Haha, yeah same here. Well, that's interesting. What is Google? It's a company in San Jose, California I'm pretty sure. It's part of a "tech boom." It's the internet. What is the internet? What cultural processes had to take place for us to have it? Doing the "zoom out" thing, you can imagine how crazy the internet seems. Let's think of going into the Amazon and having some shaman tell us that he knows something because the plants told him on a full moon. We go, right. Good one, dude. The plants told you. Then we pull out a phone, tap our thumbs, and acquire knowledge. He says, how does that make sense? You just tapped your thumb into a piece of plastic. We say, packets of data shot from my palms to a satellite and back into my palms, and there is knowledge in the thing now. I read words from it, and they're true. There's a think called Google. The guy would be like, sure dude. Keep on thinking all that stuff, and meanwhile you can't identify a single plant and can't hunt.
I'm really enjoying people's posts so far. And, if anybody has 20 minutes to spare, a talk about "endangered cultures" from one of my favorite anthropologists Wade Davis. Might make your brain explode:
Reminded me I left out an entire chapter. Lover I met in Bellingham introduced me to serious back backing. It was incredible and I miss it now. Besides the Cascades and Puget Sound, we traveled to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia and lived out of a tent and traveled by rental cars or buses the whole time, with the exception of renting a flat for a month in Tasmania. This is absolutely fascinating.
I guess - Scottish, living in northern England (Newcastle area), middle class, and went partly through public school (that's private school in the Americas). So I did Classics and Latin for a while as a child, forgot it when I went to state school as a teen, and relearned it for and after my degree. Bit of a leftie politically, and very much a child of the 1990s.
@Wreybies I'm curious about your experience and opinion around gayness and military. In my mind I have certain stereotypes about the military being highly homophobic, but as someone who was never in the military I have no idea. My dad was in the marines and two of my uncles served, so I've heard stories. But I'd really like to hear yours, if you're willing to share. Normally I wouldn't want to put anyone on the spot but it seems you're pretty open about these things.
I can only speak for myself and my own experience. Let's travel back to the USAF of the late 80's and up through the 90's..... There were two sides to being gay in the military for me. There was me within ESC (Electronic Security Command), which no longer exists given that it was subsumed later by SAC (Strategic Air Command). ESC was the USAF's intelligence command. We were the "secret folk" who gathered the "secret stuff". These days "intelligence" kinda' has a bad rap, but back in the day it was the place to be for a nerdy little guy like me. Working in ESC made you ultra-elite in a way that didn't ask for you to be on the front lines with bullets whistling past you, though toward the end I did experience that too. There were lots and lots and lots of gay and lesbian folk in ESC. It was just the kind of place and jobs and tightly insular little command (it was really small and really insular) that made it a safe haven for LGBT folk. Everyone in ESC worked with a top security clearance, within SCIF's, so everything about that life was secret and behind many heavily armored closed doors, both actual and metaphorical. Being gay within my tiny little rarified bubble within a rarified bubble was not a big deal. My friends all knew and I had a group of gay friends. We painted Berlin red, we did. I did eventually get busted for being gay - as did many others within ESC and other commands - but the "bustage" came from outside of ESC. So my view and my memory of events has two very different sides to it: the people I knew and worked with within ESC, and the people from the other Air Force, the outsiders who were markedly different. Even though we're talking about a time long before the "new gay rights movement" had any sort of effect on the military, I will tell you that I loved being in uniform and even though I was made to leave for being gay and would have served a complete 20 years had that not happened, if I were needed and asked to come back now, I would go.
Holy shit that's interesting. You could probably write a book just about this ESC deal. Nerdy gay and lesbian intelligence agents literally protected by armored doors... This alone has just painted such a cool picture in my head! Made to leave for being gay?! Jeez, can they still do that? I'm sorry that's ridiculous. This was probably before "don't ask, don't tell" right? Not that that policy did much of anything for anyone, from what I understand.
