Culture is a mixture of processes

These two photos were taken in the Lake District last week.

What do I mean by a complex subjectivity? A complex subjectivity is characterised by the tacit otherness and answerability of its parts. Answerability is the process in which the overall perspective of the complex subjectivity endures and changes in response to the emergence of new parts. I call this inclusive and historical perspective a ‘tradition’. Speech in a tradition is the performance of a spectacle whose intention is the incremental emergence of a changed tradition. Spectacular speech is a ‘bottom up’ process within a complex subjectivity.

Most works of art are spectacles. They are events that change the complex subjectivity of a tradition. Fry and Bell understood art works as examples of ‘significant form’. This suggests that significant forms are spectacles. The claim that art works imply the existence of transcendent forms can be replaced by the observation that they are parts of an enduring and emergent historical tradition.

Literal speech is a ‘top down’ process within a paradigms which provide people with definite & exclusive representations. These representations are constructions that provide explicit criteria of right & wrong. Paradigms allow human beings to dominate nature. They make human beings accountable to the paradigm they adopt.

Most societies consist of a mixture of answerability and accountability. The balance between the processes, and the direction in which the balance is changing, is a central characteristic of a society’s culture.