Why Culture Is Not Your Friend

[Entheone 0]

"Be yourself.""Stand up for what you believe in.""Your life is yours to create.""Write your own destiny."These are but a few of the cultural cliches that are passed around by everyone on a fairly regular basis. Everybody is regurgitating them, be they a presidential candidate, a modernist religious figure, an anarchist revolutionary, a New-Age hippie, an ambitious psychotherapist, an entrepreneurial capitalist, or a socialist left-winger.But take a close look at those people, especially the ones who promote a particular ideology or belief system. How many of them are practicing what they preach? And more importantly, how many are providing you with reasonable means to accomplish these lofty-sounding ambitions? And then, the most important question of all: How is all this affecting your life?It never ceases to amaze me how unsatisfied people are with their lives, and yet how they never seem to be willing to do something about it. So you might socialize with a different group of people, take up new hobbies and activities, or if you're really intrepid and audacious, change your career path. But does this really accomplish anything, other than a temporary, short-lived suppression of your dissatisfaction? Does it have any real impact on yourself, the people around you, or anything else for that matter?If so, congratulations! Either you're a member of a very rarefied group of individuals who truly and openly enjoy being alive, or you're very delusional. Either way, good for you. But if not, then I urge you to read on... perhaps something will strike a chord.What I'm going to share with you are my personal, politically-incorrect views. You are free to agree with them, criticize them, or completely ignore them. It's my hope, however, that you give them some consideration before you throw them into your psychic dustbin.Have you ever played Sim City, or Second Life, or any similar computer game that is basically a simulation of real life? Better yet, are you familiar with Virtual Reality, where you wear a pair of 3D goggles and, if you're wealthy enough to afford it, a body suit that detects your movement and transmits sensory feedback to your body, so that you get to experience a perfectly artificial world in a very similar way to the way you experience your everyday real world?Here's how I see the current situation of the human organization. Culture is a virtual reality.No, I'm not talking about The Matrix or the Thirteenth Floor, although these movies do propose a decent metaphor and a possible future. What I'm discussing here is a very real analogy. Think about it this way...A culture is a localized spatio-temporal continuum, meaning that it exists only in a particular place and over a definite period of time. Otherwise, you'd have one culture that spans the entire planet throughout all of history. This is a preliminary resemblance between culture and VR. But this is trivial, really, so let's move on...A VR world is based on a number of rules, which define its boundaries and restrict the interactions of its virtual characters. These rules are arbitrarily chosen by the programmer who designs the VR world. The programmer chooses these rules to suit the purposes for which he created the program in the first place, and he can change these rules at whim should his purposes change.Contrast that with any culture you want. Arab cultures are primarily governed by tribal values. The Nazi culture was based on the notion of racial superiority. The Muslim cultures put a premium on teleological, after-life eternity, diminishing the integrity of worldly joys and ambitions. Western and Westernized cultures magnify industrial and post-industrial value systems that equate success and fulfillment with material possession. And so forth and so on...Notice what all those cultures have in common? Their rules, laws, values, and belief systems are all arbitrarily chosen, based on no objective set of criteria. The fact that there are so many cultures is enough proof of this statement. If they were adhering to any real, objective principles or even to some eternal, metaphysical archetype, they wouldn't vary to this astronomical extent.But my feud with culture is not because of its arbitrary, artificial rules. If these rules served the people they claim to serve, or even a statistically significant percentage of the population, perhaps I wouldn't be so harsh on them. But the undeniable, self-evident fact is that only a very select class of people reap the benefits of any cultural construct. Incidentally, this is the very same class that is responsible for defining culture in the first place, in much the same way a VR is nothing but a designer-reality.But here's the crux of this analogy. VR environments are made of computer code, be it binary, C, Java, or some other programming language. I'm suggesting that culture is encoded in human language, that it's a virtual reality made of language. You might want to take a look at the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or read some of Naom Chomsky's numerous papers to get some grounding in this idea.But a computer language is usually very precise, its logic leaving no room for misinterpretation or confusion. Human languages, on the other hand, are inherently ambiguous. A word can have 2 or more meanings, depending on the context in which it occurs. And it's my contention that "Culture-Makers" manipulate us into carrying out their self-serving agendas through the skillful obfuscation of context, leaving us with a hazy, deceptive understanding of the underlying meaning.Take democracy, for example. The spirit of democracy is rather intuitively-grasped by everyone, and it's a notion that I suppose most of us find decent and constructive. But how does it lend itself to actual application? It gives rise to what political philosophers call Tyranny of the Majority. If the majority chooses to persecute a particular minor ethnicity, for better or ill, that's how it shall be.But let's take a less brutal example. If 51% of a population chooses a particular presidential candidate over another, the other half of the population is left with no better option than to bite the dust. That doesn't seem like very smart application to me, and it's made possible only by creating a confusion barrier between people's intuitive understanding of democracy and the way it is linguistically presented to them.And the plot thickens even more when you think about how those 51% made their so-called "decision" in the first place. It's usually the propaganda and the hyperbole they were relentlessly exposed to during months of campaign advertising. How else would loving parents choose a president who would send their children to kill and die in another country? The toxic power of images, now perfected through the superb machinery of mass media, leaves no room for educated decision. The brainwashing is so complete and omnipresent that we can't distinguish between choice and psychological coercion. It's no coincidence that all major news broadcasting channels have professional psychologists on staff.But you already know all this, don't you? You may even agree with my notion of culture being a virtual reality made of language. The real question here is: So what?I was talking with a dear friend of mine recently, who is an intelligent, accomplished person with a professional CV so impressive that it still amazes me every time I read it. She was trying to convince me of the importance of acquiring a prestigious university degree, and that it didn't matter whether you enjoyed what you were studying or whether you didn't find yourself in it. She insisted that abandoning a highly-respected, well-paying profession for the sake of pursuing a self-fulfilling, self-realizing activity or discipline of study is a sign of irresponsibility and immaturity.Now here's the paradox. This woman is a very spiritual person, who can easily spend so much money trying to make other people happy that she wouldn't notice she'd spent all the money she had. This is not an exaggeration -- she mentioned this to me on at least two different occasions, and I'm very inclined to believe her. Even more paradoxical is that this person was arguing with me that enjoyment and fulfillment were not the most important things to pursue in a university program, at the same time she was searching for another job because she didn't feel appreciated or satisfied with the one she then had.This reminded me of the brilliant concept of "Doublethink" that George Orwell articulated in his masterpiece, 1984. It's when you believe that X is, and that X isn't, and you hold both beliefs equally and at the same time. You think that's madness? It's the name of the game in the 20th and the 21st centuries, baby!Which brings me back to how culture is a virtual reality made of language, and how the beneficiaries of culture capitalize on the ambiguity of language to keep us confused, infantilized, unable to reach self-satisfying conclusions, and always (whether consciously or unconsciously) looking for someone else to define for us who and what we are. This someone can be a religious leader, a charismatic politician, or even our close circle of social influences. We lost all touch with what I like to call the felt presence of immediate experience. We don't trust our own experience anymore; we absolutely need to have consensus before we can acknowledge our own selves.I don't assume any moral inferiority in those who need to follow someone else's rules or live within the secure confines of social acceptability. But I don't understand why they're so willing to sacrifice their happiness and abandon the possibility of joy and fulfillment, simply to "go with the flow."People usually criticize me for doing things unorthodoxically and treading culturally frowned-upon paths. They think I do it to fit the image of the heretic or to enjoy a childish heroic thrill. The truth is, I merely follow my heart and do what "feels" right to me. I do believe that someone needs to set an example, with the obvious risk of going down as a martyr, but it's only by coincidence that not many others seem to be up to the task.But, to my mind, exemplars and ideals are meaningless if you can't find yourself in them. If a cultural value doesn't make you happy, then why the hell adhere to it? What's so wrong with being an outcast, if the "cast" isn't doing you any good?Have you ever noticed how similar the word "culture" is to the word "cult." Could this be more than a mere coincidence? Perhaps some subconscious part of our language-making faculties was trying to tell us something, but we weren't paying enough attention.Culture is the ultimate cult. When they tell you to get in touch with your roots and embrace your Egyptian-ness, or your Irish-ness, or your whatever-ish-ness, take a moment to think about what that means. You may find that it's your humanness that has eluded you in all this frenzied ethno-centricity.Think of how many times cultural boundaries ruthlessly crushed your personal aspirations, sexual preferences, artistic expressions, and aesthetic inclinations, then ask yourself whether "fitting in" was really worth it.And don't worry about being an outcast. There are many others like you who got fed up with these artificial systems of control which are manipulated by greed and selfishness and propagated through subservience and indifference. If you make the conscious decision to be a human being, you'll find that you're not alone.Why do I believe this to be true? Well, consider the staggeringly high suicide rates in Western cultures. International media had a field-day when statistics exposed the incredibly growing suicide rate among teenagers in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, which are the epitomes of materialistic achievement. In 2005, official surveys showed that at least one person committed suicide every 40 seconds in the United States.My theory is that these people, forcibly awakened from the proverbial American Dream, suddenly found themselves vis-a-vis a waking reality that they had nothing but a very brief introduction to, and over which they had no control whatsoever. Escaping life altogether was the only solution their fragile, dependent psyches found for an otherwise seemingly insoluble dilemma.But I also would like to suggest that intelligent, more hopeful people faced the same dilemma, but came up with less fatalistic, more creative solutions. And it's one of those solutions that I'm submitting to you here.If you find this all too dreamy, too far-fetched, and too unrealistic, no problem. I'd love for you to challenge it. Criticize it as much as you'd like, then pass it on to other people who would also want to argue with me over it. If I'm wrong, I'd love nothing more than to be corrected.But until then, I'll keep doing what I'm doing because it makes me happy, fulfilled, and alive. I hope you can say the same about what you're doing. But if not, perhaps it's time for you to try something different. I have a few suggestions that I'm going to talk about later on. But whatever that "something" may be, this is ultimately for you to decide.

