Somethings been on my mind. As I go through life and observe what is happening around me I don't see culture. I mean, what I see are people going through their drab and dreary daily routines like machines put on auto pilot. This can not be culture, can it?

I have done some travelling to some culturally rich areas where they too are going through daily routines but, as they carry out these routines they appear to have a deep attachment to their surroundings both natural and un-natural.

As I walk around my surroundings I see billboards, fast food stores, speeding cars, big box stores, banks, appartment complexes, busses, and receive strange looks from people if I attempt to make contact with them. I don't have any attachment to anyone or anything.

Sure, I will participate in some cultural activities, eat ethnic food and get together with buddies for wings and beer but that does not mean I am culturally connected.

Hmmmm. I wonder, is this MY culture?

What are your thoughts. And please, do not turn this into a religious discussion.:confused:

The fact that it is a culture you find unfulfilling does not negate its status as a culture.

Is it your culture? That's your decision to make.

I second that.
Group A=:eek:
Group B = Yah the culture is going to shit/is shit
Group C = No way,we have the best culture in the world!
Group D = Will say something that will not make any point at all
The Best group= It's what you make it.We have a culture that is what each and every individual makes it.

Then you'r not looking in the right places.....

http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/



http://www.moma.org/


http://wwar.com/



http://www.amn.org/



http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/



For just a few examples.

I understand that art is part of culture, art can contextualize culture and art can provide me with a haphazard attachment to that cuture. But it does this within its walls only. Leave those walls and disenchantment to my(our) surroundings once again dominates my being.

Here's an example; I recently spent time in a far removed community relatively untouched by euro-western society. The cultural experience I had opened my eyes to what culture is. The collective within this community were driven by a connectedness to their physical and social environment. No one went hungry, no poverty, strong conncection to spirituality, acceptance, understanding, and an emphasis on the well-being of the collective was ever-present.

Understand that my point is not an argument for or against the existance of culture. I know it exists but WHAT IS OUR CULTURE?


:confused: :)

Please cite examples where Americans are going hungry as in most of Africa. India has starving as well and so does many other countries that you know as well. So to say culture is dying in America is absurd. You really haven't been out much have you? Please get out more often and stop listening to the propagnda that your listening to for everyone knows better than what your trying to suggest.

Originally posted by fireguy_31
I know it exists but WHAT IS OUR CULTURE?


:confused: :)

It is whatever you see around you, though you may translate it into something that it is or isn't to others in the same culture. You might attempt to define the key indicators of a culture before attempting to define what comprises yours. I might ask: "what's the difference?". I mean, I can see the validity of the question in a sheerly curious context but if you are looking for something to "connect to" it seems shallow to consider 'culture' as something to connect to as it cannot "connect" back to you.

Aren't you in Canada or something anyway? I only ask because if so then maybe we're in different cultures. At what level does one decide what establishes a 'culture' rather than a sub-culture or psuedo-culture? Maybe we should discuss our emotional involvement with cheese? It just seems that attempting to 'connect' to something that is ultimately a tool to decribe the dynamic of human interaction on a large scale in the sense that you seem to describe it is uh... well, awefully one-sided. *shrug* I'm just spewing what I think as i think it, pardon.

Maybe you're just looking for the intellectual "how does this fit into this" kind of thing. In that case it seems that the proper thing to do would be to write down some properties of a culture you think you understand already, then attempt to find the parallel substitution for the environment you think you're in. Then go back and ensure they fit with what you think the definition of "culture" is and adjust accordingly. Repeat until properly defensable or rendered pointless which might lead you to a new question. I'd guess if you listed some specific thoughts on the matter you'll get some good input.

Fireguy:
Sure, I will participate in some cultural activities, eat ethnic food and get together with buddies for wings and beer but that does not mean I am culturally connected.


But stuck on a island wearing loincloths would?

Culture can be moccassins and a squaw dress. It can be mariachis and tequila. It can buyoun and maize served by a Vodun priest. It can be English tea served at noon with a scrumpet.

And it can also be a Big Mac and large fries, an SUV and a soccer mom. There's nothing wrong with thinking this is the American culture.

