Culture!

The left is all up in their own heads about culture, partly because they have no idea what culture means. But they’re sure they love it.

Mostly, of course, they confuse culture for race. This is why they insist school kids do essays about their “culture” by which they mean the kids’ ancestry, as though culture were passed on in the DNA. Oh, sure, families have cultures. Sort of. To be absolutely honest since the advent of mass media, public schooling and, particularly, two working parents that is a lot less important/prevalent than it used to be. In fact, unless the parents make a great deal of effort to pass on SOMETHING, the kids mostly absorb the zeitgeist. (Remember to fight for your kids. It’s important.)

But what they want on that essay is stuff like where your ancestors came from. And let’s be honest, after three to four generations, no one cares, except for the special dish grandma does for Christmas, (if an as yet hypothetical and possibly improbable grand-kid revives the Portuguese tradition of bacalhau for Christmas, my sons will lame them.) But the left doesn’t know. The left thinks culture is the same as race.

Language? Religion? All indelibly written in your chromosomes, which must be the left’s excuse for having absolutely no idea how to teach (or learn) foreign languages, and also for screaming at us when we say something about Islam, and calling us “racist.”

It is a complete puzzle how they can believe this since if culture were imprinted on our genes we’d be roaming the planet hunting and gathering. (If that.)

Their second definition of “culture” is food, clothing, dances and maybe a dozen words. “I enjoy other cultures” culture. “Don’t appropriate my culture” culture. “We had multicultural day at school” culture. It is under that definition that they’re convinced all cultures are equally valid. Because well, you might not like crispy octopus balls, but you really shouldn’t tell people they can’t eat crispy octopus balls.

Then there’s the idea of culture they imbibed in kindergarten and nursed all along with the praise of their teachers and professors, their friends, their “cool” group. The “culture” is colorful, preferably dirty and random stuff done by anyone and everyone who kind of walks by.

Culture is not, in point of fact, in their heads any great achievement. But it is super-important anyway. It’s…. well, it’s “cultural”. It’s like their idea of art froze at the level of kindergarten finger painting. But for it to be authentic and important, it must be stupid, covered in dirt and generally worthless. Like…. a public fixture covered in random stickers and graffiti.

In fact, this is why they’re convinced “white people don’t have culture” and the west doesn’t have culture, and the middle class doesn’t have culture and–

Sorry, guys, you don’t have enough ground-in dirt. And you’re not vandalizing public objects. So, you’re obviously and logically uncultured.

Of course, in that sense of culture, of worthy cultural objects, we have that definition also. It’s just I refuse to admit that their having two different definitions of culture makes any sense just because culture means two things for us too? When they think graffiti and dirt is good culture but pulp science fiction isn’t? Bah. They’re idiots anyway.

So, “culture” in the sense of “good cultural product”… of things wroth preserving, I can’t tell you what that is. i can’t tell you because your opinion is ultimately something different from mine (at least minutely.) And in fact the only thing I think should be considered “important” or “culture” are things that have survived the test of time and outlived their original culture. And still speaks to you.

But aside from that, what is culture? Culture is the software humans get installed in their heads. It supplies for us a lot of the things animals get from instincts. Things like how to communicate, how to act in certain circumstances. That type of thing.

Yes, language is part of culture and the assumptions in any given language are part of culture. For instance, if you language lacks a word for orange, you will not even see orange. you will see dark yellow or yellowish red, or whatever. But it’s deeper than that. Body language is part of culture. Your food preferences is culture. And yes, what you believe about your property or other’s property, your right to defend yourself, the rights of others, all of that is culture.

Which is why changing cultures is so difficult. Acculturation requires you to be aware of all the little things that make you and of what is out of tune with the new culture.

Oh, of course some acculturation happens naturally. Humans adapt to the environment they’re in. For me the five year mark was really important. When we visited after five years, I found myself fitting in less there than here. But ti think you end up stuck betwixt and between when leaving your birth culture, unless you make a conscious effort.

But you can most definitely change cultures. And if you come into another country and intend to live there the rest of your life, a decent respect for the people in whose home you wish to live requires you out of pure decency to try to speak the language and fit in as much as it’s possible to fit in. (About 90% and the 10% could be vagaries of your nervous system as well as anything else.) Because it’s possible. Because it’s not built in to your genes. Because you’re human and have will power and the ability to choose. You’re not a robot or an animal with everything encoded in your genes. (And even some animals — Indy! — I’m not sure about.)

And as for high culture. Well, you create what you can. You’ll never have enough ground-in dirt for the left. And that’s fine by me. Life produces enough dirt and random without any special meaning. We don’t need to contribute to the dirt and the random.

If you chose to contribute to the cultural discourse? Make it special. Make it intentional. Make it you.

Why bother otherwise?