[mitchellmckain 0]

"Be yourself."
"Stand up for what you believe in."

"Your life is yours to create."

"Write your own destiny."

These are but a few of the cultural cliches that are passed around by everyone on a fairly regular basis. Everybody is regurgitating them, be they a presidential candidate, a modernist religious figure, an anarchist revolutionary, a New-Age hippie, an ambitious psychotherapist, an entrepreneurial capitalist, or a socialist left-winger.

But take a close look at those people, especially the ones who promote a particular ideology or belief system. How many of them are practicing what they preach? And more importantly, how many are providing you with reasonable means to accomplish these lofty-sounding ambitions? And then, the most important question of all: How is all this affecting your life?

It never ceases to amaze me how unsatisfied people are with their lives, and yet how they never seem to be willing to do something about it. So you might socialize with a different group of people, take up new hobbies and activities, or if you're really intrepid and audacious, change your career path. But does this really accomplish anything, other than a temporary, short-lived suppression of your dissatisfaction? Does it have any real impact on yourself, the people around you, or anything else for that matter?

I don't see anywhere near so many unsatisfied people it seems, but the one thing that is clear to me is that these unsatisfied people you are talking about are not the ones saying these things you call "cliches". The message behind all of these are really just saying that you should live your life - find something worth doing and do it and not just sit around complaining. Because, frankly that is why these unsatisfied people never change, for complaining will get you nothing.

