At dinner one night, I made two fatal social errors in rapid succession. First, during casual conversation with two good friends, I began talking about American culture. Not just culture, but how culture is linked to power and the broader social structure. If your eyes are glazing over at this point, you are beginning to understand how my dinner guests felt. Now imagine you are only half-way through dinner and I am seated between you and the door. My second social gaffe was that I invoked the name of the infamous social critic, Karl Marx. And I had the audacity to state my opinion that part of what he observed about culture is correct. The conversation went a little like this: Me: You know, I was thinking lately about Marx’s observation that modern society is divided between the … [Read more...]