Jessa Crispin argues that we've traded one monoculture for another:
Twenty years after the Velvet Revolution, [the Czech playwright-turned-national-leader Vaclav Havel] gave a public speech in which he assessed the current state of the free Czech Republic. “On the one hand everything is getting better — a new generation of mobile phones is being released every week,” he said. “But in order to make use of them, you need to follow new instructions. So you end up reading instruction manuals instead of books and in your free time you watch TV where handsome tanned guys scream from advertisements about how happy they are to have new swimming trunks"… The artistic and literary scene that flourished paradoxically under censorship and repression has died off.
The public intellectual is, for the most part, no longer invited to the most important parties. [Author] Anna Porter writes, “Now that everyone can publish what they want, what is the role of the intellectuals?” and she can’t find an answer. It’s no longer the police state that’s attacking the intelligentsia — it’s disinterest and boredom. It’s distraction. It’s a trade off. And it’s one that we should be able to acknowledge and be allowed to mourn.
The Dish 