One root causes of this habit of complaining is another destructive habit: envy. This is one that I find particularly pathetic. Looking at other people and wanting what they have. Well frankly more than 90 of wealth is something that people have created themselves. This was the flaw in the whole Marxist ideology that the captalists have all this wealth and is keeping it from others. Now there is no doubt that those who accumulate wealth are quite often going to do their best to keep it. But again since it was originally created by them or their family they are the ones who deserve it.

And by the way, I am way below the poverty line, so don't think that I think this way because I am one of the have's, because except in the sense that I live in the US which means that relative to much of the world I can relatively speaking be called wealthy. But that is not really what counts here, because the point is that I don't look at the people around me with envy thinking that the things they work for and create should be mine.

But you want to know where the greatest source of joy in my life is found? And this is important because I believe it is directly connected with all those out there who are satisfied with life regardless how they are financially. It is in the creation of things. For me it is in computer programming that I found my art medium so to speak. Once you have created something whether it is writing a book or making music or some accomplishment in sports or building a small business or even making a difference in regards to some social issue, that is when you know that you have found the purpose of life and this whole envy-complaining thing is revealed for the complete nonsense that it really is.

But the key to this is finding your joy in the work of creation for its own sake for if you are looking for rewards and fame then you are defeating yourself because most of the time these rewards only come to people because your passion, love and investment in the thing itself is what causes others to see value in what you have created.

If so, congratulations! Either you're a member of a very rarefied group of individuals who truly and openly enjoy being alive, or you're very delusional. Either way, good for you. But if not, then I urge you to read on... perhaps something will strike a chord.

I don't get this delusional part. If you enjoy being alive then how in the world could that be a delusion? Just because the enjoyment they find in life is not what turns you on, does not make it delusional!

A VR world is based on a number of rules, which define its boundaries and restrict the interactions of its virtual characters. These rules are arbitrarily chosen by the programmer who designs the VR world. The programmer chooses these rules to suit the purposes for which he created the program in the first place, and he can change these rules at whim should his purposes change.
Contrast that with any culture you want. Arab cultures are primarily governed by tribal values. The Nazi culture was based on the notion of racial superiority. The Muslim cultures put a premium on teleological, after-life eternity, diminishing the integrity of worldly joys and ambitions. Western and Westernized cultures magnify industrial and post-industrial value systems that equate success and fulfillment with material possession. And so forth and so on...

Notice what all those cultures have in common? Their rules, laws, values, and belief systems are all arbitrarily chosen, based on no objective set of criteria. The fact that there are so many cultures is enough proof of this statement. If they were adhering to any real, objective principles or even to some eternal, metaphysical archetype, they wouldn't vary to this astronomical extent.

Yes but the fatal flaw in your analogy with VR is that these societies were not designed at all. These rules were not all laid out in some kind of blueprint for some over-arching purpose, they evolved because they fulfill a need. Thus a much better analogy is to compare a society to a living organism, and in the case of a multi-cellular organism this is more than an analogy it is an actuality. These organims have also made all kinds of choices in their evolutionary development, some quite arbitrary and some critical to their survival. And do I even need to point out the mind boggling diversity of the forms of life that have resulted from this process.

What is fundamentally wrong is not the arbitrary character of some of the rules that societies and organisms live by. What is completely and utterly wrong is not seeing that this is a perfectly natural feature of life. Diversity is something to admire and rejoice in for even the arbitrarily chosen results in the foundation of our identity. So what if there is nothing particularly advantageous for a particular species of bird to have a blue feather on its head, it is part of what makes that bird what it is and by which these bird recognize themselves.

But my feud with culture is not because of its arbitrary, artificial rules. If these rules served the people they claim to serve, or even a statistically significant percentage of the population, perhaps I wouldn't be so harsh on them. But the undeniable, self-evident fact is that only a very select class of people reap the benefits of any cultural construct. Incidentally, this is the very same class that is responsible for defining culture in the first place, in much the same way a VR is nothing but a designer-reality.

Ah I guess it was inevitable that this pervasive habit of envy would eventually make its appearance. But frankly it is this that is the real culprit in the disatisfaction of the people who frankly choose to live like drones and robots.

But let's take a less brutal example. If 51% of a population chooses a particular presidential candidate over another, the other half of the population is left with no better option than to bite the dust. That doesn't seem like very smart application to me, and it's made possible only by creating a confusion barrier between people's intuitive understanding of democracy and the way it is linguistically presented to them.
And the plot thickens even more when you think about how those 51% made their so-called "decision" in the first place. It's usually the propaganda and the hyperbole they were relentlessly exposed to during months of campaign advertising. How else would loving parents choose a president who would send their children to kill and die in another country? The toxic power of images, now perfected through the superb machinery of mass media, leaves no room for educated decision. The brainwashing is so complete and omnipresent that we can't distinguish between choice and psychological coercion. It's no coincidence that all major news broadcasting channels have professional psychologists on staff.

Yes well you could say that this means that democracy is not going to be much of a success for a lazy people, but the only problem is, neither is anything else.

But you already know all this, don't you? You may even agree with my notion of culture being a virtual reality made of language. The real question here is: So what?

That's right, I certainly do not. This thinking partakes of that laziest of all justifications for envy and complaining - the blaiming of all ones disastisfactions upon some mysterious "they" who are supposedly victimizing you. The problem is that when this thinking takes root, ceases power, and eliminates all the satisfied people, who "must be" the mysterious "they" because they are the ones who disagree with you, the immediate and obvious consequence is complete and utter poverty due the fact that you have just eliminated all the people who were actually creating things. This tragic story has replayed itself over and over again in country after country throughout the world in the last century.

