Post by Brad Nelson on Jul 13, 2019 8:31:44 GMT -8
Is there such thing as too much culture?
“Uncultured” is a synonym for using the wrong fork with the entree or wearing white out of season. But unless one lives alone on an island, every person is steeped in culture of one type or another. Some culture (or parts of it) are good. Some culture (or parts of it) are bad. Yadda yadda yadda.
I was watching a softball game between two Christian teams the other day. You would think it was two prison teams playing each other because of the amount of tattoos. One guy had this tacky spider-web image on his neck. Doesn’t anyone stop to think that trying to imitate a Marvel comic in permanent ink on their skin might be taking culture too far?
I had a conversation with a “Native American” at the game. He’s a friendly fellow. And in a conversation with a couple other people, he went on (in good humor and matter-of-factly) about how some tribes don’t like him because he’s considered too Eskimo. I learned there is an entire pecking order of “Native Americans.” Maybe they all uniformly agree on hating the white man but solidarity is not their calling card amongst themselves. I was left with the thought that if the Nazis were alive today, they could be excused for thinking they had won the war, for everyone parses the value of another human being via race these days.
Or sex — that is, if they can agree on that notion at all. Maybe vulgar culture isn’t the problem as much as fantasy culture. When a man can enter a woman’s sport (pretending that he is a woman) and take home trophies, you needn’t be defensive when noting that this is a sham. But our fantasy culture has declared that sex is but a construct applied at birth by wrong-thinking parents. I hope Jeffery Epstein’s lawyers are taking note. A clear defense is that age is but a social construct applied at birth by wrong-thinking parents.
Oddballness is being mainstreamed. Being a freak is now something to be “proud” of. This is so pervasive that what is more amusing than mainstreaming the freak show is watching the normal person sit quietly smiling at this stuff. He silently disagrees to some extent but realizes he is powerless to do anything. Wanting to be the last person eaten by the crocodile, he will find some way to justify nonsense. He can be “sensitive” or “non-judgmental.” Indeed, by accepting nonsense as sense he can often gain a cultural gold medal, and plenty of back-slaps, for doing so.
A recent achievement by soccer women was arguable spoiled by too much culture. One can say that it was the intrusion of politics that spoiled it. But it could be said that holding in-your-face strident political positions has become mainstream culture. Politicizing everything has become culture. There’s no escaping it.
There is, I dare say, way too much culture. How does one resist? It’s easy. You don’t judge yourself according to the cultural Commissars. But then we reveal the true conundrum which is “I leak culture like Chernobyl leaks radioactivity, therefore I am.” That is the proposition by which most live these days. People become so acclimated to aping culture (and it is thick and it is everywhere) that the thought of simply being selective, let along going outside of it, is unthinkable. With everyone else pretending that a man can be a woman, that bad tattoos have a sort of apish panache, and that the freak is normal, what is there for one to do but jump on the bandwagon?
I got a small lesson in the pervasiveness of culture while doing StubbornThings. People just could not slow down and ask themselves a simple question: “Does repeating the same junk ad infinitum enrich my or anyone else’s life? Does it matter? Given that the Left politicizes everything, should I not be a little wary of being rope-a-doped into the same game?”
The answers were always no, no, and no. It was not possible for most people to metaphorically stand up on a stool and gain another perspective on themselves and the entire situation. It was just verbal diarrhea from another type of all-political hack battling their supposed opposite.
Too much culture.
“Uncultured” is a synonym for using the wrong fork with the entree or wearing white out of season. But unless one lives alone on an island, every person is steeped in culture of one type or another. Some culture (or parts of it) are good. Some culture (or parts of it) are bad. Yadda yadda yadda.
I was watching a softball game between two Christian teams the other day. You would think it was two prison teams playing each other because of the amount of tattoos. One guy had this tacky spider-web image on his neck. Doesn’t anyone stop to think that trying to imitate a Marvel comic in permanent ink on their skin might be taking culture too far?
I had a conversation with a “Native American” at the game. He’s a friendly fellow. And in a conversation with a couple other people, he went on (in good humor and matter-of-factly) about how some tribes don’t like him because he’s considered too Eskimo. I learned there is an entire pecking order of “Native Americans.” Maybe they all uniformly agree on hating the white man but solidarity is not their calling card amongst themselves. I was left with the thought that if the Nazis were alive today, they could be excused for thinking they had won the war, for everyone parses the value of another human being via race these days.
Or sex — that is, if they can agree on that notion at all. Maybe vulgar culture isn’t the problem as much as fantasy culture. When a man can enter a woman’s sport (pretending that he is a woman) and take home trophies, you needn’t be defensive when noting that this is a sham. But our fantasy culture has declared that sex is but a construct applied at birth by wrong-thinking parents. I hope Jeffery Epstein’s lawyers are taking note. A clear defense is that age is but a social construct applied at birth by wrong-thinking parents.
Oddballness is being mainstreamed. Being a freak is now something to be “proud” of. This is so pervasive that what is more amusing than mainstreaming the freak show is watching the normal person sit quietly smiling at this stuff. He silently disagrees to some extent but realizes he is powerless to do anything. Wanting to be the last person eaten by the crocodile, he will find some way to justify nonsense. He can be “sensitive” or “non-judgmental.” Indeed, by accepting nonsense as sense he can often gain a cultural gold medal, and plenty of back-slaps, for doing so.
A recent achievement by soccer women was arguable spoiled by too much culture. One can say that it was the intrusion of politics that spoiled it. But it could be said that holding in-your-face strident political positions has become mainstream culture. Politicizing everything has become culture. There’s no escaping it.
There is, I dare say, way too much culture. How does one resist? It’s easy. You don’t judge yourself according to the cultural Commissars. But then we reveal the true conundrum which is “I leak culture like Chernobyl leaks radioactivity, therefore I am.” That is the proposition by which most live these days. People become so acclimated to aping culture (and it is thick and it is everywhere) that the thought of simply being selective, let along going outside of it, is unthinkable. With everyone else pretending that a man can be a woman, that bad tattoos have a sort of apish panache, and that the freak is normal, what is there for one to do but jump on the bandwagon?
I got a small lesson in the pervasiveness of culture while doing StubbornThings. People just could not slow down and ask themselves a simple question: “Does repeating the same junk ad infinitum enrich my or anyone else’s life? Does it matter? Given that the Left politicizes everything, should I not be a little wary of being rope-a-doped into the same game?”
The answers were always no, no, and no. It was not possible for most people to metaphorically stand up on a stool and gain another perspective on themselves and the entire situation. It was just verbal diarrhea from another type of all-political hack battling their supposed opposite.
Too much culture.
