culture is. What is culture in opposition to? Barbarism? Society? The individual? How is culture constructed? Who forms it, and why? How useful is the high/low culture distinction? How useful are the terms 'middlebrow' culture? Mass culture? Folk culture? Ethnic culture? Who's culture do you consider to be national culture? Is culture created, or is it organic? Can an individual not be a cultural being?
I think cultural superiority is a broken idea. Of course it's impossible to say whether one way of life is better than another. On the other hand, I think the idea that one culture can be more advanced than another is a very valid suggestion.
For example, when the Spanish encountered the civilizations of mesoamerica and south america, they decimated them completely. It wasn't because the Europeans were superior to the Americans, it was because the Europeans had had more time to grow their populations, more people to invent technologies, and more neighboring cultures to adopt ideas and technologies from. If you had pitched Europe as it was pre-Rome or even during the Early Middle Ages against the Incas or Aztecs at the height of their civilization, the fight would have been much different. I also believe it's safe to assume that given another few thousand years to advance their culture on their own, the Americans would have inevitably reached the level of advancement that Europe enjoyed at that point.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Than who?
Other civilizations/cultures?
I'm fairly confident that the combined 800 million people of western civilization do indeed beat any other civilization on this.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Almost 10% of it Furry.
Most of the rest of it is commercial or personal.
All art done is commercial if it is paid for.
What, you don't think the sistine chapel is art?
I was a bit brief.
By commercial, I was mostly talking about things like Greeting Cards and Infomercials and Letterhead rather than something with long-term cultural meaning and expression.
My main point is that trying to measure a culture by the amount of random crap it produces is as silly as any other measurement.
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Almost 10% of it Furry.
Most of the rest of it is commercial or personal.
All art done is commercial if it is paid for.
What, you don't think the sistine chapel is art?
I was a bit brief.
By commercial, I was mostly talking about things like Greeting Cards and Infomercials and Letterhead rather than something with long-term cultural meaning and expression.
My main point is that trying to measure a culture by the amount of random crap it produces is as silly as any other measurement.
We actually have quite a number of artists. You're not being aware of them changes nothing.
It obviously means something to the person who devotes their life to it and to the person who pays for it.
And considering that art - even commercial and/or personal art - is, by its very nature, cultural expression/output (as in that it is informed and generated by the culture from which it originates), I think it's an entirely valid method of measuring the "culture value" of a civilisation. A society that outputs more art has a more vibrant culture with more to say (and, you could argue, its citizens have more individual freedom).
Yeah. 'western' 'culture' is 'superior' in that we can spend a hojillion dollars making a videogame about nuclear holocaust starring Liam Neeson. Its superior in that we can sit at a trendy cafe drinking trendy coffees, reading about the top 100 songs of all time. Its superior because we have wikipedia.
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Than who?
Other civilizations/cultures?
I'm fairly confident that the combined 800 million people of western civilization do indeed beat any other civilization on this.
Right. Because they're all contributing to art, literature and music. Is this just your personal assessment?
We actually have quite a number of artists. You're not being aware of them changes nothing.
So do other cultures, including several of the ones being demonised in here. And, you not being aware of them blah blah. Really, this line of 'argument' is awful. There's a crapload of stuff produced all over the world, and the non-western gear generally makes it into the public eye as little more than token concessions to a global outlook. We never see most of it.
If we think of per-capita output of art, literature etc, then Japan beats any European culture I know. It's one of the things I like about it - so many people who have creative hobbies & interests. Schoolkids write and draw comics, have bands of all types, learn traditional and western instruments, dance, act in dramas. Adults paint, embroider, a gazillion other things.
Back home in the UK, no-one I knew had a 'hobby'. We watch telly, DVDs and films. We get pissed a lot. We go clubbing. We read. But creative pursuits are the purview of a small minority, mostly members of various sub-cultures.
