A Culture, If You Can Keep It: All Things Are Too Small

Minimalism is a malady that has ravaged our culture of late and will continue to do so unless treated with an abundance of color and bliss. One need look no further than a modern art museum to get the gist: it depresses me, at least, to gaze at the disinfected rectangles and meaningless blobs today’s “artists” call “art.” You see it, too, in architecture (Dartmouth’s Anonymous Hall is antiseptic both in form and in name), in music (why do I want to hear computer-generated nonsense?), and in literature (I’ve read poetry in class that would make Eliot and Frost cringe). 

Some want all that was good to be gone, and all that is new to have no chance at lasting in our memory. It’s a globalist culture that attaches little to no meaning to its creator and inspires no emotion in its viewer. It’s nothingness. It doesn’t have to be this way. Let there be well-crafted songs to fill the air, let there be beautiful, complex paintings on our walls, and let books of the great poets of yesteryear overflow our shelves. 

Becca Rothfeld’s All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess asserts that less is not in fact more, and that our culture is in need of extravagance. Rothfeld, a Dartmouth ’14, consistently applies this philosophy to a number of topics through twelve original chapters that demonstrate maximalism in prose too. Among the subjects are discussions on culture more broadly, aesthetics, literature, living spaces, and yes, sexuality and love. 

The best, and the one with which I agree most, is the first titular essay, “All Things Are Too Small.” She argues that the Left’s failures to successfully equalize political power in the public sphere have led to their efforts to democratize culture. While Rothfeld certainly supports political egalitarianism—she defends economic redistributive policies as a means to secure cultural engagement—she thinks this spirit has damaged the aesthetic and cultural spheres. She writes that liberalism, the philosophy that favors neutrality toward conceptions of the “good life,” should remain the government’s business, not the private individual’s. We humans are discriminating by nature, and should remain free to choose what art is actually good. When everything is equalized, we are “abstracted into sameness.” 

Rothfeld takes aim at the recent film Trolls 2, which I regret to inform you I’ve not seen, but I can assume she’s right about its artistic deficiencies. It’s horrendous films about nothing like this that proponents of egalitarian culture insist we must enjoy and give adequate appreciation to. Equality should persist in access to produce and admire all art, but that doesn’t mean we have to agree everything is permissible. Some—today, most—films are bad, and so are books and buildings and paintings. We ought to be free to reject them and demand intellectually and culturally-stimulating products.

This particular essay tugs at my nostalgic heartstrings because, even at my young age, I have noticed the consequences the politics of identity have had on our artforms. Filmmakers, for example, worry too much about pandering to every social group and asserting progressive dogmas to tap their creative genius. We should be allowed to say these films are bad without declaring ourselves enemies of equality. 

Another of Rothfeld’s essays, “More is More,” simply argues against the decluttering mindset. Self-help book authors are especially popular today. They urge their readers to throw out their books and reduce them to a folder of summaries. What good is a book, they say, once you’ve already read it? 

Rothfeld employs a rather conservative refutation of this mindset. She claims that these sorts of people live as if they’re constantly packing and moving away. They live constantly to “abolish the past” and cleanse their physical spaces of any memory. This connects to modern architecture as a whole. Towers of concrete and steel have consumed the world’s cities. If this movement isn’t stopped, Boston or Washington, D.C. could lose their distinctiveness. Sense of place is real and important, and if you seek to wipe out any traces of life or culture and make rooms empty white canvases, all that makes life worth living, namely family and country, could be refigured for the worse. 

Not only that, but the abundance of books in one’s living room is a good thing in itself. It encourages reading, intellectual curiosity, and a broadening of the mind. It simply makes a room look more livable and gives the impression that your mind is not empty. I for one am glad that I no longer have room to store all of my books. I certainly will not be throwing them out and filing their summaries elsewhere. 

Rothfeld applies similar logic to attempts to declutter the mind. In “Wherever You Go, You Could Leave,” she declares herself an enemy of mindfulness and mediation. One can go see the therapist, as I’m sure many here at Dartmouth do, to erase thoughts from the mind and rid it of excessive clutter. What this achieves, Rothfeld says, is the sterilization of the mind. Thoughts are good, actually, even the bad ones. They lead us to further inquiries, expand possibilities, and improve the human condition. 

Rothfeld writes, “The urge to detach from every emotion, every judgement, every preference, eerie wish that the world were otherwise, every fit of temper, every bout of petulance, is the urge for death itself.” What I perhaps appreciate most about Rothfeld is that she has a grasp on human nature, and does not want to exterminate it like some try to today. Humans like to enjoy culture; they prefer what is best over what is mediocre; and they have emotions and thoughts that might not lead towards equality but are nevertheless valuable. 

In “Having a Cake and Eating It, Too,” she implores us to live a life well-lived. Eat that dessert, drink that beer, buy that baseball ticket, sing that song. Now, it’s easy to see how such a philosophy can get out of hand. Moderation is a virtue and needless excess is a vice. But the point still stands. Starving ourselves during our short stay on Earth deprives us of happiness and meaning. We mustn’t be too frugal to dismiss everything priceless about human existence. 

Rothfeld applies her “praise of excess” to sex and love. It gets a little out of hand. She blames the new puritans—conservative and progressive alike—who see sex as a hazard and not as pleasure. While I more broadly agree with her view that relationships are powerful and romance is blind to the requirements of political equality, as she touches on in “Only Mercy” and “Our True Entertainment Was Arguing,” her praise of erotic adventure leads to dangerous roads. She wants more sex, but in doing so threatens the sanctity of human relationships and marriage. Let’s not get licentious here. 
Despite her apparent support for excess indiscriminately, and so apparently in government, Rothfeld’s status as a defender of culture makes her a welcome ally to those of us conservatives who want to save the good and the beautiful. Perhaps we can enjoy our day’s own Shakespeare or da Vinci if we only create an environment where such brilliance is cultivated. All Things Are Too Small is, more than anything, a clarion call to save our culture from modernity. On that, let’s add our voices to a hopefully-growing chorus.