People usually criticize me for doing things unorthodoxically and treading culturally frowned-upon paths. They think I do it to fit the image of the heretic or to enjoy a childish heroic thrill. The truth is, I merely follow my heart and do what "feels" right to me. I do believe that someone needs to set an example, with the obvious risk of going down as a martyr, but it's only by coincidence that not many others seem to be up to the task.
But, to my mind, exemplars and ideals are meaningless if you can't find yourself in them. If a cultural value doesn't make you happy, then why the hell adhere to it? What's so wrong with being an outcast, if the "cast" isn't doing you any good?

WELL I am certainly NOT one of those people who would criticize for doing things unorthodoxically. I am going to be even more "insulting" and say that instead you are one of these creative people that I have been talking about who can see the real meaning of life and is actively pursuing it. LOL But maybe what you are seeking to create is a new language and way of expressing the truths that are in these so called cliches so that they will more successfully communicate to all these disatisfied people what it is that they really need to hear. Which is kind of the calling of a preacher, if you will forgive my use of a term that is so orthodox, mundane and culturally accommodating. LOL But the real thing to be decided however, is whether you will create something for positive change or something which is destructive and I think the key to that cleansing this aspect of envy and complaining from the rhetoric you are using.
Edited September 30, 2008 by mitchellmckain (see edit history)

[docduke 0]

Actually, I "see" a lot of unsatisfied people! They don't like where their surroundings are going (particularly involving economics and crime), but they feel powerless to do anything about it. Indeed, if there is a general consensus I can draw from it, it is that the "elites," those with political and economic power, are acting in ways that are harmful to the majority of people, and are arrogant because they believe the great majority of people can only look on, and perhaps envy them.

It is my perception, however, that the global environment is rapidly changing, and not to the advantage of the elites. One advantage they have had for millenia is effective communication among themselves. Now, with cell phones and low-cost computers rapidly penetrating even the lower-middle class, the non-elites are becoming empowered. The raw numbers are very impressive: Sales of cell phones are on pace to reach a billion annually by the end of the decade, when nearly 40 percent of the world's population will own a mobile handset, according to a Gartner report. Similarly, the market for computers (and thus larger and more permanent communication is now very large: Analysts: 1 Billion PCs in use by end of 2008

Another change, which the elites may not yet recognize, is the downsizing of energy as well as communication. One hundred years ago, the means of communication were written, and the majority were handled on a large scale, by book and newspaper publishers. More recently, TV and radio have also used large, capital-intensive methods. With cell phones and the internet, the medium is large-scale, but the message is becoming much smaller-scale -- like people who post here, or bloggers.

Now this is happening with energy as well. There is major growth of solar power. But that does not need large facilities. Each house can have its own solar array. The present problem is energy storage. But that problem is being solved with new, more efficient batteries, and even things as simple as more efficient electolysis, which can allow the energy received during the day to be stored for use at night (or on cloudy days) in the form of compressed hydrogen and oxygen. This has the potential to make invidual homeowners independent of the power grid, and the big, expensive systems provided by the elites. It can even provide transportation, either via electric cars or in the case of electrolysis, hydrogen cars refueled at home!

With a lot of frustrated people looking for improvements in their lives, and new technologies being developed which allow them to break free of the present large-scale systems, now is the time for some major changes!

[Entheone 0]

Hi mitchellmckain,

 

 

Ok, first of all, let me say that I'm really glad to have you commenting on this. I've been a faithful reader of as much of your writing here as I could (I was a member here long time ago as well). If it wouldn't have looked too ridiculous and wasted too much of everyone's time, I'd have replied to almost every one of your topics here with a simple: thank you for writing!

 

Alright, that aside for now, let's get down to it...

 

I don't see anywhere near so many unsatisfied people it seems, but the one thing that is clear to me is that these unsatisfied people you are talking about are not the ones saying these things you call "cliches". The message behind all of these are really just saying that you should live your life - find something worth doing and do it and not just sit around complaining. Because, frankly that is why these unsatisfied people never change, for complaining will get you nothing.

 

I must admit it that this is fairly surprising to me, the (I don't see anywhere near so many unsatisfied people) bit. But I suppose it has to do with the definition of satisfaction itself, and how it differs from one person to the next. Although it's my experience (or perhaps my conviction, who knows) that, regardless of my own definition, most people I know are not satisfied according to their own definitions.

 

And actually, I think those cliches are the exclusive domain of people above a certain point of financial stability (which differs according to the individual). It may well not be a function of satisfaction, intelligence, or a willingness to help others -- it's simply something that you have the luxury of saying at that position, and it doesn't require much conviction.

 

But let me ask you this: how can someone find something worth doing? Where do they find it? What does it mean for something to be worth doing?

 

But you want to know what the greatest source of joy in my life is found? And this is important because I believe it is directly connected with all those out there who are satisfied with life regardless how they are financially. It is in the creation of things. For me it is in computer programming that I found my art medium so to speak. Once you have created something whether it is writing a book or making music or some accomplishment is sports or building a small business or even made a difference in regards to some social issue, that is when you know that you have found the purpose of life and this whole envy-complaining thing is revealed for the complete nonsense that it really is.

 

But the key to this is finding your joy in the work of creation for its own sake for if you are looking for rewards and fame then you are defeating yourself because most of the time these rewards only come people because your passion, love and investment in the thing itself is what causes others to see value in what you have created.

If I had to re-write this whole thing from scratch, I wouldn't have to... I would just ask your permission to quote these two paragraphs!

 

I don't know where I made the mistake of making any of this seem to be about envy, communism, distribution of wealth, or any other materialistic issue. I tried to make it clear on more than one occasion that this was the least of my worries, and that it might behoove others as well not to make it the most of theirs. What I really wanted to say was exactly what you're saying in these two paragraphs. If I had failed to make it clear, well, I'm glad you stumbled upon this page

 

I don't get this delusional part. If you enjoy being alive then how in the world could that be a delusion? Just because the enjoyment they find in life is not what turns you on, does not make it delusional!

