Reply to Becoming a cultured person, “just like NYC intellectuals”

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[quote=Anonymous]The key thing about culture is that it is just that -- culture. Culture being: "the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group." Emphasis on the second half of this sentence. The NYC intellectuals you refer to are basically members of a social class that existed in a particular place and time (well, sort of ... Woody Allen caricatures it all a bit). Certain things were interesting/important to them as a group, and that included a lot of knowledge of, and values that arise out of, what I think of as Western Civ. I don't know how you become a 1980s NYC intellectual (if they even really existed that clearly outside of Annie Hall), in 2023 St Louis (or wherever you are) -- because it is a very social thing, people were molded by the values and priorities and interests of those around them.

But agree with PPs that you can kind of start with The New Yorker. My grandparents, Texas versions of what you aspire to, had it on their coffee table and showed me the Charles Addams cartoons every week. At the age of 6 they took me to NYC and took me to a big Picasso exhibit. That early formative experience stirred enough interest in me in art that I have, over the course of my life, learned quite a bit about it. Modern Art anyway. I don't know -- figure out was is important to you about this notion of the NYC intellectual that you want to pass on (knowledge of art history? the definition of what good writing is? where our legal system came from? an understanding of how modern dance evolved from ballet and Anna Pavlova and Martha Graham have to do with it? why Oscar Wilde is funny? Or what?) and do so.

People point out that it can cost money to be "cultured," and yes, it cost money when my grandparents took me to MOMA in the 70s. But the internet really does democratize this all a bit. [/quote]

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