Cultural Hegemony

On my walk to the minimarket, I pass this monkey puzzle tree entangled with a white bougainvillea. The two plants must really like each other as they’ve been together for about 20 years. Perfect partners because the bougainvillea needs a backbone to sustain it and the tree needs some company and visual brio. They’ve adapted to one another and live in harmony.

Living together in a society is not always easy. But, as the story of evolution has shown us, we need one another to survive. The biggest punishment in prehistoric times was to be kicked out of the clan because it was basically a death sentence as there was little possibility of surviving alone.

We are presently living in a state of decadence and decline. What most amazes me is the pleasure some people have in seeing others suffer. Like ICE and their unjustified violation of human dignity. So why do they do this? Maybe because they are losers who are insecure and have more wounded-ego than self-esteem. And, to avoid their own inadequacies, they must belittle and denigrate others. Only someone who hates themselves could be so cruel and despicable.

Evil is not beautiful. There is nothing aesthetically pleasing about it. Therefore, evil people are ugly inside and out. Nevertheless, these evil and ugly people want to take control of the art and cultural institutions. And why would they want to take control of the arts when they are culturally illiterate and promote taking funding away from artists and the arts?

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was a Marxist philosopher, politician, and ferocious critic of Mussolini and fascism. Mussolini, like all other wannabe dictators, attempted to repress any dissent against him. And for this reason, in 1926, Gramsci was imprisoned for the 11 years that remained of his life.

While in prison, Gramsci filled a number of notebooks with his political theories. These notebooks, later published collectively as “Prison Notebooks”, showed the development of his political theories including that of “cultural hegemony”. When wannabe dictators are trying to take control, they don’t just use laws, military, and economics to further their agenda. They also use cultural hegemony. That is, they attempt to maintain their power by shaping ideologies especially with the help of various institutions (education, religion, media). Those who want power strive to impose an ideology on the general public and, via this imposed ideology, they can more easily control the public.

Some examples:

Despite the Constitution’s very distinct separation of church and state, political powers in the U.S. insist on the promotion of Evangelical Christians even though most of these “Christians” apparently haven’t read the New Testament as their actions are not compatible with the teachings of Jesus. Furthermore, only about 25% of American identify themselves with Evangelicals. They also tend to be W.A.S.P.s.
Book banning is another step towards cultural hegemony as it attempts to obliterate one set of values to impose another. Furthermore, it violates the first amendment that gives us the right to express ourselves.
And what the wannabes don’t obliterate, they want to infiltrate by taking over existing cultural institutions (such as the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Cultural Center).
The biggest cultural infiltration is probably that of AI. AI takes, for example, art created by someone else and “restyles” it to fit another narrative even if completely opposite of that of the original artist. These appropriations are proof that who promotes this kind of AI does so because they don’t have enough imagination of their own to create something truly original.

The only kind of artist these people can ever be is a con artist.