Spain
Having spent the weekend in Barcelona, I now realise that culture, like accent, is one of those things that everyone thinks they lack until they go elsewhere. A country without a culture is like a shape without a size: impossible.
The word “culture” nowadays is used to describe either 1) identity 2) the fleeting collection of habits and opinions that preoccupy the people 3) grand, iconic things such as languages, organisations and rituals.
Real culture, however, underlies and outlasts all these things, is more robust, and more rooted in intuition. It can be shaken by neither ideology nor public opinion. Why does every foreign country that I visit have motorists more aggressive than in Britain? Is that the unforthrightness Britons are known for? Every Barcelonan driver seems to think red lights are a mere suggestion and that pedestrians are there to be flattened like pigeons. I feel that’s the kind of difference that would have been apparent a hundred years ago but in a different way, like the legendry animal cruelty. That came to me in the form of a gameshow, and a street market where gerbils are left in the sun so long they drink eachother's blood. If you want to find culture, real culture, in a country, look to its commonplace aspects. Look out your hotel window. The courtyard view from my hotel was of a higgledy-piggledy layout, cracked tiles, drab tiny gardens and overall unkemptness, and in Britain would be thought to be a council tenement. However, something about Spain's genius loci made its makeshift appearance romantic. Maybe by stepping outside Britain I lost a sense of class consciousness I never knew I had (although real class feeling is subconscious). Furthermore, the fact that such a mundane area was filled with characteristically Spanish adjustments made it clear just how extensive and unconscious culture is.
Grand architecture and poetry represent conscious ideas, but the shape of a toilet seat is probably more culturally informative.
I think to properly gauge the depth of a culture, to see what lies closest to the heart of a nation, one must to experience more than one era, and see what outlasts what.
It would be like moving from side to side to add depth to one’s view of a billiard ball.
The word “culture” nowadays is used to describe either 1) identity 2) the fleeting collection of habits and opinions that preoccupy the people 3) grand, iconic things such as languages, organisations and rituals.
Real culture, however, underlies and outlasts all these things, is more robust, and more rooted in intuition. It can be shaken by neither ideology nor public opinion. Why does every foreign country that I visit have motorists more aggressive than in Britain? Is that the unforthrightness Britons are known for? Every Barcelonan driver seems to think red lights are a mere suggestion and that pedestrians are there to be flattened like pigeons. I feel that’s the kind of difference that would have been apparent a hundred years ago but in a different way, like the legendry animal cruelty. That came to me in the form of a gameshow, and a street market where gerbils are left in the sun so long they drink eachother's blood. If you want to find culture, real culture, in a country, look to its commonplace aspects. Look out your hotel window. The courtyard view from my hotel was of a higgledy-piggledy layout, cracked tiles, drab tiny gardens and overall unkemptness, and in Britain would be thought to be a council tenement. However, something about Spain's genius loci made its makeshift appearance romantic. Maybe by stepping outside Britain I lost a sense of class consciousness I never knew I had (although real class feeling is subconscious). Furthermore, the fact that such a mundane area was filled with characteristically Spanish adjustments made it clear just how extensive and unconscious culture is.
Grand architecture and poetry represent conscious ideas, but the shape of a toilet seat is probably more culturally informative.
I think to properly gauge the depth of a culture, to see what lies closest to the heart of a nation, one must to experience more than one era, and see what outlasts what.
It would be like moving from side to side to add depth to one’s view of a billiard ball.