Oct 09, 2008 00:05
5. Define Culture.
Culture is scary, man. Culture is a set of norms adopted by a group of people to define what they accept as artistic, logical, moral, profane… the list goes on. Culture is a checklist of memes.
It’s strange that so much of nationalism is tied up in language. I’m not saying it’s the all encompassing end all be all. But people get up in arms about their language. There have been wars about this stuff. Language is part of culture. Language provides one of the filters through which we perceive the world. Culture is the conglomeration of an agreed upon set of filters.
Everyone thinks culture is this big great thing, but seriously, it makes us say and do the most ridiculously stupid things to one another. Did you watch the debate with McCain and Obama? Our culture says that one of these men should be running the place? Are you kidding me? The filters we gotta put on to like either of those guys, sheesh! But we have to choose one of them, because we have an agreed upon set of rules here that we must abide by, or anarchy will reign. Which actually wouldn’t be so bad, I bet. The Spanish would have been fine if it weren’t for FASCISM.
I dream that one day there will be this huge global culture that we all adhere to, and then being a Muslim or a Christian, a punk rocker or a stock broker, from Duluth or Djibouti will all be subcultures and we can look for something out in space to kill.