The entirety of human culture is the elevation of non-material aspects of being over the material ones. The capacity to experience these non-material factors more acutely than the material ones is what makes us human. Culture brings transcendence because we can transcend the materiality of existence. Culture happens when we add any other factors to the maintenance of bare life. A porcelain plate is not needed to maintain bare life. Neither are a painting or a book.
The capacity to enjoy the non-material aspects of life is, to a large extent, inborn. It is a function of a high IQ. It responds well to early exposure. It can be developed. Every time you create beauty for its own sake, you affirm the primacy of the non-material aspects over bare life. If you set the table beautifully, put a vase of flowers on the table, and arrange the place settings, you delay the ingestion of the food until the environment is organized and not chaotic. In this way, you affirm your mastery over the animal part of your nature. You affirm that you are human and have control over your instincts. Culture is a system of limitations that are willingly sought and imposed by the higher order of your self on the raging maw of desire that is the animal self.
Culture is always excessive. It’s by definition unnecessary to bare life. We don’t relieve ourselves in the streets. Instead, we have created toilets and we maintain them clean and pretty. Seeing a dirty toilet depresses us because it reminds us that bare life is there. It can escape from the civilizational constraints that we put on it.
Clarissa's Blog 
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret
et mala perrumpet furtim fastidia victrix.
When we make ourselves ignorant of our animal realities, we obviate our ability to transcends them.
Also, a much smaller minimum IQ is necessary to participate in, than to maintain said transcendence.
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That is an interesting point, wanting to be around and create beautiful things is special and precious. And it does take a refined mind and sensitivity to appreciate art and music and literature, or any good art. Unfortunately this is why it’s a stereotype that the more low-IQ conservatives have bad taste in arts: country songs about beer and trucks, dumb and loud action films, Left Behind, and the sort of cop shows where the bad guys get their asses kicked.
If one has an above average intelligence and an artistic sensibility, such stuff is appalling and unbearable. This stuff appeals to lower IQ people who want stuff that is easily digestible and to understand, stuff that doesn’t challenge them. Such folks couldn’t watch a foreign film or listen to an opera in its original language or watch a TV show with ambiguity, much less read classic literature even in English.
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