What Is Culture For

We need culture around us because we are so poor at retaining our equilibrium and maturity. The best lessons are constantly draining from us. We must have the right songs, films, history books, plays and images to hand to keep us from succumbing to rage and error. Culture is our emotional apothecary, a storehouse of humanity’s finest bottled wisdom and compassion, with whose help we have the best chance of riding out our many inevitable moments of fragility and folly.

Works of culture can redeem us in a variety of ways, but we should never overlook the fact that they can do so only on one condition: that they are successful as works of art. It isn’t enough that they should badly want to help us, that they should have powerful intentions to be companionable, serene or inspiring. They must also be these things in and of themselves. In other words, they cannot be mere manifestoes or declarations; they must, in addition, be good art.

that the quality of designed environments matters because we are hugely vulnerable to the suggestions emanating from them about how we might behave, and more broadly, who we might be.

What we call ‘beautiful’ is any work of art that supplies a missing dose of a much-needed psychological component, while what we dismiss as ‘ugly’ is that which forces on us moods or motifs that we feel threatened or already overwhelmed by

Our tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional makeup lies in shadow and is hence in need of stimulation and emphasis

despite the manifest failings of life and the world it is still possible for us to experience true pleasure

We hunger for artworks that will compensate for our inner fragilities and help to return us to a viable mean.

It’s just that, all the same, they can truly enjoy this opportunity of pleasant friendship in a lovely place.

your imaginary tribe (the modern version of angels and saints) are with you:

The old religious idea was that we are never fully alone; there are always special beings around whose aid we can call on.