Plague Journal, Culture II
A friend sent me this graphic picturing the various modes that culture takes. We use the term ‘culture’ in many ways. The diverse uses indicates how important this aspect of our lives in fact happens to be. Here are a few examples of culture that come to mind from my own experience. Certainly you could add to this list, deepening the richness of what is meant, from your own experience. We could continue this matrix with contribution from our friends, until we have an outline of what it means to live as an American in the early years of the 21st century.
It boggles the mind to imagine what a person living in London, or Copenhagen, or Buenos Aires, or Mumbai, or Tokyo might add to this list. The additional elements would not be alien to what you and I have contributed, and we would be able to identify the intersections.
- a summer cookout of Wisconsin Bratwurst
- a 2020 ZR-1 Corvette
- a cup of Starbucks coffee
- Little Gidding Poem by T. S. Eliot
- Land of Hope and Dreams by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
- A good dinner at Lauretta’s Italian Bake Shoppe and Cafe
- A Curt Brock piece of studio glass
- A graduation ceremony
- A town or village competently managed
- The ruthless take-no-prisoners-competition of capitalism
- The story of my family and yours too…..
I have no doubt that whatever that obstructs, whatever inhibits or crushes the transmission of meaning and beauty, is on it’s face evil, and merits our resistance. Every aspect of culture is not moral, life affirming. There is always a darkness, the underbelly of human nature. Culture deserves our judgment, our appraisal, our constant evaluation of the practices that humanize, the rituals that allow us to be our best self.
Culture: what it means to be alive here, now.
