“The individual has become a mere cog... while culture gains an autonomous momentum beyond his control.” — Georg Simmel, “The Conflict in Modern Culture” (1911)
The Triumph of Things Over Souls
In a world of infinite content, ceaseless innovation, and sprawling archives, what does it mean to be cultured? Do we own culture, or does it now own us?
In his late essay “The Conflict in Modern Culture” (1911), Georg Simmel diagnosed a tension that still haunts us: the tragedy of culture. At its core is a deceptively simple idea: the very success of human creativity threatens to overwhelm the individuals who produce it.
Simmel distinguishes between subjective culture—the individual’s capacity to absorb, create, and cultivate meaning—and objective culture—the externalized products of that creativity: art, science, technologies, institutions, knowledge. In early societies, these two move in tandem. But in modernity, they drift apart. Culture accumulates faster than any one person can absorb. The world becomes saturated with works, systems, innovations—while the individual becomes increasingly dwarfed.
This is the tragedy: the more we produce, the less we possess.
The Overproduction of Meaning
Simmel’s diagnosis eerily anticipates our cultural moment. The internet offers infinite access to literature, theory, fashion, music, code—yet many feel alienated, fragmented, adrift in cultural excess. Algorithms recommend, but they also flatten. Playlists replace albums; tweets replace essays; aesthetics replace critique.
We are surrounded by culture, yet struggle to feel cultured. The self becomes a curator, scrolling endlessly through what others have made.
This isn’t just information overload—it’s a structural imbalance. Objective culture now multiplies independently of individual development. It doesn't need us to grow. We just try to keep up.
Freedom or Fragmentation?
Simmel didn’t mourn this loss in the way a conservative might. He wasn’t nostalgic for a return to unity or simplicity. He understood that fragmentation is part of modern freedom. The modern individual, freed from tradition, is able to pick, remix, experiment. But the price of this freedom is often disorientation.
The tragedy of culture is not necessarily its abundance—but our estrangement from it. Culture, once a field of self-realization, now risks becoming a system of external demands. A pressure to consume. To know everything, be everywhere, master every form.
Why It Still Matters
Today’s cultural landscape is not only vast—it’s accelerating. Simmel helps us see the cost of this acceleration not in moral or aesthetic terms, but in existential ones. What does it mean to make meaning in a world where meaning is endlessly made?
To engage with Simmel is not to seek escape from the modern condition—but to name its structure. To see that the tragedy of culture isn’t collapse. It’s overflow.