Quote: As I walk around my surroundings I see billboards, fast food stores, speeding cars, big box stores, banks, appartment complexes, busses, and receive strange looks from people if I attempt to make contact with them. I don't have any attachment to anyone or anything.

All of the above are a part of culture. They define the lifestyle we live. The alienation you feel is also a part of this culture. All this by the way is being exported to those places where you perceive a more meaningful experience of culture. Many outside the West would love to have the chance to experience the benefits and freedoms of this culture you seemingly abhor. Perhaps what you find alienating is the 'trendiness' and speed of change within this system culture. It is not as permenant as traditional cultures ie: clothes, music, food stuff, cars, values etc change rapidly. Read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock.

Lucysnow:
Perhaps what you find alienating is the 'trendiness' and speed of change within this system culture
Right on. La cultura americana es roller-coastered.

Read Alvin Toffler's Future Shock.
Or Hall's "The Silent Language". He's got something to say about 'ugly americans' for which I'd like to bash his head in:

"We have to to learn to take foreign culture seriously. The British are way ahead os us on this, and the Russians (ha) are so far ahead it isn't even funny. We, in the United States, are in the stone age of human relations.......".

I say there is going to be alienation no matter what. Everyone to his heartaches. So........here's a cheer for bacteria. Quite possibly the only culture we can't argue about.

Thank-you!

I mean no disrespect to any other posts here but you managed to stick to the question and answer it with meaningful intent.

:)

Ah ya just caught me in one of my better moods:D

They define the lifestyle we live.

Or, does our lifestyle define our culture?




But stuck on a island wearing loincloths would?


:bugeye: "Very good Mr.Parrington!"

Bah, you want alienation, read Durkheim or Marx. Hell, on the latter, rightyo old Karl - only now, entertainment is production. As for the lack of American culture, boo. Fucking. Hoo.

Give me trivial sex and a Quarter Pounder with fries

"Or, does our lifestyle define our culture?"

I believe they are one and the same. Our environment helps define our lifestyle which is an aspect of culture. I recall reading African Child, which is written by an African living in Paris, he wrote of his childhood in a traditional African village (wonderful book by the way). His lifestyle changed dramatically during his years of study and work in France. He had adapted to a new culture and some of its values. In many respects he was critical of this new culture and pined for what he grew up in, but he could not completely re-establish his African culture while living in France because of environment (no african village, no rights of passage ritual taking place in the bush, no reason to subsist in the same old way etc.). His culture had changed because his lifestyle and environment had changed even if he has retained some of his old values. His children like himself for example attend a French school, use the subway, wear western clothes, eat French food as well as African cuisine and grow up within a European value system. Lifestyle and culture are the same and determined by our environment. In NYC we speak of having a wide variety of cultures and in a way we do, but the truth is that we are all part of the same metropolitan culture. Being born Chinese in China town is in no way equivilant to being born and raised in Hangzhou, China. While in the East I once knew a young woman who's parents were American and living in Asia. She was born and raised in S. Korea, attended university in China and lived in Hong Kong. Her main annoyance was having everyone assume she was Western because she was a white woman. She has never been outside Asia, her lifestyle is in no way dissimilar to that of other educated Asians. It was the culture she was raised in that determined her lifestyle.

Quote: Bah, you want alienation, read Durkheim or Marx. Hell, on the latter, rightyo old Karl - only now, entertainment is production. As for the lack of American culture, boo. Fucking. Hoo.

There is no 'lack' of American culture. It is alive and well and a major U.S export. Wouldn't you consider Durkheim and Marx a part of Western Culture? Aren't we speaking of Western culture as opposed to traditional cultures? Communism represents a Western ideology.

That....was rather my point.

The fact that one finds American culture to be in conflict with their view of what culture should be does not mean that American culture is not culture. It's simply a culture that you dislike. Disliking something (and the clue train is leaving the station at 8:45 pm going 45 mph while another train is leaving the station at 9:00 pm going 50 mph...) does not mean that that thing is thus negated.