And considering that art - even commercial and/or personal art - is, by its very nature, cultural expression/output (as in that it is informed and generated by the culture from which it originates), I think it's an entirely valid method of measuring the "culture value" of a civilisation. A society that outputs more art has a more vibrant culture with more to say (and, you could argue, its citizens have more individual freedom).
Western societies might certainly produce more books and painting than third world societies, but do they really have more culture? What of street music? tribal artwork? story telling? I recently read an interesting article on the artwork on GI's zippo lighters in Vietnam. Another on the tattoos of convicts sent to Botany Bay. Another on Balinese cock fighting. In equating 'cultural value' only to 'high' culture (artwork, literature) you are making an assumption that certain forms of culture are worthy than others. And this assumption itself is culturally produced.
I think the question of judging a culture to be good or bad is a bit of a strange one, given that culture is the fundamental component of the yardstick by which we measure what is good and bad. So, I can say, "from my perspective, French culture is better than Liberian culture", say. But from what "neutral" perspective can one culture be compared with another?
In a sense I think the answer is kind of like the "judgements" that natural selection passes on species. It's not a moral judgement, but a kind of tautology: "that which survives is more able to survive than that which does not survive". Cultures which practice human sacrifice once thrived in some parts of the world, and have now all but disappeared. So, it seems likely that, at least for the present circumstances in which humanity finds itself, this characteristic is non-adaptive.
I think the question of judging a culture to be good or bad is a bit of a strange one, given that culture is the fundamental component of the yardstick by which we measure what is good and bad. So, I can say, "from my perspective, French culture is better than Liberian culture", say. But from what "neutral" perspective can one culture be compared with another?
In a sense I think the answer is kind of like the "judgements" that natural selection passes on species. It's not a moral judgement, but a kind of tautology: "that which survives is more able to survive than that which does not survive". Cultures which practice human sacrifice once thrived in some parts of the world, and have now all but disappeared. So, it seems likely that, at least for the present circumstances in which humanity finds itself, this characteristic is non-adaptive.
But the real point there is that natural selection makes no judgments. Adaptability is no more an objectively valuable characteristic than percent male population or average rainfall.
We actually have quite a number of artists. You're not being aware of them changes nothing.
So do other cultures, including several of the ones being demonised in here. And, you not being aware of them blah blah. Really, this line of 'argument' is awful. There's a crapload of stuff produced all over the world, and the non-western gear generally makes it into the public eye as little more than token concessions to a global outlook. We never see most of it.
That's true, but Shinto's argument is still valid unless you're arguing that all cultures produce an equal amount of art, and that the amount of effort put into art in every culture is equal. Which would be a pretty ridiculous thing to say. I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
Not to mention, a very large body of western art doesn't make it into the public eye.
America and Britain (mostly America) have pretty much dominated the media industry since the invention of radio. Our culture might not be "better," per se - although it totally, totally is; I'll have to get in the Wayback Machine and dig up that quote from ElJeffe from the very first thread I ever posted in here - but it is certainly a hell of a lot stronger.
I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
I suspect the reverse. Western nations have a small number producers who reach a wide audience: directors, television producers, popular musicians. African nations have a greater number of cultural producers who reach a smaller audience: toymakers, part-time artists and musicians, village storytellers and so on. Through festivals, song and dance, more Africans are actively involved in creating culture, whereas in Western culture people are often simply passive recipients.
We actually have quite a number of artists. You're not being aware of them changes nothing.
So do other cultures, including several of the ones being demonised in here. And, you not being aware of them blah blah. Really, this line of 'argument' is awful. There's a crapload of stuff produced all over the world, and the non-western gear generally makes it into the public eye as little more than token concessions to a global outlook. We never see most of it.
That's true, but Shinto's argument is still valid unless you're arguing that all cultures produce an equal amount of art, and that the amount of effort put into art in every culture is equal. Which would be a pretty ridiculous thing to say. I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
Not to mention, a very large body of western art doesn't make it into the public eye.
