Modern individuals derive their ideals from specialized occupational roles, not unified cultural wholes

Evidence

If you were to ask educated people today by what ideals they live, most would give a specialized answer derived from their occupational experience. Only rarely would they speak of a cultural ideal which rules them as total human beings. There is a good reason for this. Not only is there a lack of material for a comprehensive cultural ideal, but the fields which it would have to circumscribe are too numerous and heterogeneous to permit such intellectual simplification. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 847

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the essay’s causal chain: the same specialization and fragmented experience that produces the blasé attitude in the metropolis also undermines any totalizing cultural ideal. — connects to: Fashion substitutes for class and profession as a source of individual differentiation. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 732; Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882; Cultural identities are marriages of convenience, not organic belonging. (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Modern trust is vested in abstract capacities, not individuals #corroborates (0.82) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 72
• Culture names the forms, not the content, of social relationships #expands (0.50) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 882
• Cultural identities are marriages of convenience, not organic belonging. #corroborates (0.40)
• Objective and subjective culture grow by fundamentally different logics #expands (0.40) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 32