Of course fireguy_31 gets strange looks from the strangers he tries to engage in conversation. If some stranger named "fireguy_31" tried to engage me in conversation I'd likely bludgeon him with whatever book he was interrupting my reading of. Unless he was cute. In which case I'd still bludgeon him, but I'd only knock him unconscious and drag him back to my apartment. People don't like to be annoyed. It has nothing to do with "alienation". The fact that we're so isolated is one of the GOOD things about American culture. Stadtluft macht frei!

American culture isn't really a culture.
It's more like commercial hell.
With pitch forks in the shape of Barbie doll celebrities.
Stabbing at you with their nauseating fashions.
Then burning you alive with their never ending barrage of crappy trends.
It’s horrible.

Lucy:
Communism represents a Western ideology.
Point to ponder: Ideology is not culture.

Xev:
Give me trivial sex and a Quarter Pounder with fries
Yes, and make his a quarter pounder too. Get it?
Ha-ha.

It has nothing to do with "alienation". The fact that we're so isolated is one of the GOOD things about American culture
Oh yes. It'd be warped day in hell to see a Muslim teenybopper doing the cabbage patch in a burqua.

But globalization is making that hell a brutal reality. Yikes.

Stadtluft macht frei!
Translate please.

Cool Skill you are free not to eat junk food, watch television and buy second hand. Hell you are free to join the Amish! If you don't like commercialism then don't embibe in it. Reads Xev post, just because you don't like it does not negate it as a culture. Consumerism is on of the defining factors in this culture. I am not saying it is right or good but that it is.

Xev don't be selfish! After you've bludgeoned the sorry cutie you can at least invite some of us over and share him...after youre done with him of course.

Gendankan: Ideology is not a culture but it represents an aspect of a culture, just like Confucianism represents and was a determining factor in Chinese culture.

gendanken:
Oh yes. It'd be warped day in hell to see a Muslim teenybopper doing the cabbage patch in a burqua.

But globalization is making that hell a brutal reality. Yikes.

Agreed. Soon we will have women in burquas hopping around singing along to Madonna's "Justify My Love" or something.

Incorperation of varied cultural traditions is the hallmark of a great nation or empire. Destruction of those cultural traditions in favour of a bland, worldwide monoculture is not.

Translate please.

I spent much of today learning to say things in that hell of a language, now you want it in English?

City (stadt) air (luft - the Germans love these longass words, literal words) makes (machen - macht) free (frei).

Logical language, it's hell to learn.

Cool_skill:
American culture isn't really a culture.
It's more like commercial hell.
With pitch forks in the shape of Barbie doll celebrities.
Stabbing at you with their nauseating fashions.
Then burning you alive with their never ending barrage of crappy trends.
It’s horrible.
Jinx the tortured artist bit. We've all heard the gothic mantra before.

Lucy:
Ideology is not a culture but it represents an aspect of a culture, just like Confucianism represents and was a determining factor in Chinese culture.
This is ad hoc.
I'm thinking this thread is geared more towards the idea of a navajo having his rain dance and us having nada. Both having nothing to do with Occidental -ologies

Xev:
Agreed. Soon we will have women in burquas hopping around singing along to Madonna's "Justify My Love" or something.
Muahha.....ha.
Mayhaps its already started. I remember just now seeing a burqua floating down the street in brand new Nikes .

Incorperation of varied cultural traditions is the hallmark of a great nation or empire. Destruction of those cultural traditions in favour of a bland, worldwide monoculture is not.

Amen. But what bugs me is what chrystallizes out of the hodgepodge- the nasty habits of yeoman romantisizing another man's culture for the sake of diverstity. White americans being the most annoying to do this. Why?

Logical language, it's hell to learn.
No shit. The Germans have this knack for taking a language and "churning it into a long string of compuound sausage words".


C'mon..........tell me you got my "and make his a quarter pounder too" jokey joke and I can go to bed a happy woman.

Quote: This is ad hoc.
I'm thinking this thread is geared more towards the idea of a navajo having his rain dance and us having nada. Both having nothing to do with Occidental -ologies

Well I agree. I was responding to what something I misunderstood in Xev's post.

Quote:
Amen. But what bugs me is what chrystallizes out of the hodgepodge- the nasty habits of yeoman romantisizing another man's culture for the sake of diverstity. White americans being the most annoying to do this. Why?

