Exploitation of cultural values

Key values in a culture tend to be denoted by words and expressed through music and other arts. Both the words and the artistic expressions can be exploited for commercial, political or religious purposes by associating them with other more restricted meanings or with commercial products. The consequence is that the words used to communicate key values become more closely associated with the distorted meanings and lose their power to articulate the original and often more complex meanings vital to the coherence of a culture.