 

There's a misunderstanding here. There's an OR before you're very delusional. And the entire sentence is preceded by another one that completes its meaning. Please re-read it again and tell me if it still doesn't make sense.

 

Thus a much better analogy is to compare a society to a living organism

I use that analogy all the time . Actually, like you it seems, I believe this to be an actuality. But I'm not talking about societies here -- I'm talking about cultures. Perhaps it was my fault not to start with some definitions, but I'll try to make up for that some time very soon. And just as an interim distinction, perhaps it might be useful to think of a "society" as the hardware and of a "culture" as its operating system, as it were.

 

What is fundamentally wrong is not the arbitrary character of some of the rules that societies and organisms live by. What is completely and utterly wrong is not seeing that this is a perfectly natural feature of life. Diversity is something to admire and rejoice in for even the arbitrarily chosen results in the foundation of our identity. So what if there is nothing particularly advantageous for a particular species of bird to have a blue feather on its head, it is part of what makes that bird what it is and by which these bird recognize themselves.

 

I actually answered that last question already, when I said that: But my feud with culture is not because of its arbitrary, artificial rules. If these rules served the people they claim to serve, or even a statistically significant percentage of the population, perhaps I wouldn't be so harsh on them.

 

Ah I guess it was inevitable that this pervasive habit of envy would eventually make its appearance. But frankly it is this that is the real culprit in the disatisfaction of the people who frankly choose to live like drones and robots.

I may agree with you on that, but I really have no idea where you found reference or allusion to envy or anything related to it. I'd love it if you could clarify that a bit.

 

This thinking partakes of that laziest of all justifications for envy and complaining - the blaiming of all ones disastisfactions upon some mysterious "they" who are supposedly victimizing you. The problem is that when this thinking takes root, ceases power, and eliminates all the satisfied people, who "must be" the mysterious "they" because they are the ones who disagree with you, the immediate and obvious consequence is complete and utter poverty due the fact that you have just eliminated all the people who were actually creating things. This tragic story has replayed itself over and over again in country after country throughout the world in the last century.

 

Again, I have no idea what's going on here. I didn't condone envy or complaining -- I made this rave against them to begin with. I'm not blaming dissatisfaction of an individual on anybody other than the individual him/herself, who wasn't willing to make a stand for what makes him/her satisfied in the first place. I must be missing something very important here because I certainly don't understand where you're coming from. I'd love to, though.

 

But maybe what you are seeking to create is a new language and way of expressing the truths that are in these so called cliches so that they will more successfully communicate to all these disatisfied people what it is that they really need to hear.

Abundant use of LOLs aside, yes, I believe that this is what I'm trying to do. In other words, it's what I'm hoping to see done, whether by myself or someone else it doesn't really matter.

 

Which is kind of the calling of a preacher, if you will forgive my use of a term that is so orthodox, mundane and culturally accommodating.

 

I have no problem with your use of the term -- I think it's quite fitting . But what I don't understand is why it's mundane and accommodating.

 

But the real thing to be decided however, is whether you will create something for positive change or something which is destructive and I think the key to that cleansing this aspect of envy and complaining from the rhetoric you are using.

Again, I agree with you -- even though I still don't see where envy and complaining crept in that riotously

[Entheone 0]

It is my perception, however, that the global environment is rapidly changing, and not to the advantage of the elites.

Yes, I do see things mostly this way as well. It's just that lately I've been seeing more and more things which somewhat convinced me that perhaps this global change still needed a push, and that push had to happen soon. In others words, maybe we don't really need to push the 2-ton truck -- we just need to push the pedal. Which sounds pretty good to me because, and I'm ashamed to say this, I have a 6-year old's muscle structure

[mitchellmckain 0]

Again, I have no idea what's going on here. I didn't condone envy or complaining -- I made this rave against them to begin with. I'm not blaming dissatisfaction of an individual on anybody other than the individual him/herself, who wasn't willing to make a stand for what makes him/her satisfied in the first place. I must be missing something very important here because I certainly don't understand where you're coming from. I'd love to, though.

Abundant use of LOLs aside, yes, I believe that this is what I'm trying to do. In other words, it's what I'm hoping to see done, whether by myself or someone else it doesn't really matter.

 

I have no problem with your use of the term -- I think it's quite fitting . But what I don't understand is why it's mundane and accommodating.

Again, I agree with you -- even though I still don't see where envy and complaining crept in that riotously

You should not be so surprised. Communication is a lot of work and misunderstandings are just things you have to deal with. In my case, your clarification is sufficient, for I think arguing about what you said is silly because you are right here to say what you mean anyway.

 

If you have read enough of my stuff then you know that I will adopt postures as part of a technique for getting a point across. For example I can come down on Christianity pretty ruthlessly, but I am a Christian, so the anti-Christian posture is just a technique for communicating what I think Christianity is really about. So the point is that I am not going to get too bent out of shape if someone else is using a similar technique. But when you do that, you have to expect misunderstandings, and anticipating them you can actually use them to further emphasize your message.

 

You use the rhetoric of revolution and that is a powerful one for change. It really moves people, especially young people because they can see that things are wrong and they want change, so if you can give them a vision for how that change can ocur they will want to be a part of it. But it also has great potential for destruction. The French and communist revolutions paid an enormous price in human life for little gain. The American revolution was the opposite of these for it was all about preserving what they had from British interference. Christianity uses this same type of rhetoric of revolution all the time because Christianity has a strong tendency to calcify into an institutional structure and loses the life giving message it has. In Christianity there is a very strong need for each generation to rediscover the life giving revolutionary message of Christianity apart from the dead institutions around them.