Guilt. Its the white mans burden turning into the white mans guilt.

gendanken:
It's started. The little Muslim girls at school are trying to co-ordinate their hajibs with sexy, lacy tight shirts.

Yeah...so it sucks.

Why? Because (as Lucysnow mentioned) whites are eeeevil. We're paying the piper for "oppressing" minorities in the coin of our self-accusation. This involves glorifying the cultures we "destroyed".

I got your joke. I couldn't think of anything witty to say in return.

Well, true to form, what began as a directed discussion has turned?!?!?!

Xev Lucysnow

In which case I'd still bludgeon him, but I'd only knock him unconscious and drag him back to my apartment.


Maybe Xev should start a new thread titled, "My conceptions of foreplay" and lucysnow could respond... haha!;)

Quote: Why? Because (as Lucysnow mentioned) whites are eeeevil. We're paying the piper for "oppressing" minorities in the coin of our self-accusation. This involves glorifying the cultures we "destroyed".

Well I never! Why do you assume I think a race or culture is evil?
Europeans were not the only ones to oppress minorities. I just think that when Westeners go to other countries and romanticize about their lifestyles, sprituality, culture etc (noble savage and all that), it comes from a need to negate what one is, guilt because one comes from a more affluent, dominating society or culture. I have noticed this in some lefties as they assume the same psychological disposition ie: I am rich and priviledged and feel guilty so I move into a poorer neighborhood in order to 'help the people'. American Indians have been displaced so I adopt aspects of their religious beliefs and hail them as greater than what I was raised with.

Lucysnow:
Oh I don't, sorry I didn't express that right, I was more noting the common view that whites take of the situation - we've been bad, look at all the wonderful people we fucked over, we should atone - what you're outlining. Actually, what you outlined better than I have.

American Indians have been displaced so I adopt aspects of their religious beliefs and hail them as greater than what I was raised with.

Whoa! Lucy, I can't help but notice extreme arrogance within your response. I mean,
I just think that when Westeners go to other countries and romanticize about their lifestyles, sprituality, culture etc (noble savage and all that), it comes from a need to negate what one is, guilt because one comes from a more affluent, dominating society or culture.

whats that? Oh my higher than thou lucy, please enlighten me, I am a lost soul searching for this higher understanding you so posess.:rolleyes:

I have no idea why you are being so defensive. I mean how does what I outlined pertain to you?

Maybe it doesn't but, if you read my earlier posts you'll see that my bewilderment of our own culture stems from cross-cultural experiences. Your statement belittles that experience.

Originally posted by gendanken
Jinx the tortured artist bit. We've all heard the gothic mantra before.

What??
Really?

Absolutely not. I understand your ambivilances but unless you take on the psychological disposition I had mentioned it does not pertain to you. I have also had cross-cultural experiences as I attended a cross-cultural studies program (Friends World Program...quacker no less). I also own property in Belize; a country that has yet to have been completely transformed by Western culture but I give it time. In FWP I often noticed this annoying trait I mentioned where American students would wax so emotionally about the culture they were experiencing that they lacked the perspective to see it clearly (ie: going to India and immersing oneself in Hinduism while ignoring poverty and the status of women). All cultures and societies have positive and negative, beautiful and ugly aspects to them. To see Western culture as all negative is to negate its accomplishments ie: Technological advancements, honoring the individual, diversity of thought and experience, etc.

Belize for example is beautiful and I can romanticize about the Mayans living in little shacks painted prettily in bright colors, their beautifully landscaped gardens etc., or about the Garifuna who retain much of their African traditions, but I cannot ignore that many have to work in the hot sun for very little pay, do not get adequate health care, lack electicity and running water, or that women are quite often dismissed as an extension of their husbands and children. When I am there or in any other less affluent society I have to remember that it is the society I come from that allows me to live as well as I do IN THEIR culture. In Belize I am land-owner, potential employer. In Asia I can afford to hire my own driver to shlepp me around for less than $20 US a day. I can go where I want and EXPERIENCE them because I am from the West. Why do you think so many (granted not all) want to come to the States or Europe? They are looking for freedom, education, money and opportunity. The Belizeans I know who have lived in the States go back to their country with the education and money gained here and become business people there. They return to the States to purchase goods, go to the mall, the movies and eat whatever the hell they like. All you abhor is what they love about this culture. It is a PRIVILEGE to romanticize about another culture or even visit them and complain about how shallow it is in the West.

