Middlebrow

Titbit:

In the IHT today, an opinion piece by David Brooks titled 'What Happened to Culture?". It's a short yarn on the demise of culture from the American Middle class. The Middlebrow existed in form of, for example, lengthy pieces on Hi-Culture subjects (Abstract Expressionism etc.) in the broadsheet weeklies, readers digests (nowadays its all fashion and interior design and how-to-spend-it photo features).

The middlebrow impulse in America dates at least to Ralph Waldo Emerson and the belief that how one spends one's leisure time is intensely important. Time spent with consequential art uplifts character, and time spent with dross debases it.

On surface you can dismiss it as another 'when I was a lad' moan you hear from your father every other day. But Brooks noted something with made me think near the end. He traced the demise of this middle class intellectualism from attacks from the Hi-Culture class calling fowl of dumbing down of real culture, and then he noted:

At the same time, pop culture changed. It was no longer character-oriented; it was personality-oriented. Readers felt less of a need to go outside themselves and absorb works of art as a means of self-improvement. They were more interested in exploring and being true to the precious flower of their own individual selves. Less Rembrandt, more Maine. Fewer theologians, more dietitians.

The distinction between "having to understand something or somebody else" and "understanding oneself" is important; the Social and the Self; the them and me. As a society (and i am referring mostly to the Western/westernised societies here) we have been shifting more to the self over the decades. Politically it has been reflected (lead?) from he rejection of communism and socialism, the rise of the Right. The balance has at least been slipped in Europe with the rise of the Centre left governments. But what about here in SE Asia? How would HK people describe their stance? What does it mean in China? I don't know much about politics, maybe someone can point me to a book or two.