I think it’s worth the time to define a new sub-section of western culture. New western culture. Or Neo-Occidentalism. New in the sense that it’s a new concept, but also new in the sense that it is a relatively new culture on the global stage, distinct from other the ‘old’ occidental culture.
Neo-Occidentalism is easily defined. It’s the culture of the settler states.
What are the settler states, and what is their culture?
Settler states are culturally mongrel states. Where the dominant culture has no significant or lengthy history to draw upon. Theirs is a culture that is exclusively post-enlightenment era and draws almost exclusively upon post-enlightenment ideas to define itself. Neo-occidental cultures know nothing other than a culture of the mind. While broader occidental culture, that of ‘old’ Europe, has cultures that existed in their history, and as such, have known other cultural paradigms, such as the culture of the senses.
Settler states are, by comparison with their peers, culturally immature. They, for the most part, very new on the cultural map of the world. Prior to their settlement and establishment of a new and completely different dominant culture, they were home to indigenous populations with a set of cultural values so different from the introduced set that the change could not be considered a continuum. The new settlers, rightly or wrongly, overwrote those indigenous cultures, or significantly sidelined them to a point where the indigenous culture is either absent entirely from the new culture, or is observed, and perhaps even integrated, in some tokenistic or patronizing way.
Who are the settler states of the Neo-occident? The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These four states are the backbone of the neo-occidentalist paradigm. These four states are the cultural epitome of the Culture of the Mind. They are so debased from any long-standing tradition, or cultural identity, associated with the culture of the senses, everything they do is, by global comparison, culturally progressive, lacking the benefits of history to serve as a guide for future cultural directions – the hallmark of typically conservative cultures. These states are very similar in this regard.
However, this is not to say that the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are culturally the same. Far from it. Each of the four states are evolving, culturally, in their own unique directions. But this growth all stems from a similar position of relative cultural angst. A cultural identity crisis rooted in the debasement of their culture of the senses, in an evolution towards a full-fledged ‘culture of the mind’. A journey that none in or outside the neo-occident knows where or when it will end.
It is perhaps this state of cultural anxiety that not only binds the neo-occident together, but is perhaps a hallmark of it. An unclear ’way forward’, only knowing they have a shared commitment to pluralism, all the rights that go along with it, and also a propensity for ideational bandwagoning, and all the dislocation that may/may not go along with that.
While they all four states share some degree of cultural similarity, not least of which is the primacy of English as the official and/or spoken language, it is sometimes less clear
Far from it. exactly how to define precisely the nature of these four states. And that is precisely the four are somewhat defined by the cultural differences that do exist. But that said, the exact nature of their culture is part of what binds them together in this club.
But the differences between them, are far less than the differences between them and the rest of the occident, and certainly from the rest of the world. These four states all face similar cultural challenges and questions associated with a pure culture of the mind.
The neo-occident is a loose cultural association of purist Cultures of the Mind. Collectively unburdened by a historical Cultures of the Senses. Collectively bound by the contemporary cultural anxiety and angst of being at the vanguard of the ascent/descent into new and exciting cultural domains.
It is useful to think of our modern world in these terms.
Photographer and cULTURE VULTure 
Leave a comment