I don't think culture is dead, i think it's hiding away for when junk culture (fashion, tv, mags, pop music) dies it's inevitable death.

Internet and associated technology has spawned a new forward looking culture that is percolating to the top of the human melting pot.

The old broadcast era was isolationist, very one way broadcasted culture arriving by magazines, television and radio. You had the illusion of choice being able to choose channels etc. Now the internet is group and community focused.

It's why there are so isolated and lonely people. It's also why there so many freaks on the net, it's their only outlet when they were traditionally isolated. That's diminishing of course.

With the internet you can be anywhere on earth (or for agurments sake, even off the earth) and as long as you can hook into the internet your in contact with the rest of humanity.

If you haven't heard of Smart Mobs you're not one of the new 'in' crowd. That kind of thing is the future.

Thousands of years ago the first humans lived largely in nomadic groups, only in the last two or three millenia have we shifted to the settled agricultural and eventually urbanised.

We're not doing to well, we're unhealthy and we're slaughtering each other on a large scale still. It's because the ideal psychological environment is not living in a seething mass of millions of people yet isolated in our own family and peer groups. It's in small tribes and clans where everybody knows everybody and that small group was as good as the entire human world as a individual knows it.

In a way we're coming back to that, internet is uniting humanity and it's a kind of internet on it's own.

Eventually we will all be one tribe again.

Interesting point. I think I get the gist of what you say to mean we evolved through the modern era as isolated people then, with the help of technological advancements, we have remained isolated yet connected at the same time. But the connection we now have is as real as the medium which connects us. Ultimately leaving us with a greater disconnection.

No doubt, as some here have claimed, it is culture whether we like it or not. Which begs the question yet again, is culture(proper)dead?

:confused:

Lucy:
In FWP I often noticed this annoying trait I mentioned where American students would wax so emotionally about the culture they were experiencing that they lacked the perspective to see it clearly

Mierda. This is precisely what I'm talking about. I'm picturing blue eyed and pigtailed Betty Sue up in Harlem bawling her eyes out watching Shiniqua getting her hair cornrolled.

That's, like........so cultural. Whatever.

The only thing worse than this is Sally Struthers in a Third World Country.

Culture never gets truely appreciated untill many years after its gone.
Thats all I need to say.
I'd bank, that in 50+ years, todays culture will be held in higher regard than the people of today who mock it.

Originally posted by Lucysnow
Reads Xev post, just because you don't like it does not negate it as a culture.
No kidding.
It was a figure of speech: "American culture isn't really a culture."

It's like saying the river behind my building isn't really a river.
It's a toxic cess pit for mutant ducks with 3 heads.

Quote: Mierda. This is precisely what I'm talking about. I'm picturing blue eyed and pigtailed Betty Sue up in Harlem bawling her eyes out watching Shiniqua getting her hair cornrolled.

That's, like........so cultural. Whatever.

The only thing worse than this is Sally Struthers in a Third World Country.

And doesn't it just make you want to vomit? I will never forget when our indigenous field advisor turned to us and said "Never feed the beggars it only encourages them. They become accustomed to their position and you in yours.".

One of the students became indignant claiming insensitivity, not fully understanding what was being conveyed. Our field advisor simply turned and said,
"I understand. You feel better about yourself witnessing their habit of groveling".

I simply shuddered at her words.

Culture never gets truely appreciated untill many years after its gone.

I believe this to be a more fitting definition of a word that was used prior; Romanticizing.

Without question ther are ills within any society; starvation, poverty, human rights abuses, equality issues etc etc. Lucysnow provided a scenario earlier that qualified her assertion that the psychological disposition of ones culture can provided a better understanding of their culture. I agree. Examining your societal response to such issues as; starvation, poverty, human rights abuses, equality issues etc etc, which is found within every culture, provides a fantastic window into your own culture.

Culture is everywhere, all you need do is LOOK! If YOU don't want to take the time , that's YOUR problem.