OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE
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lated the difficulty in an extreme way: "The
m~
crushes beneath it
everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual,
qualified and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does
not
think
like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated." By
"mass" Ortega y Gasset does not mean any social or economic class
of society. "By mass," says Ortega y Gasset, "is not to be specially
understood the workers; it does not indicate a social class, but a
kind of man to be found today in
all
social classes, who consequently
represents our age, in which he is the predominant ruling power."
We cannot however accept the views of Ortega y Gasset without
serious qualifications, for he ignores the fact that political democracy
seems to coexist with the domination of the "masses." Whatever the
cultural consequences may be, the democratic values which America
either embodies or promises are desirable in purely human terms. We
are certain that these values are necessary conditions for civilization
and represent the only immediate alternative as long as Russian
totalitarianism threatens world domination. Nevertheless, there are
serious cultural consequences: mass culture not only weakens the
position of the artist and the intellectual profoundly by separating
him
from his natural audience, but it also removes the mass of
people from the kind of art which might express their human and
aesthetic needs. Its tendency is to exclude everything which does not
conform to popular norms; it creates and satisfies artificial ap–
petites in the entire populace; it has grown into a major industry
which converts culture into a commodity. Its overshadowing presence
cannot
be
disregarded in any evaluation of the future of American
art and thought. Its increasing power is one of the chief causes of
the spiritual and economic insecurity of the intellectual minority.
Apparently, cultural democracy is an outgrowth of political
democracy under conditions of modern industrial development. And
the democratization of culture involves an inevitable dislocation,
though
it
may in the end produce a higher culture and demonstrate
that a political democracy can nourish great art and thought. But
whatever the future may promise, we cannot evade the fact that at
present America is a nation where at the same time cultural freedom
is
promised and mass culture produced. This paradox, we think,
creates many difficulties for American writers and intellectuals who
are trying to realize themselves in relation to their country and its
cultural life.
