The Simulation of Culture: Notes Inspired by an American Mall

The Florida Mall stands as a glowing symbol of all that American culture has become—glowing not with the golden hue of man’s greatest achievement but, rather, with radioactive decay. I’ve been in malls before, of course, but somehow, wading through the sea of people, lights, signs, and sounds, the tableaux of top American brands coaxing passersby to buy more, more, and always more, left me sickened in a way I hadn’t been before.

In a mall, the senses are not so much gratified as assaulted. Everything seeks to devour your attention through the sleekest images, sounds, and even smells that the advertisers can conjure up. The shop fronts in the artificial marketplace of the mall speak of luxury—even decadence—because most of the products being sold are expensive and unnecessary. 

Tech stores and clothing boutiques dominate the space with flickering screens and scraps of video or garish displays of the latest indecipherable fashions and trends, while immense images of half-naked women aim to ensnare the eyes. Each image must be more arresting than the previous if it hopes to win out in an environment where the eyes are overstimulated and pulled in all directions, overwhelmed by an uncoordinated mixture of bright colors and strange shapes. And once you’ve tickled your eyes with glitzy fashions and colorful phone cases, you can tickle your tastebuds with unidentifiable fried substances that have emerged steaming from the semi-intentional grease-fires of food court kitchens.

This, my friends, is not culture. The Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper famously argued that culture is built upon leisure and associated with the feast, a communal celebration of the universe and its Creator. In leisure, we contemplate reality—whether through the medium of art, conversation, food, prayer, or liturgy. Real cultural achievements are both aids to and fruits of this highest form of leisure.

A culture grows organically out of this shared spirit of the celebration of being. It expresses, enshrines, and promotes those things that a certain people hold most sacred and inviolable. 

But if culture is predicated on the shared celebration of something, then what, precisely, are we celebrating in American culture today? What do we all still hold inviolable? If our malls, media, and movies are any indication, the answer is: not much, except maybe an aimless consumerism and restless hedonism. Movies and media preach a vague creed of tolerance, that everything has value, which is another way of saying that nothing has value. And in our malls, corporate executives blanche not at a blatant appeal to the lowest common denominators of greed, gluttony, and lust as the means of selling more products. This is a kind of profit-motivated simulation of culture; it is not the real thing.

In order to celebrate, which is the soul of culture, a people must agree, at least to some extent, on what is worth celebrating, as the Romans agreed about pietas or the Greeks agreed about xenia. But Americans can no longer agree on such things. To agree about the value of American individualism means simply to agree to disagree, to share only one value: that really nothing is worth sharing. We cannot even agree on the definition of a family, let alone that family life is an inherent good. Too many people believe that “family” life can take different forms according to the whims of the individual. 

If a people lack shared values, then no true feast can take place because a feast is precisely a manifestation of values and something of value in itself. But if we cannot even agree on what is good, how can we celebrate it together? At best, such a celebration resembles one of the feasts of Scandinavian sagas where knives lie hidden under the tables. 

And if we do not celebrate, how can we have soil for the tree of culture to grow in?

Of course, Americans agreed, at one time, on the value of certain concepts: freedom, independence, individualism, hard work, tolerance. But this value system was to be its own undoing. Built into it was a deadly genetic flaw: a society where individualism, freedom, and independence are held as the highest goods tends toward diffraction, dissipation, and conflict over time, as each man sets out on his own, separate path. Where an Enlightenment version of freedom reigns supreme, each individual and group will choose their own goods, values, and pursuits—a process that slowly fractures any shared ground within the polis.

Liberalism is the earthquake that shatters and then removes any firm cultural ground to stand or build on. Liberalism prevents a society from planting a flag or staking a claim, from saying “This is good, beautiful, and true, and this is not.” Liberalism demands a neutral public square, allegedly equal freedom for all ideas, values, and beliefs. But a neutral public square is an empty one. And an empty public square is the sign of a dying city. Liberalism demands a neutral public square, allegedly equal freedom for all ideas, values, and beliefs. But a neutral public square is an empty one. And an empty public square is the sign of a dying city.Tweet This

Culture is born of love. A man writes a poem because he is in love with a certain woman. A woman paints a painting because she is in love with a certain landscape. A people build a cathedral because they are in love with a certain God. When enough people love the same thing, then something like Notre Dame becomes possible. But where there is no unity and no love, nothing enduring can grow in the civil sphere. If the man loves all women equally, or the woman sees all landscapes the same, or a people places all gods on an even level, then there will be no sacrifice, no devotion, no creation. 

The only “love” I saw in the Florida Mall was an appeal to our animal instincts, especially our sexual drive—because, increasingly, we have nothing else to unite us. As radical individualism and liberalism slowly stripped away the common beliefs and treasures of the Western heritage, we became united by less and less.

How to reverse the damage? That’s a large and complicated question, the scope of which extends far beyond the confines of this essay. However, a few brief notes are in order. 

First, we need to fall in love again—with the world as it is (not as we would prefer it to be) and with the Creator of that world. This love flows naturally from a healthy encounter with the world through nature, art, and community. As John Senior wrote, “No serious restitution of society…can occur without a return to first principles, yes, but before principles we must return to the ordinary reality which feeds first principles.” Trees and grass and the stars, singing and dancing and laboring in the fields, friends gathered around a fire, parents playing with their children and animals—these are the ordinary things of human experience that too many of us have lost touch with. These are the beginning of wisdom.

Second, having fostered common sense through a return to raw contact with reality, we must promote and defend the first principles that flow naturally from experience. A first principle is something self-evident. That which is self-evident ought to be common to all. And what is common to all provides a foundation for culture. 

Of course, what ought to be self-evident is not always so, especially when you have lost touch with the direct experience of basic realities—but I would contest that this is why we need to foster the “return to the ordinary reality which feeds first principles,” as Senior put it. Senior referred to gymnastic (physical) and poetic (emotional/imaginative) contact with the world as necessary soil for philosophical and cultural restoration. 

Finally, the West must return to faith. It is no secret that the Catholic Church more or less built Western civilization. There are supernatural reasons for this, but even on the natural plane the Catholic Faith gave the peoples of Europe a common set of values, common principles, shared loves on which to construct the edifice of culture. Josef Pieper speaks of culture as a kind of “festival.” The peoples of Christendom agreed at the deepest layers of their souls on what to celebrate, what to hold a festival for, because they were united in faith. Thus, culture flourished. And it could do so again.