 

 

 

But I'm not talking about societies here -- I'm talking about cultures. Perhaps it was my fault not to start with some definitions, but I'll try to make up for that some time very soon. And just as an interim distinction, perhaps it might be useful to think of a "society" as the hardware and of a "culture" as its operating system, as it were.

I still don't see it. And the new analogy isn't helping. Since I see society/culture as an organic self-inventing structure...... AAAHHHHHH maybe I get it. Perhaps I am using the word "intitutional" in the way that you intended the word "culture" to convey. I will even use the word "culture" in a similarly negative sense when see conservative elements of Christianity unable to distinguish Christianity from the culture they have welded it to.

 

OK I was going to suggest sticking to the analogy with a living organism and see where this thing you call "culture' fits into that, so let me see if I can help. The word "institutional" in the framework of this analogy conveys something dead, and so I would compare it to the shell of a crustation, a dead product of the living organism. It best serves a purpose in a hostile world to protect the organism, but an impregnable shell has its price in taking away mobility and limiting growth, so many organisms have learned to shed their shell and grow a new one. For the human body, what is comparable is our skin, which we completely replace every 14 days.

 

My church organization has learned this lesson very well, understanding that the church organization serves a purpose but it is only a dead shell and we need to be ready and willing to cast it away if we want to be a part of something that is alive. So we see our church simply as a temporary entity whose purpose is simply to help the next generation to reinvent Christianity for themselves in a church of their own. But where I have applied this to the church, perhaps you can find a way to apply it to a broader context, for there is a sense in which modern culture is very much like a skin that replaces itself completely every generation.

 

 

But now I would like to consider the last part of your OP that I did not get to in my first post.

 

 

Why do I believe this to be true? Well, consider the staggeringly high suicide rates in Western cultures. International media had a field-day when statistics exposed the incredibly growing suicide rate among teenagers in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, which are the epitomes of materialistic achievement. In 2005, official surveys showed that at least one person committed suicide every 40 seconds in the United States.

 

My theory is that these people, forcibly awakened from the proverbial American Dream, suddenly found themselves vis-a-vis a waking reality that they had nothing but a very brief introduction to, and over which they had no control whatsoever. Escaping life altogether was the only solution their fragile, dependent psyches found for an otherwise seemingly insoluble dilemma.

Hmmmmm.... I don't know if this will help but it is just the point of contact that I can make with this topic.

 

When I was in my first four years of college I remember that there was a time when I was trying to figure out what this word "God", that religion was talking about, could possibly mean. The connection that finally gave this word meaning to me was the following: I decided that a faith in God was some how equivalent to a faith that life was worth living. It is a faith that every experience of life is a gift to learn and grow from. That life is worthwhile is not something that can be proven to you, it necessarily must be taken on faith, and like many things where faith has indispensible role, your faith actually creates its object.

 

For example, love between two people cannot exist without an act of faith that this love between them exists. Likewise, life itself requires some faith or you can never find that it is worthwhile. Nothing will kill love faster than expecting it to be proven to you, and I think the worthwhile nature of life is the same. Life is not something that happens to you, it is something you do -- it is what you do in response to all the thing that happen.

Edited September 30, 2008 by mitchellmckain (see edit history)

[Entheone 0]

If you have read enough of my stuff then you know that I will adopt postures as part of a technique for getting a point across. For example I can come down on Christianity pretty ruthlessly, but I am a Christian, so the anti-Christian posture is just a technique for communicating what I think Christianity is really about. So the point is that I am not going to get too bent out of shape if someone else is using a similar technique. But when you do that, you have to expect misunderstandings, and anticipating them you can actually use them to further emphasize your message.

I like that. Seems like too advanced a technique for me to use so easily, specially since I still struggle with getting things out of my head in a coherent, understandable form. But I'll definitely keep this in mind!

 

AAAHHHHHH maybe I get it. Perhaps I am using the word "intitutional" in the way that you intended the word "culture" to convey.

Yup, that is mostly what I mean. I also felt that "institutional" should refer to something that's dead, and I wasn't comfortable with saying that about culture, which I as well don't see it as entirely dead.

 

... for there is a sense in which modern culture is very much like a skin that replaces itself completely every generation.

Again, you summarized in one sentence the entire point I was going to dedicate a separate post to!

 

I believe that human beings are greatly creatures of habit. Once they try something and it works, even if the results were only so-so, they tend to tenaciously hang on to it, forming a strong habit. Or perhaps it's better to call it what C. H. Waddington used to call a creode, something like a vector of developmental activity.

 

But while we're trying to hang on to that creode, life around changes very rapidly. Environmental changes, changes in other countries, new scientific discoveries, new religions, etc. etc. Now the results which were once so-so are now becoming quickly and increasingly abysmal. As the inadequacy of the results gets noticed by more and more people, they - as you put it - shed the cultural skin and replace it with a new one. At least, that's how I see it for now

 

When I was in my first four years of college I remember that there was a time when I was trying to figure out what this word "God", that religion was talking about, could possibly mean. The connection that finally gave this word meaning to me was the following: I decided that a faith in God was some how equivalent to a faith that life was worth living. It is a faith that every experience of life is a gift to learn and grow from. That life is worthwhile is not something that can be proven to you, it necessarily must be taken on faith, and like many things where faith has indispensible role, your faith actually creates its object.

Then out notion of God is not really that different, even though we end up calling it different things. And it seems to me that a lot of people have the notion at their core and that the rituals and the terminology are just the layers. At least, that's the impression that I get by talking to people lately, particularly those of my age group here in Egypt (where I live).