And all kinds of other, different, bright, intimidatingly brilliant people. I still have my group of air force buddies almost 20 year later. It's why being gay... no one cared. All they cared about was how many languages can you speak, and how fast can you copy this particular kind of intelligence, by hand. How able were you to extract spoken information from what would seem to anyone else to be pure, LOUD static. How clever were you to put together this unusual thing you heard from this emitter and that unusual thing you heard and from another and from that connect the dots to something new happening over there on the enemy side. That's all anyone cared about because frankly people able to do those things aren't common. Not anymore, but again, this was from before any sort of address or attention was paid at all to policy concerning LGBT folk in the military. In a way, and to go back to your original question, ESC was a separate culture from the rest of the Air Force.
If I recall, there was a big stink about the stupidity of the military booting out a number of bilingually skilled gays desperately needed for translating Middle East communications. Another level of failure of the Bush war.
Who the fuck are you???? That's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Are you sure you're not a sci fi character?
Oh gosh, where do I even start on this one - I'm originally from Colorado Springs, Colorado (which, trust me, is different than just saying "I'm from Colorado"), now living in inner city Washington, DC and working around (but not on) Capitol Hill. How many different perceptions of who I'm supposed to be do we want to get into? Well - I'm from Colorado - which if you're from there means: You're ridiculously outdoorsy and love hiking (I like hiking, but it's not my life, and I prefer an evening at the theatre, thanks) You ski and snowboard all winter (I've never been skiing - it's expensive and I don't see the logic in sliding down an icy mountain at high speed). You're affluent and yuppie-ish (well sort of. My dad was a computer programmer but we have pretty blue-collar local roots and carry that chip on our shoulder). And if you're not from there: You're a stoner (Not in a million years) Of course that's just stereotypes of Colorado, there's also stereotypes of "The West" You're uneducated (I work at a think tank) You're a redneck (see above comments about theatre) You love country music (guilty as charged) You're from Red-State America and therefore conform to stereotypes of Southerners (News flash - the West and the South are really, REALLY culturally different from one another - including the types of Republicans they elect, by the way). Then again - I'm also a Capitol Hill DC Millenial yuppie, therefore everyone around me assumes I'm liberal (Sorry. Long time conservative activist) I must realize how silly and ignorant people back home are, and how people here are so much more educated (Nope. There are morons everywhere. DC's morons just tend to be more elitist) I'm a hipster (Please kindly take your craft beer and shove it up your....) Oh and then I'm a Republican... I'm racist (I'm sure the majority-black house of worship I attended for years would be surprised) I'm ignorant about how the world really works (let's talk about my Master's research...) I'm mean and hate people who don't think like me (All of my roomates are liberals, as are my entire writing group) I'm Evangelical (Messianic Judaism, google it) All of my political work is motivated by religion (Actually, I'd rather talk to you about foreign policy, statecraft, European Economics, Aboriginal rights in Australia - oh, what were you saying about how I'm supposed to be obsessed with gay marriage? Yeah, not really my issue, although I can recommend some experts if that's what you really want to talk about) So - I guess at the end of it - I don't make sense. And I'm just me.
My culture is a bit mixed up. I live in the South, near my fathers family. They're working class, southern, christian, 'muricans and that's how they identify themselves. All of them are uneducated (my father dropped out of high school and my grandfather dropped out in 8th grade). They're the stereotypical Americans living halfway in the sticks and halfway in a (pretty small) town. They value the bible, and going to church twice a week. Borderline racist (definitely bigots and prejudiced) and most definitely homophobic. -- oh remember how I said uneducated? they recently had a baby and named it Naveah and told everyone that they named her that because it was "heaven", backwards. When I insisted that's not heaven backwards, they said, "Only someone who's REALLY PICKY would notice or care." *bangs head on the table* Apparently I'm a snob. My mother comes from Kansas. her family is much more educated, and "cultured" so to speak. She grew up in an (even smaller) town with all white people and one black family - who were the towns main preacher (irony, right?). Fun fact - until my mum moved to the south, she somehow didn't realize "nigger" was an insult. If you said, "he works like a nigger," or even, "he's a nigger" to her that meant he was hardworking and strong. There were also a bunch of american indian reservations around - and there were stigma and prejudiced against them. I grew up in the south, around my fathers family. Because of my physical disability, that part of my family didn't have much to do with me so I spent a lot of time with my Mom, and even lived in Kansas with her family during some years of my childhood which REALLY influenced me. The insane patriotic pride is instilled in me, and I'm a christian. I even have a little bit of a ... I guess prejudice? Against black people if they're dressed a certain way. I've gotten WAY better at recognizing the idiocy of it though. I also used to have the homophobia type attitude towards gay people. If you told me you were gay, I would look at you like you're an alien. That has completely turned on it's head as I've matured, though. My best friend has decided she's a lesbian, and because of that I'm a lot more comfortable discussing that type of thing. (What I'm saying is that even though my fathers family tried to make me anti-guy and anti-black, they didn't succeed) Also because of my disability I'm a lot more cultured and well-traveled (we would have to fly/drive all over the country to see specialists). I've been in a total of 32 states, and have done all sorts of amazing things. I'm also a lot more educated than my fathers family which doesn't help. I'm sure I'm missing things, but that's all I can think of at the moment. I'll probably add to it.