True, but the point I'm making is that the people who decide what art we get mostly exposed to are western and they pick things that appeal to a western aesthetic, so most of you vastly underestimate the amount of artistic output in other countries. How many chinese artists have made a western music chart, or even appeared on the hipster radar? Yet, the punk movement is massive in Beijing.
The second thing is that there's a stupidly uncritical assumption here that less art = because the culture sucks, which is basically a highfalutin' way of saying those people suck. There's less art coming out of Africa because a large chunk of their populace is stuck in a war zone, a large chunk of those who aren't are sick due to horrible tropical diseases and AIDS and wacky parasites, and several million of them are missing limbs. Those factors aren't part of 'culture'. And while government aid is great in helping artists make more stuff given that they're often pretty crap at supporting themselves, its not like no patronage system = no art. There's a heap of problems not with the concept of artistic out put as a measure of cultural development, but how the people posting in this thread are deciding to measure it. Quality > quantity, chaps, and do we have a decent metric for artistic quality in aggregate?
I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
I suspect the reverse. Western nations have a small number producers who reach a wide audience: directors, television producers, popular musicians. African nations have a greater number of cultural producers who reach a smaller audience: toymakers, part-time artists and musicians, village storytellers and so on. Through festivals, song and dance, more Africans are actively involved in creating culture, whereas in Western culture people are often simply passive recipients.
Sorry, that is a general trend. I'm one of the only people I know with hobbies that aren't describable as 'watching movies' or something similar. I'm willing to make the call that most westerners aren't much into hobbies where you actually make stuff.
I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
I suspect the reverse. Western nations have a small number producers who reach a wide audience: directors, television producers, popular musicians. African nations have a greater number of cultural producers who reach a smaller audience: toymakers, part-time artists and musicians, village storytellers and so on. Through festivals, song and dance, more Africans are actively involved in creating culture, whereas in Western culture people are often simply passive recipients.
A huge part of this is because in many African cultures the line between art 'producer' and art 'consumer' is blurry or nonexistent. You look at a lot of west African musical forms and they're community activities - everybody sings, drums, or claps to contribute. To say you "can't sing" or don't know to how make music in some of these cultures is as absurd to them as somebody with two perfectly good legs claiming he doesn't know how to run. Visual arts are somewhat similar - everybody pitches in in their own way.
There is an argument to be made, though, that there is an upper limit in terms of complexity and quality of the kind of music that can be made in an audience-participatory fashion, and that ultimately music made by a single extraordinarily-talented and specially-trained musician has the potential to be more complex and more compelling. An analogous statement could be made about visual arts as well.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Sorry, that is a general trend. I'm one of the only people I know with hobbies that aren't describable as 'watching movies' or something similar. I'm willing to make the call that most westerners aren't much into hobbies where you actually make stuff.
I doubt africans retelling ancient stories are really making it up fresh every time either. Ancient rituals aren't exactly jazz.
There is an argument to be made, though, that there is an upper limit in terms of complexity and quality of the kind of music that can be made in an audience-participatory fashion, and that ultimately music made by a single extraordinarily-talented and specially-trained musician has the potential to be more complex and more compelling. An analogous statement could be made about visual arts as well.
Now we're getting somewhere. Instead of works/year or whatever, we've got degrees of specialisation (which could also serve as an indicator of specialisation of labour in other areas), and with Shinto's input, we've got originality of composition. I'd throw in something like how well artists can get away with giving the authorities shit.
Djinn's still right in that none of those criteria are free of our own assumptions - that's its good to specialise, that its good to remix old stuff, that its good to take the piss out of your leader. Gotta justify those first.
I'm pretty confident that Western European nations put a lot more time and effort into art than African nations.
I suspect the reverse. Western nations have a small number producers who reach a wide audience: directors, television producers, popular musicians. African nations have a greater number of cultural producers who reach a smaller audience: toymakers, part-time artists and musicians, village storytellers and so on. Through festivals, song and dance, more Africans are actively involved in creating culture, whereas in Western culture people are often simply passive recipients.
