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The origin of culture lies in community. Culture teaches symbolic values that found a community. The more culture becomes a commodity, the more it leaves its origin behind. The total commercialization and commodification of culture leads to the destruction of community. The 'community' that is so frequently invoked on digital platforms is a commodified form of community. Community as a commodity spells the end of community.
Non-Things
Byung-Chul Han and Daniel Steuer
Well, we’ve now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. ‘The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.’ But there aren’t any losses for us to compensate;
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
If it is foolish to think that we can carry with us all the good things from the past—from our personal past or that of our culture—while leaving behind all the unwanted baggage, it is a counsel of despair and, I think, another kind of foolishness to think that if we leave behind the errors and miseries of the past, we must also leave behind everything that gave that world its savor. Wisdom lies in discernment, and utopianism and nostalgia alike are ways of abandoning discernment.
Breaking Bread With the Dead
Alan Jacobs
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