Whatever Happened to Culture?

Whatever happened to culture? By “culture” I mean what Matthew Arnold meant in Culture and Anarchy, his essay of 1867, where he described it as the pursuit of “the best that has been thought and said,” with the assumption that this also included the best that had been painted, composed, and now, in the modern age, filmed. Arnold thought that culture “had its origin in the love of perfection,” and that, properly pursued, would not only lead to “an expansion of human nature” but release us from our “inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following.” Arnold did not think the acquisition of culture, though clearly an elite enterprise, was the exclusive province of the wealthy, for he recognized that some people more than others had what he called a “bent” for it.