 

It's been a pleasure talking to you, mitchellmckain! If getting my butt whipped the first post of every thread I open is the price of luring you in, then by God that's not so bad :-D

[mitchellmckain 0]

It's been a pleasure talking to you, mitchellmckain! If getting my butt whipped the first post of every thread I open is the price of luring you in, then by God that's not so bad :-D

Then let me apologize ahead of time for when we have a real knock down disagreement for it is bound to happen sooner or later. If I get too heavy handed with the arguments against your point of view, you can simply say, I don't know how to answer you argument or even if I understand it fully, but what I said is nevertheless what I believe and that is my choice, right? That or something like it should shut me up pretty quick, for I very much believe that what we believe is primarily a matter of choice and that we mainly use reason to justify those choices.

[OpaQue 15]

I am replying to share my opinions here because for a simple fact, Your TOPIC scratched my mind. I do not know if you are right or wrong, but the same jumpy voice in me who wants to be noticed .. needs a chance

But take a close look at those people, especially the ones who promote a particular ideology or belief system. How many of them are practicing what they preach? And more importantly, how many are providing you with reasonable means to accomplish these lofty-sounding ambitions? And then, the most important question of all: How is all this affecting your life?

Humans define culture based on the limits which they follow themselves. If I cannot get up early in the morning, I will not mention it to others (unless I m a liar..)

Here's how I see the current situation of the human organization. Culture is a virtual reality.

Nicely put.. I feel, more like the rules defined by the Sims Game.

A culture is a localized spatio-temporal continuum, meaning that it exists only in a particular place and over a definite period of time. Otherwise, you'd have one culture that spans the entire planet throughout all of history. This is a preliminary resemblance between culture and VR. But this is trivial, really, so let's move on...

Culture has a strong connection to the habitat.

But a computer language is usually very precise, its logic leaving no room for misinterpretation or confusion. Human languages, on the other hand, are inherently ambiguous. A word can have 2 or more meanings, depending on the context in which it occurs. And it's my contention that "Culture-Makers" manipulate us into carrying out their self-serving agendas through the skillful obfuscation of context, leaving us with a hazy, deceptive understanding of the underlying meaning.

I hope, here Culture and Duty are not mis-understood. :-)

Take democracy, for example. The spirit of democracy is rather intuitively-grasped by everyone, and it's a notion that I suppose most of us find decent and constructive. But how does it lend itself to actual application? It gives rise to what political philosophers call Tyranny of the Majority. If the majority chooses to persecute a particular minor ethnicity, for better or ill, that's how it shall be.

Democracy itself is a system made and written by humans. Its main focus should be the good of the country & humanity. Not only it should help the people in your own country live in peace but also give them enough opportunities to uplift themselves with knowledge. Being a Human, A class of animal whose prime distinguishing quality being "Intelligence" must get enough room & support by society to be explored.

And the plot thickens even more when you think about how those 51% made their so-called "decision" in the first place. It's usually the propaganda and the hyperbole they were relentlessly exposed to during months of campaign advertising. How else would loving parents choose a president who would send their children to kill and die in another country? The toxic power of images, now perfected through the superb machinery of mass media, leaves no room for educated decision. The brainwashing is so complete and omnipresent that we can't distinguish between choice and psychological coercion. It's no coincidence that all major news broadcasting channels have professional psychologists on staff.

Biting the Dust will apply to the people who were busy in politics.. but what about the men who are completely occupied by their self duty? And learning life by what it gives every second?

I was talking with a dear friend of mine recently, who is an intelligent, accomplished person with a professional CV so impressive that it still amazes me every time I read it. She was trying to convince me of the importance of acquiring a prestigious university degree, and that it didn't matter whether you enjoyed what you were studying or whether you didn't find yourself in it. She insisted that abandoning a highly-respected, well-paying profession for the sake of pursuing a self-fulfilling, self-realizing activity or discipline of study is a sign of irresponsibility and immaturity.

Hahahaha... Pity. People forget that everything visible in life has never remained permanent. The world was changing before and after. You are changing since the day you were born and you are slowly progressing to your ultimate truth. Death. How can time spent on the self.. to discover your own existence be called a waste? I believe, only a MATURE person shows the sign of listening to inner-voice by observing the truth of nature, understanding the facts he learns, applying his understood knowledge and finally eradicating his ignorance by his understood knowledge(for which it was learnt in the first place). I feel, this is what defines a human. His gift of "free will" which gives him a chance to stop acting by instincts and using his power of "reasoning". Its then a human classifies himself from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Even more paradoxical is that this person was arguing with me that enjoyment and fulfillment were not the most important things to pursue in a university program, at the same time she was searching for another job because she didn't feel appreciated or satisfied with the one she then had.

I feel its wrong to judge anyone because I really haven't understood myself so confidently that every spoken word of my word reflects my true self. but I end up judging others.. I accept, I am a human and born ignorant.

People usually criticize me for doing things unorthodoxically and treading culturally frowned-upon paths. They think I do it to fit the image of the heretic or to enjoy a childish heroic thrill. The truth is, I merely follow my heart and do what "feels" right to me. I do believe that someone needs to set an example, with the obvious risk of going down as a martyr, but it's only by coincidence that not many others seem to be up to the task.

Many Many people are not mature enough to distinguish the voice of the heart and that of the mind. The ones who are acting on the voice of the mind will always question the voice of the heart:) its just a quality of the brain, otherwise how would it reason in the first place

Think of how many times cultural boundaries ruthlessly crushed your personal aspirations, sexual preferences, artistic expressions, and aesthetic inclinations, then ask yourself whether "fitting in" was really worth it.

My policy is .. either I do it myway or I won't do it to keep you happy. :-)

My theory is that these people, forcibly awakened from the proverbial American Dream, suddenly found themselves vis-a-vis a waking reality that they had nothing but a very brief introduction to, and over which they had no control whatsoever. Escaping life altogether was the only solution their fragile, dependent psyches found for an otherwise seemingly insoluble dilemma.