I worked with a gal named Tina who was a sci-fi character. She spoke seven different languages and spoke all of them well. When she asked me how many I had, I had to say, "only four". During slow times, like on mid-shifts, she made these elaborate drawings that were sentences and paragraphs, in drawn form. No actual words, just patterns. She would say, "This part is the subject, and this curly part here is the verb, and see how it opens and flows into these little dangly things? Those are all the dependent clauses..." and she would do this in the different languages she knew. She was something else, and you knew that her mind worked very, very differently. Just brilliant. She taught me a lot as regards language apprehension and understanding and how to engage language as a system of subsystems, not just words.
This sounds really cool, could you elaborate more? Reminds me of the movie Dear White People, which I really loved. There were a lot of complex black identities portrayed in the film, and one interesting feature was this pressure from some of the black characters to other black characters to embrace their "blackness" and oppose "whiteness." The film did a good job showing how some folks just want a "tribe," others want lots of attention, others don't want to conform to anything in particular. I've heard really good things about the movie Dope that just came out, exploring similar ideas.
Wow this thread is so interesting! It's so great to see where people are from and what kinds of things they have been up to. I'm from North East England so our culture is a bit of a mix up. There's a little bit of everything here, though I can't say I accept it all myself. A lot of our culture and dialect evolved from various historical events and I really like that fact. We've got a bit of Old English, some Nordic and Scottish. I don't speak in such ways myself and I have a pretty watered down accent but I enjoy reading about where the words have come from and what they mean. -Stereotypical 'Geordies' are supposed to be friendly and very sociable - I find that to be true a lot of the time but some of the younger 'chav' type people can be quite loud and rude. - There is a 'nightclub' culture here which I just can't get behind. I'm all for having a good time in the way in which you choose but being a non-drinker I find large crowds of drunken, half-naked people a bit too much to bear (seriously, the clothes the women wear...not good. In winter too!). -Football culture plays a big part here too (though I'm not into it at all) It's not uncommon to see people with stained glass windows of the Newcastle United football team in their houses - its completely insane. -There's the food too, gotta love a stottie bread with cheese savoury, Although I can't get behind ham and pease pudding (being a vegetarian). Love my cups of tea though, I swear I am dependent on tea. Stereotypically people think of us North Easterners as 'rough' and 'common', but people forget that there's a lot of culture and heritage in the North East. We're big on our science, art and music here and we have loads of history (also a 12th century castle keep and 900 year old cathedral in the centre of the city which I think is really cool). There's loads more to add but If I say any more I'm going to be writing an essay and no one has time for that!
