Warring Culture

THE CULTURE WAR is a phrase that has gained much meaning and use over the last couple of decades or so. Arguably, there is always and eternally some form of culture war or other in any vibrant,thriving, society. Different cultural values, artistically, philosophically, religiously, forever circulate through the population, creating controversy and choices. And, like every other aspect of human existence and culture, the intensity of these conflicting patterns of thought comes and goes in cycles. In America, for instance, the immediate post World War Two era, historically, seems to have been a time of relatively little cultural warfare, when the shared prosperity of the post war American economy helped create widespread contentment, and a fair amount of uniformity of agreement in cultural concerns and endeavors. The first time I personally noticed any cultural warfare in my idyllic life in the land of opportunity was during the Viet Nam War. Funny how winning an obviously virtuous war for national survival, freedom, and democracy against an evil tyrant unites and inspires a whole population, while losing a needless war for corporate power and capitalism results in a divided, angry country, fighting among itself. American military patriotism, such as the type which motivated the civilian population all throughout World War Two, never materialized around Viet Nam, even at the beginning of the Viet Nam war, which from the beginning seemed far away, mysterious, udefined in terms of American values, other than to weakly, rhetorically claim that we were over there fighting for freedom, democracy, and the American way, for...somebody or other. It is duobtful whether anybody ever really believed such nonsense, instead of the reality that Viet Nam was an extension of the nineteen fifties policy of containment of communism, Russia, and China. Making the world safe for American corporte capitalism. But by 1967 the country was culturally divided, majorly, and not just politically. The hippie movement arose among the nation's young adults, and the most popular music of the day, rock n roll, turned radical, became protest music. Even Johhny Cash was against Viet Nam, and sang about it. Our current seriously divided Amerian body politic can be seen as a comprhenisve culture war, the apparent fruition of decades of public policy and response to it. A brief overview reveals that on one side we have the conservatives, and on the other, the progessives. Conservatism is aligned with the Christian religion, capitalism, nationalism, and cultural, sexual conformity and uniformity. Liberalism, now called "progressivism", is associated with socialism, secularism, religious freedom and diversity, and cultural and sexual diversity and noncomformity. Here's the "bottom line": the cultural war is being won by and will ultimately be won by the progressives. Religion is declining in importance, and has been for a long time. All religions, uncluding our current ones, live and die. Capitalism is doomed to forever live with regulation, restraint, some degree of democratic government oversight and control. No holds barred free market capitalism will not be allowed to endure in the future. We must cooperate, economiclly. We have too many people, and we are too interconnected. And, of course, change, which is the nature of progress(ive) culture, will always accelerate, while tradition, the basis of conservatism, gives way to change and innovation. And this is good.