Prole Drift: The Aesthetic of a Dying Civilization

Let Those With Eyes to See Close Them

Beauty is important. It inspires, uplifts, and sets the tone of a civilization. And, of course, it is pleasing. Such is why it was long cultivated by Western man.

Yet it no longer is. Instead of cultivation, our culture is marked by the degradation of prole drift, the term coined by Paul Fussell in his book Class to describe the tendency of culture in post-death of the WASP "American democracy" to gradually eschew high culture and slowly adopt whatever the prole class enjoys, likes, and does.¹ This can be seen in everything now and is a change as dramatic as it is deleterious. In this article, I will describe the sort of culture prole drift replaced, and why prole drift is so disastrous for America.

Prole Drift, included in Class

Listen to the audio version of this article here:

[AUDIO] Prole Drift: The Aesthetic of a Dying Civilization

Before We Became Idiocracy

It was once assumed that beauty, like other virtues—honor and bravery, namely—matter.s Even in the Dark Ages, warriors wore beautiful bands of gold and silver upon their arms and incredible helmets upon their heads as they clashed in feuds with similarly bedecked warriors.