A year ago I would have just classed myself as a normal person not really having any culture. But I moved with my husband overseas to Belgium and never have I missed my homeland more! People here either love or hate us for being American, and they all have some opinion, usually some with negative connotations, regarding our lifestyle in general. I began writing this and realized it was turning into a huge biography so instead I'm going to post a few bullet points on what I think really sums me up as a person culturally. I still think I went overboard! D: -Christian: We believe in the NKJ version of the Bible and nothing else lol. I have realities who used to work at ORU, I've seen Benny Hinn in person lay my grandmother on the floor for healing. (My sister-in-law is Atheist... that led to an interesting Christmas one year to say the least.) Her political views are mostly polar opposites of mine but she's a pretty cool gal and she loves the heck out of my brother. -I have two loving, married Mother-in-laws who believe in Karma. (Atleast that's something lol.) I have been raised a "Born Again" Christian and even though most of my family think it's weird to love another person of the same sex, I love my moms dearly. They are two of the most loving, self sacrificing and hospitable people I have ever met. I am very accepting of them being together and couldn't imagine my life without them. -I have a lot of "mother figures" in my life. (And I appreciate everyone of them) I have little to no relationship with my actual mother nor do I want one, but that's a story in and of its itself. I feel like things turned out for the best really. -I'm not a very girly type of girl. (If that makes any sense.) I don't like the color pink at all. I was never into princess-y stuff. I liked playing with my brothers and riding dirt bikes and playing basketball growing up. Today I find myself having more in common with your typical teenage boy than that of the girly army wives and mothers I'm surrounded by. Makes it real hard for me to make friends. /: -People think I have a Southern Accent. I find this really funny and usually take it as a compliment. I really get this a lot, but I've heard people with Southern Accent's and let me tell you, if I have one it's the tiniest, barely there accent ever. I try to be really polite to people and I think that comes across and "Good Ol' Southern Hospitality" to most people. Also I call a lot of people 'Hun. -I love, LOVE mexican food and American food in general which is hard to define if you've never been out of the country. But when all you have around you is frog legs, lamb, escargot, lots of fishy foods, a total lack of steak houses and burger joints, weird interpretations of pizza that you eat with a fork and not a single Mexican restauraunt within 4 hours driving time around you... you start to realize everything you grew up eating and love in this world food wise is considered American. The people here greatly frown upon Americans taste in food and I frown upon theirs in return lol. These people are sorely missing out. -We like to keep to ourselves. What I mean by that is I hate neighbors, girlscouts, teenagers and strangers in general who knock on my front door or worse- ring the doorbell and alert my dogs that "someone's here!!" We get these really large "festival parades" every couple of months and everyone in the village we live in rides on homeade floats down our street and blares loud music for a good 3-5 hours, trapping us within our home. So you could say I'm definitely more of a shut in-people-hating hermit these days than I used to be. -Avid lover of videogames. My brothers and I all grew up in what I like to call the gamers generation. We had every handheld and console ever made (and no we weren't very financially stable, but we had two very loving and persuadable aunties and grandma.) I get a great feeling of accomplishment from playing games and it's super fun! Usually when people start complaining about their boyfriends/husbands playing videogames that's the moment I realize we probably aren't going to get along and simply cannot be friends lol. Overall I would still describe myself as a "typical" American as everyone here says. But I like to think there's a lot more to me than that. I feel as if I've barely scratched the surface above but I don't want to ramble on and on. (Even though I think I already have!) D: Just think of me as your sassy, yet caring tomboy of a sister. That's more me than anything. c:
This is an interesting thread! It's making me think about what 'culture' really means - so many people defy the stereotypes of their geography - do we really have regional culture anymore, or has everything fragmented into sub-cultures and internet clans? I'm Canadian, but other than the hockey thing, I'm not sure what that means. And while I'll watch the big games in hockey, I'm not a huge fan and don't really follow any teams. I think my patriotism, like many other Canadians', is largely a negative thing - I don't know exactly what it means to be Canadian, but I know we're not Americans, got it?!? Maybe Canada is too big and sparsely populated to really have a national culture. I grew up in Ontario, then moved to Montreal, then to Vancouver, and now I'm back in Ontario, but in a rural part, now. Nothing really jumps out at me as Canadian. Well, except maybe a sense of security? When I travel to other countries, I'm nervous a lot of the time. I don't think it's xenophobia (or whatever it's called when you're the xeno); I feel like things really are less secure elsewhere. Guns and crime, and more visible poverty, and just a sense of... I don't know. Difference. I mean, at home, I leave my doors unlocked most of the time. I've got security from myself and my family, but I know that if somehow those fail I've got a good social safety net to hook me up. It's nice. (I've never been to Europe - only travelled in the States and the Caribbean and a bit in South and Central America. Possibly I'd feel just as secure in Europe?) I think the culture that's really influenced me most is the micro-culture of my family. I think we really have an emphasis on ideas, and the life of the mind, above a lot of other aspects of life. We're all pretty diverse in our opinions, but we all seem to agree that it's really fun and important to discuss these opinions and try to sort them out. When I was in university my brother came to visit me and we were out at the pub and he and I were talking, and we didn't notice that the rest of the table had gone silent and were staring at us, feeling awkward. My roommate had to step into the conversation and say, 'No, they're fine. They're not fighting, this is just how they talk.' I think to other people it feels like we're disrespecting the person by disagreeing with them, but to us it would be disrespecting the idea to not disagree. But I don't think that's really a part of Canadian culture. I'm trying to think of cultures that it would be part of... I think I encountered it a bit in university, especially in philosophy and poli sci classes, and in law school. I don't know. I guess I'm not a typical Canadian, but I'm not sure who a typical Canadian would be, really...