Its a pity, one chooses to end life before giving some time to life.. alone. We are all unique signatures of our creator (yes, the same X who sent me on earth without my will). I do not know what caused people in USA to end their lives but I know its a very courageous thing and it takes a LOT of energy to do it in the first place (keeping the fact of it being good or bad aside, because I do not know what happens after death. A lot of stories but no hard evidence)
But before ending my own story, I would first STEAL a lot of money and then run away to some place where I can be alone for atleast a month. With people and negativity apart.. here I will see what happens to me and then decide to kill myself. Or even put up an auction to allow someone to kill me for granting my last wish. Lots of ideas.. but yeah, if its killing myself what I m talking about, I can always USE this great move of mine for the good of me or someone else.

------ Now the part where I talk about Culture -------

I have lived in a society from birth and people always looked sane to me. None tried to beat me or abuse me (thankfully). I went to school and saw kids much stronger than me who never hit me and some did threaten but thankfully again, something held them back. A kind of fear I would say.

First, I used to wonder, Why I am blindly following others? Why am I suddenly stopping at a GrEEN signal or What makes me stand up when I hear the National Anthem.

I believe the Role of culture is to let people live in peace. And this is not possible without Discipline. So, What do we do? We set a list of rules like "Thou shall not harm anyone, not Steal etc. etc". All the CONDITIONS of culture which helped me and others to live in peace and gave me a sense of security for myself and my immediate family members was accepted. However, some rules were not applicable for me because I was a guy. So, I started abusing the loop holes I found in the system. Immediately I saw myself acting like a Dog. Because, everyone else was doing or intending to do just the same :-/

It was then I dis-connected my existence to all the stupid knowledge GAINED by PEOPLE/SURROUNDINGS and accepted a NEW personal Teacher. The Teacher of truth. Of all the things that changed, truth was something with my Deep understanding (of sitting idle at one place n just thinking) flashed me saying.. DUDE! I NEVER CHANGE! Truth said, "No matter what you say" or "What your friend's say" or "What the whole world CHANTS", A is to APPLE and B is to BALL. If all humanity wakes up one day chanting.. "A for Ball" and "B for Apple", All humans will be HONEST with their REASONS for what they said. I do not judge them, but the TRUTH can never budge. Its there and no nuclear or cosmic power can change it.

My next Question was.. So, If Truth itself is not affected .. Why the heck am I bothering soo much in asking people to EXPLAIN it to me? If I m really bothered about a Certain fact, Can't I discover it myself? At the most, I might not approve hosting applications for one year but then so what.. I finally get to know what I want. LUCKILY, most of my QUESTIONS/ARGUMENTS/FRUSTRATIONS were related to only one specie called "Human". But Guess what? I m one MySELF

The First thing I did was change the TAG LINE of XISTO to "Honestly Rocks!" meaning.. its GREAT to be HONEST! and its the best thing in the world you can do
to live Happily between humans, BUT "truth rules" because its un-changeable

When I started my journey to understand "truth" (still on it.. Haven't been bored of it yet..), I really cut myself out of people. Knowing myself was the main Goal and its lessons have taught me so much more about others. I now see myself as a simple Human

[mitchellmckain 0]

I believe that human beings are greatly creatures of habit. Once they try something and it works, even if the results were only so-so, they tend to tenaciously hang on to it, forming a strong habit. Or perhaps it's better to call it what C. H. Waddington used to call a creode, something like a vector of developmental activity.

Yep. And this is the nature of living things in general. This self-programing nature that living things have is the essence of free will. People confuse free will with freedom which involves some control over events, but if we think that we have such control then we are in one part lucky and in another part deluded. Free will is the freedom to make choices among those alternatives that we are aware of and be doing so to decide what we are (in the ways that really matter).

 

 

 

 

I decided that a faith in God was some how equivalent to a faith that life was worth living. It is a faith that every experience of life is a gift to learn and grow from. That life is worthwhile is not something that can be proven to you, it necessarily must be taken on faith, and like many things where faith has indispensible role, your faith actually creates its object.

Then our notion of God is not really that different, even though we end up calling it different things. And it seems to me that a lot of people have the notion at their core and that the rituals and the terminology are just the layers. At least, that's the impression that I get by talking to people lately, particularly those of my age group here in Egypt (where I live).

 

By faith creating its object, I should clarify that I do not mean that faith in God creates God, but rather that our faith that life is worth living does tend to make life worth living. Another example is that a shared faith in love creates that love. These are examples of how the belief effects reality because they are well within the realm of the things of the mind where belief has power to alter reality. But God cannot by definition be any such thing, for the very idea of God is that He is something beyond all limitations - particularly our own limitations and therefore to identify God with and reduce God to the concept we create of Him would render the concept meaningless. No the identification I am making is between these two types of faith: the faith in God and the faith that life is worth living. What this means is, that you cannot have a faith in God without a faith that life is worth living and the more radical claim is that if you have a faith that life is worth living, then in some sense, no matter what words you might use for it, or what you might call the object of your faith, you essentially have a faith in God.

 

You see part of the problem is the that word "God" has a history of use and abuse and thus comes with a whole lot of baggage and thus this gives rise to situations where an individual may be forced to repudiate "God" with all the life-denying baggage it has been loaded down with in their life, in order that they can make a real and effective affirmation of life - but a true affirmation of life is a affirmation of the true God, for life is His creation and you might say His "obsession". It is for life that God created the physical universe and it is for life that God has always worked and acted, encouraging living things to reach out for the potentiality that is within them and for life in general to reach out for the infinite potential that it is ultimately capable of. It is the repeated plea of God in scripture, "I have set before you life (blessing) and death (curse), therefore choose life." Thus Jesus says, "I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly."