Quin, your cite to Burke at once brought to mind a few lines from Philip Rieff, of whom I am a great and all-too-rare enthusiast:
A culture in control needs first of all to preserve that control by not reaching its legal arms too far into the labyrinths of public life. The guardians of any culture must constantly protect the difference between the public and private sectors — and encourage forms of translation between the two sectors; that is the meaning of ritual in all traditional cultures.
For the reader who’d like to read deeper, I’ve put together a sort of concordance of my glosses and commentaries on Rieff and culture here.
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