To Americans, canadians are super nice people who wear a lot of red scarves. You enjoy special-people-bacon, hockey, and you're all best friends with mooses, EH?!? () You don't know how to argue with anyone and you're always cold. "Sorry" is your second favorite word next to "EH!"
I think a big collab story would be funny, if everyone were to write their character from the perspective of their stereotypical culture.
Yeah, sure. When you look at many peoples of color and study their cultures and practices, you might find that many of them share similarities with older African traditions. This is what I'm referring to. All black people have roots in Africa, we have a shared ancestry. We have the people of Kemet (Egypt), the Dogons, the Sumerians, the Ethiopians - these people were our ancestors and they had certain spiritual understanding and practices, certain worldviews that seeded many later traditions. These people were building kingdoms, developing mathematical and scientific knowledge and innovation, codifying laws based in ethics, and exploring the world before invaders came conquering. Shamanism started there. Spiritual alchemy started there. Honoring the ancestors started there. Honoring nature started there. The history of these peoples - of Africa - is the heritage of black people on a deeper level. This is what was robbed of blacks taken to America (and even many before that who were forced to adopt the watered down religions of invading peoples). We no longer know where we came from or who we were before our time here. We are virtually disconnected from our history. We have no knowledge of the inventive, powerful people that our ancestors were or what they taught in their mystery schools. It is a culture that recognizes the value of all life, that promotes unity and respect. It is a culture that promotes song and dance and and play and ritual. It is a culture that doesn't believe the "dead" have permanently left us. It is a culture that teaches children to listens to elders to listen to nature. It is a culture that reconnects people with their inner selves and helps them rediscover life purpose. It is a culture that has it's roots in Africa but shows up in various forms worldwide. Does that make sense. It's kind of hard to articulate because I haven't done the research to be able to speak on it in depth. It is sort of intuitive as I reconnect with myself. I watched Dear White People. It was pretty good, pretty smart. It definitely spoke to the troubles young black people face trying to fit in or even find ourselves in a community that always expects us to be or do something. I like that it brought up the issue of interracial relationships because it demonstrates how conflicting it can be to say you love your blackness and your black people but still feel love for a person of a different "race." Is it betrayal? Should it be secret? What would others say? If I'm happy, then does it really matter what others think? Would the other family ever accept me as normal or am I just the black bf/gf, a trophy in the collection, if you will? I also like how it portrayed what it takes for black people to get media attention: Conflict. The girl who wanted to be on tv was willing to put on an act, to become a stereotype, just to get some attention. But then, inside she showed traces of hating herself for being black. There was a lot to it. I'd have to watch it again to do it some justice in my commentary. I haven't seen Dope, yet, but I've heard some good things about it so I'm thinking about catching it this weekend. ADDENDUM: This is to add that I don't mean to undermine what is real black culture in America. Music is every bit a part of black culture as it is any. African Americans started Jazz, which has largely spread to please many more people, and that's the point. It is not so much ours vs. there's as it is our contributions to the larger spirit of the people in and the land. So I cannot say that one has to go all the way back to africa to find true black culture. Haitians, Jamaicans, Ethiopians, Ghanaians, and Black Americans (for instance) all have self-identifying subcultures. While I don't believe in Christianity, Spirituality has always been present in black culture. While hip hop has been appropriated, diluted, and forced back upon us, it is a form of music and music has been in black culture for years. Cooking and food prep has been black cultures for years. What I feel is important for black people in America to understand is that they have a culture of creativity, of dignity, of spiritual identity, of diversity that transcends the surface value stuff we see and typically accept.