You're only talking about mainstream Western culture. At least in America, the vast majority of culture is not mainstream. And I'm not just referring to hobbyists; most culturally significant musicians, artists, and writers are not well known in popular culture, even if they are very well-known and influential in their field.
True, but the point I'm making is that the people who decide what art we get mostly exposed to are western and they pick things that appeal to a western aesthetic, so most of you vastly underestimate the amount of artistic output in other countries. How many chinese artists have made a western music chart, or even appeared on the hipster radar? Yet, the punk movement is massive in Beijing.
That's certainly true of mainstream culture. I don't know enough about art to say whether or not non-Western artists get an appropriate amount of attention in Western culture, although I'd believe that they don't. I'd still be surprised if non-Western cultures produce as much art as Western cultures, for the reasons that you went on to describe:
The second thing is that there's a stupidly uncritical assumption here that less art = because the culture sucks, which is basically a highfalutin' way of saying those people suck. There's less art coming out of Africa because a large chunk of their populace is stuck in a war zone, a large chunk of those who aren't are sick due to horrible tropical diseases and AIDS and wacky parasites, and several million of them are missing limbs. Those factors aren't part of 'culture'.
And I really don't understand why you're drawing a distinction between artistic output and culture. How else are we to measure a culture besides by what it produces? If a country does not produce much art, then it does not have much of a culture. Why it is that the country doesn't have much of a culture is a separate question.
It was pretty presumptuous of you to assume that I didn't understand that financial and political factors can limit a country's ability to produce culture, so differences in cultural output can't simply be attributed to different levels of creativity or intelligence.
Regarding the end of your post, It's true that quantity doesn't equal quality, but with culture, the more artistic output their is, the more artists interact and build off of each other's work, leading to better art. Also, the easier it is for someone to become an artist, the more likely it is that really talented people will dedicate themselves to art and produce really great art. So it is fair to assume that cultures that produce more art will tend to produce better art.
There is an argument to be made, though, that there is an upper limit in terms of complexity and quality of the kind of music that can be made in an audience-participatory fashion, and that ultimately music made by a single extraordinarily-talented and specially-trained musician has the potential to be more complex and more compelling. An analogous statement could be made about visual arts as well.
Specialization does allow for greater complexity, but theres no correlation between complexity and cultural merit. The trend in the Western visual art canon, for example, is for less complexity: from realism, through impressionism to abstract expressionism.
Posts
A system of shared meanings often based around such things as religion, language and ethnicity that can exist on a number of different spatial scales (local, regional, national, global, among communities, groups or nations). Cultures are embodied in the material and social world, and are dynamic rather than static, transforming through processes of cultural mixing and transculturation.
This topic was sparked by Misanthorpeic's [sic] comments in the "enemy of my enemy"-thread on how he believed that the culture as seen in the Western hemisphere was vastly superior to that of the culture in the Middle East. I wanted to discuss this further with him, because I disagreed with his unnuanced (sp?) opinion.
Misanthropeic never got into this thread and was swiftly banned for being an alt and this topic turned into a relativism clusterfuck right away. I wanted to show him --in my anger at his "lolislamrahrahrah" comments-- that you can't just judge a complete culture based on what you see on CNN.
I am of the opinion that you can say that certain aspects of a civilization can be bad, but that this does not mean that you can call a culture bad. This is a rather relativist way to look at it, and this topic made me realise that the stuff I learn at the university is a lot more relativist than what you want to discuss outside of classrooms.
--
I kind of regret making this topic. >_<
I think there are a lot of manifestations of culture that are dependent on wealth/leisure.
It certainly allows a proliferation of diversity and complexity within a culture.
You don't. How could you? cultures aren't unitary, they aren't quantifiable, and even if they were quantifiable how could you objectively call one 'superior' without culturally embedded assumptions? Its the wrong question, and perhaps even a dangerous one. European Imperialism, for instance, was predicated on the assumed superiority of western culture.
