Notes for Cultural Renewal

The lay of the land, opportunities, attitudes, and dispositions

“Please create AI slop as visual accompaniment for this article.”

I was recently invited to speak at a small meeting of media executives where the central question was where the fragmented conservative media ecosystem goes from here.

Specifically we wanted to answer:

1. What cultural crowns are lying in the gutter?

2. What are the obstacles faced by the right in claiming these crowns?

3. What is the relationship between the internet and real space?

4. What can the right do besides participate in the take economy?
   

I can’t speak on everything that was said at the meeting, but I thought it might be worthwhile to share the outline of my remarks, which are not yet fully formed and probably would benefit from a more thoughtful treatment. Still, there is a seed of something useful here (I think) and keeping with my central premise––that these cultural efforts must be inclusive of a lot of people who, if properly arranged, will not be fighting over a zero sum pie, which has long been the mindset of those participating in this space––I want other people thinking about these topics, if for no other reason than as a starting place for future collaborations.

This is also a placeholder for me to come back to these topics at a later date.

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“I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.”

- William Blake

I. Crowns Lying in the Gutter:

1. Curation: in a world of total access and infinite content, there is a new premium on tastemakers and curators

• Select: Tell people what’s good and worth engaging with

• Contextualize: Tell them why

• Reward: people get positive feedback and experiences for engaging with what is good. Content makers and people with good taste are surrounded by prestige

• Integrate: institutionally formalize what is good so that it permeates the culture and becomes durable

2. Creative talent: there is an entire generation of disaffected creatives who want the freedom to make good and interesting art and work on cool projects that aren’t dominated by politics

• May not be Ideologically aligned, but not hostile

• Attracted to opportunities for prestige

• Do not want to feel creatively constrained

• Turned off by explicit political associations

3. Myth making: The world is disenchanted. Yet people ache for myth, for meaning, for narrative grandeur. The Right can reclaim mythopoesis: building worlds, characters, and archetypes that resonate beyond politics. We have to create an entirely new interior mental universe for people to occupy.

• Be funny: This includes humor that is not nihilistic or merely self-deprecating. It observes the world as it is. And includes cultural memory beyond the last current thing. Dark and layered humor is good.

• Be accessible: a little bit of slop is good. Not everything is a grand epic or intellectually sophisticated. Action and slapstick go a long way

• Be alive. A little bit of eroticism is good. All great art has this.

• Be less moralistic (less scolding): Much higher tolerance for the unexpected and offensive. Not because those are good in and of themselves, but because they are a part of the world as it is.

• Be less sentimental/nostalgic. Conservatives have a tendency to lean too heavily on feeling good about themselves. Not all art is intended to soothe discomfort about the world.

• Be less whiny. No more grievance. No more mere “owning the libs.” That’s fine but there has to be an affirmative vision. Whatever comes next shouldn’t own the libs so much as it confounds them. It should leave them behind.

Everything we make should:

1. Attract young people

2. Resist the defeatism of decline; it requires new, creative will-to-life. We are opening the future.

II. Biggest Obstacles to Cooperation on the Right:

1. Aesthetic Immaturity:

• Much of right-leaning media/art is either:

  • Cringe and amateur (self-sabotaging),

  • Too obsessed with “owning the libs” (reactive, boring),

  • Or aestheticizing defeatism (blackpilled, sterile).

2. New meaningful efforts require independence from the news cycle and partisan reflexes.

• We have to stop reacting to everything

• We can’t live inside the existing social/cultural frame

• Fragmentation by Purity Spirals:

  • Small movements tear themselves apart fighting internal battles over who’s “based” enough.

    • narcissism of small differences

    • it’s a big pie and everyone can get a piece; if you’re not rooting for your allies to succeed, you're out

  • Solution: Be selective in alliances, but generous in spirit.

  • Shared action > shared ideology.

3. Scarcity Mindset:

• Everyone clinging to their small piece of the pie

• No coordination to create a prestige economy

• No coordination on solving infrastructure bottlenecks like distribution

• Ghetto turf wars or indifference

III. Real-Space v. digital. The Role of DC, New York, LA, Dallas, etc.:

1. DC: Mostly irrelevant to culture creation; however it useful for funding, prestige, and institutional integration as described in 1 above. We should be using its museums and exhibition functions.

2. New York: Still the nerve center for the old elite art and publishing institutions, but in steep decline.

• Opportunity: Right-aligned venues can exploit its vacuum.

• Density of high value young people means everything accelerates

3. Dallas and Other 2nd Cities: Emerging hubs include Dallas, Miami, Nashville, Austin…

• second-tier cities are where new movements can physically incubate.

• these places are cheaper, freer, and less ideologically policed.

• rate of movement is slower and less impactful than NYC/LA

4. LA and SF/California: like NYC in steep decline from a cultural perspective. This will change and reclamation can/will be done, but this requires strategies accounting for a longer timeline and is beyond the scope of current efforts

5. Where does the internet intersect with irl:

• Real-space matters more than people think but the internet is still where cultural creation is happening and aggregating.

• The Internet is fragmenting attention, but live events are REAL in a way the internet is not

  • multi-dimensional, multi-sensory, tactile

  • people desire to smell each other

• Real world cultural nodes must touch the internet and vice versa

IV. What Comes After the Commentator, Influencer, and Streamer “Take” Economies:

1. Making over reacting:

• The next wave will value the maker over the taker: those who build things (stories, music, spaces, brands) rather than just reacting to things.

2. New Worlds and Forms:

• Reach for the unexpected

  • films and novels

  • but also…

    • video games

    • anime

    • we have to attempt large projects

3. Communities over Audiences:

• The parasocial audience is fragile; real communities (where people build relationships) will be stronger.

• Curators and organizers of real communities will matter more than social media megaphones.

4. Mystery and Initiation:

• People crave exclusivity and meaning.

• Movements that offer layers of access, rites of passage, prestige, and loyalty

• The future is less “mass media” and more exclusive

• Highly curated content and highly curated experiences