Carl Trueman on Culture / Anticulture

Drawing on the work of Rieff, Trueman writes:

Whereas in the first and second worlds, intellectuals and institutions such as universities were the conduits for the transmission and preservation of culture, now the intellectual class is devoted to the opposite–to the subversion, destabilization, and destruction of the culture’s tradition. In fact, so radical and disruptive is this phenomenon that Rieff argues that what these third-world elites are promoting does not even deserve the name of “culture.” culture is, after all, the name given to those traditions, institutions, and patterns of behavior that transmit the values of one generation to the next. But that is not the way of elites in third worlds. Rather, they are attempting to abolish such transmission and the means by which it would typically take place. They are, in the words of Rieff, creating not a culture but an anticulture, called such because of its iconoclastic, purely destructive attitude toward all that the first and second worlds hold so dear.

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020. p. 88-9.