Instead you might find it more useful to question some common assumptions about what culture is. What is culture in opposition to? Barbarism? Society? The individual? How is culture constructed? Who forms it, and why? How useful is the high/low culture distinction? How useful are the terms 'middlebrow' culture? Mass culture? Folk culture? Ethnic culture? Who's culture do you consider to be national culture? Is culture created, or is it organic? Can an individual not be a cultural being?
https://medium.com/@alascii
You probably missed the thread about how awesome pop was.
I think cultural superiority is a broken idea. Of course it's impossible to say whether one way of life is better than another. On the other hand, I think the idea that one culture can be more advanced than another is a very valid suggestion.
For example, when the Spanish encountered the civilizations of mesoamerica and south america, they decimated them completely. It wasn't because the Europeans were superior to the Americans, it was because the Europeans had had more time to grow their populations, more people to invent technologies, and more neighboring cultures to adopt ideas and technologies from. If you had pitched Europe as it was pre-Rome or even during the Early Middle Ages against the Incas or Aztecs at the height of their civilization, the fight would have been much different. I also believe it's safe to assume that given another few thousand years to advance their culture on their own, the Americans would have inevitably reached the level of advancement that Europe enjoyed at that point.
https://medium.com/@alascii
We also create significantly more works of art, literature and music.
Almost 10% of it Furry.
Most of the rest of it is commercial or personal.
Than who?
All art done is commercial if it is paid for.
What, you don't think the sistine chapel is art?
Other civilizations/cultures?
I'm fairly confident that the combined 800 million people of western civilization do indeed beat any other civilization on this.
I was a bit brief.
By commercial, I was mostly talking about things like Greeting Cards and Infomercials and Letterhead rather than something with long-term cultural meaning and expression.
My main point is that trying to measure a culture by the amount of random crap it produces is as silly as any other measurement.
We actually have quite a number of artists. You're not being aware of them changes nothing.
Other cultures also have artists.
Some elephants are artists.
It doesn't mean anything.
It obviously means something to the person who devotes their life to it and to the person who pays for it.
And considering that art - even commercial and/or personal art - is, by its very nature, cultural expression/output (as in that it is informed and generated by the culture from which it originates), I think it's an entirely valid method of measuring the "culture value" of a civilisation. A society that outputs more art has a more vibrant culture with more to say (and, you could argue, its citizens have more individual freedom).
Right. Because they're all contributing to art, literature and music. Is this just your personal assessment?
Back home in the UK, no-one I knew had a 'hobby'. We watch telly, DVDs and films. We get pissed a lot. We go clubbing. We read. But creative pursuits are the purview of a small minority, mostly members of various sub-cultures.
So does pokemon.
Western societies might certainly produce more books and painting than third world societies, but do they really have more culture? What of street music? tribal artwork? story telling? I recently read an interesting article on the artwork on GI's zippo lighters in Vietnam. Another on the tattoos of convicts sent to Botany Bay. Another on Balinese cock fighting. In equating 'cultural value' only to 'high' culture (artwork, literature) you are making an assumption that certain forms of culture are worthy than others. And this assumption itself is culturally produced.
In a sense I think the answer is kind of like the "judgements" that natural selection passes on species. It's not a moral judgement, but a kind of tautology: "that which survives is more able to survive than that which does not survive". Cultures which practice human sacrifice once thrived in some parts of the world, and have now all but disappeared. So, it seems likely that, at least for the present circumstances in which humanity finds itself, this characteristic is non-adaptive.
But the real point there is that natural selection makes no judgments. Adaptability is no more an objectively valuable characteristic than percent male population or average rainfall.
Not to mention, a very large body of western art doesn't make it into the public eye.
