V is for "Virtue and Vice": "Sweetness and Light" by Matthew Arnold

 5-42

No other V Ideas. It kind of feels like Adler ran out of steam in some of these later ones. "I don't want to have to do an intro and catalog for both letters, I'll just make Virtue and Vice one entry. And X, Y, and Z don't need anything anyway.

Summary: Culture comes from curiosity. Or a desire for perfection. Or *ramble ramble ramble*...

Bonus: I'm sticking with curiosity. 

Commentary: This one started great. Culture comes from charity is both inspiring and reasonably accurate. Most stories start with What if... and so many other advancements and both art and science stem from trying to figure something out.

It then moved into culture is the pursuit of perfection. That's not impossible to argue, but I think a weaker claim than the former. It then quickly transitions into religion is the best expression of culture, because it tries to get us closer to God's perfection, and turns to crap. I've spent an inordinate amount of words on the conflict between the incompatibility of traditional Christianity with a "liberal education" (people are good, intelligent, and can use reasoning and morals to figure out how to live life) viewpoint. Short version: Christianity says that we're all terrible, and need to beg for grace from the genocidal maniac that created mankind knowing we'd "fuck up" and have to punish us in an act of cosmic insurance fraud by sacrificing sort of himself to himself to redeem us to himself. And you're too dumb/bad to make sense of this, so stop trying. 

Arnold improves again when he pivots off of Christianity (I'm not sure why that page or so even needed to be there) and back into the perfection scheme. He kinda-of/not really tries to draw distinctions between different types of  perfection (internal, general, etc.) 

I think the biggest flaw in this argument is illustrated when he starts talking about fashion, which is apparently constantly reaching for some Platonic Ideal of beauty. Maybe it's my colonial rugged individualism talking, but it seems like there will never be one perfect fashion. Tastes and environments can change, different fashions might work for different people (body type, etc.). Finding a universal fashion seems like it would require, at best, some sort of dystopian uniformity of everyone in terms of size, shape, color, etc.

Also, even as he pushes culture=greatness, he still slips into culture=curiosity. "What is greatness? -- culture makes us ask." CURIOSITY!

(He then gives a definition of greatness without backing it up.)

He sort of gets somewhere on materialism (just doing something isn't worthwhile if you don't value your work) but it comes across as more of a screed against valuing material accomplishments at all than making sure your goals and values align. I'd be pretty proud if I built a railroad.  

Really, this is just a bunch of "conclusions" that he flies through quickly, each one "proving" the next one, without being proved itself. He loves Ben Franklin though, so that's good at least.

Rating: 2/5? This is a hard one. There's a couple real gems, but the overall piece is a mess. It's probably worth reading if you're trying to wrestle with what culture is, what a society should aspire to, etc., but not good enough to be required or taken as too strong an influence.

I am thankful for Ben Franklin and curiosity.