Literature, drama, and music are important parts of any culture, including ours. But books, movies and songs that neither make us think nor connect us — ones that merely entertain us — only debase that culture. They dilute it with senseless, introspective, selfish concerns.

All of these mediums through which we can be made to see and experience other lifestyles, outlooks and thoughts should convey those through the pursuit of perfection. The makers of literature, drama and music ought to be concerned primarily with the perfection of the literature, drama and music they create.

The forms should be elegant, the story compelling, the vocabulary precise and the moral behind it should challenge us into examining our lives in new ways.

Now, literature, drama and music have very compelling private uses. They allow us to convey our innermost thoughts onto paper, or into the air, when we most need to feel heard. Often it is helpful simply to shout off the rooftops how awful your day has been, or write onto a page the pinings of your heart.

But it seems to me that, in this decade especially, with the increasing prevalence of internet-based social networking mechanisms such as Facebook and Twitter and reality television, we Americans have become obsessed with broadcasting the details of our private lives, somehow hoping our own individual problems will be resolved if only the wider public — people who have no interest in the resolution of the struggles of our inner selves — can be made aware of them.

The expectation is that people who are unrelated to us, who are not our confidants, will for some reason or other care. And so when we write words, words, words on paper, or when we say words, words, words on a stage, or when we write notes, notes, notes on a blank music score, they should reflect things that tie us to other people. We should be in the habit of taking great care to make sure that our statements are not irrelevant to our interpersonal connections.

Modern pop artists are all very entertaining; Lady Gaga fairly regularly surprises and astonishes us with something she says, wears or does. There are some media personalities we love to love, and some we love to hate.

Think of the music you hear on the radio. Think of the songs you remember from day to day.

Think of the ones you get stuck in your head, and enjoy their presence there. They make you feel emotions; they make you think of other people, other places or something bigger than yourself.

Culture should be concerned with crafting the most poetic, most romantic, most sentimental and most inspiring objects for our attention. Pursuit of mere entertainment — the instant gratification of our base desires — leads us toward wholesale corruption. Pursuit of emotions we experience individually, without others, leads us only into isolation and out of interconnectedness.