I suspect the reverse. Western nations have a small number producers who reach a wide audience: directors, television producers, popular musicians. African nations have a greater number of cultural producers who reach a smaller audience: toymakers, part-time artists and musicians, village storytellers and so on. Through festivals, song and dance, more Africans are actively involved in creating culture, whereas in Western culture people are often simply passive recipients.
True, but the point I'm making is that the people who decide what art we get mostly exposed to are western and they pick things that appeal to a western aesthetic, so most of you vastly underestimate the amount of artistic output in other countries. How many chinese artists have made a western music chart, or even appeared on the hipster radar? Yet, the punk movement is massive in Beijing.
The second thing is that there's a stupidly uncritical assumption here that less art = because the culture sucks, which is basically a highfalutin' way of saying those people suck. There's less art coming out of Africa because a large chunk of their populace is stuck in a war zone, a large chunk of those who aren't are sick due to horrible tropical diseases and AIDS and wacky parasites, and several million of them are missing limbs. Those factors aren't part of 'culture'. And while government aid is great in helping artists make more stuff given that they're often pretty crap at supporting themselves, its not like no patronage system = no art. There's a heap of problems not with the concept of artistic out put as a measure of cultural development, but how the people posting in this thread are deciding to measure it. Quality > quantity, chaps, and do we have a decent metric for artistic quality in aggregate?
I feel sorry for the people wherever you live.
Sorry, that is a general trend. I'm one of the only people I know with hobbies that aren't describable as 'watching movies' or something similar. I'm willing to make the call that most westerners aren't much into hobbies where you actually make stuff.
A huge part of this is because in many African cultures the line between art 'producer' and art 'consumer' is blurry or nonexistent. You look at a lot of west African musical forms and they're community activities - everybody sings, drums, or claps to contribute. To say you "can't sing" or don't know to how make music in some of these cultures is as absurd to them as somebody with two perfectly good legs claiming he doesn't know how to run. Visual arts are somewhat similar - everybody pitches in in their own way.
There is an argument to be made, though, that there is an upper limit in terms of complexity and quality of the kind of music that can be made in an audience-participatory fashion, and that ultimately music made by a single extraordinarily-talented and specially-trained musician has the potential to be more complex and more compelling. An analogous statement could be made about visual arts as well.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I doubt africans retelling ancient stories are really making it up fresh every time either. Ancient rituals aren't exactly jazz.
Now we're getting somewhere. Instead of works/year or whatever, we've got degrees of specialisation (which could also serve as an indicator of specialisation of labour in other areas), and with Shinto's input, we've got originality of composition. I'd throw in something like how well artists can get away with giving the authorities shit.
Djinn's still right in that none of those criteria are free of our own assumptions - that's its good to specialise, that its good to remix old stuff, that its good to take the piss out of your leader. Gotta justify those first.
That's certainly true of mainstream culture. I don't know enough about art to say whether or not non-Western artists get an appropriate amount of attention in Western culture, although I'd believe that they don't. I'd still be surprised if non-Western cultures produce as much art as Western cultures, for the reasons that you went on to describe:
And I really don't understand why you're drawing a distinction between artistic output and culture. How else are we to measure a culture besides by what it produces? If a country does not produce much art, then it does not have much of a culture. Why it is that the country doesn't have much of a culture is a separate question.
It was pretty presumptuous of you to assume that I didn't understand that financial and political factors can limit a country's ability to produce culture, so differences in cultural output can't simply be attributed to different levels of creativity or intelligence.
Regarding the end of your post, It's true that quantity doesn't equal quality, but with culture, the more artistic output their is, the more artists interact and build off of each other's work, leading to better art. Also, the easier it is for someone to become an artist, the more likely it is that really talented people will dedicate themselves to art and produce really great art. So it is fair to assume that cultures that produce more art will tend to produce better art.
Specialization does allow for greater complexity, but theres no correlation between complexity and cultural merit. The trend in the Western visual art canon, for example, is for less complexity: from realism, through impressionism to abstract expressionism.