Ganz’s explanation for “Why Culture Sucks” (as the post is titled) draws on Arendt and the destabilizing, ephemeralizing character of the internet. I think he’s more or less right, but his explanation is incomplete. Our broken phenomenology is inextricably bound up with the broken material basis for cultural production. Yes, the internet as it is shares some of the blame — but that’s the internet as it is, not as it had to be. Background economic conditions helped build that internet.

I don’t want to suggest that materialist explanations are the only explanations that matter. But I do want to argue that a nation’s material and economic circumstances have profound implications for its spiritual, moral, and artistic health. Sickness along one dimension leads to sickness in the other. And reinvigorating the cultural realm is going to require close attentiveness to the economic conditions that make certain types of culture possible.