Culture destroys everything it contaminates.

Culture destroys everything it contaminates. In the culture of philosophy, there is no thinking. In the culture of art, there is no creativity. In the culture of poetry, there are no poems. In the culture of romance, there is no love. Or in the culture of melancholy, there is no sadness. They only seem to exist amidst excess. For the culture is not interested in the raw phenomena—true thought, true emotion—but in the appearance of these phenomena. A poem becomes a “poem” because society calls it one; “love” becomes a spectacle because norms script it; or, “melancholy” becomes a style because culture demands a recognizable emotional template. Hence, the purpose is not genuine; it is ideological in a way even though it carries no “ideology,” because its aim is to exist within a specific culture and to celebrate that very culture.