Defining American Culture...

People here got me thinking about what is culture, and how to define it. Well, not to say I have any conclusions in regards to what cultures are, I find myself intrigued by it. One thing to make clear is that, yes the government can influence culture, and they are not immutable, they evolve. The problems in defining our culture is that we have a tendancy simplify it to slogans.

First is the breakdown of our culture to National Culture, Local/Ethnic/Religious Culture, and then Family Culture. The National Culture is perhaps the most difficult to define, because, at least in America, it is ambigious. For example, one of the "ties" of cultures is religion, yet because of the government's non-involvement in religious questions the citizens are free to define their own beliefs. We are a largly religious nation, that much is true, however, defining the majority versus minority religions is problematic at best. The ties of religion largely do not exist in this country and we should be thankful for that.

The other tie would be language, this is what I would call a non-issue, and one that pops up throughout our history, though we do not have an official language, we do use a version of the English language. The complaints about some immagrants not learning our "official" language is overstated. First, and even Second generation immigrants do have difficulty adapting to the language most used in this country, but usually by the third generation, the descendants of somewhat recent immagrants have fully integrated it into their daily lives (many times forgetting the 'Mother Tongue'). The exceptions to this would be certain ethnic neighborhoods that encourage the use of one or the other, or both.

One tie that many Americans would talk about is our lifestyle, usually the consumerism and marketing practices here that many seem to lambast on this very board. While there are negatives and positives to this lifestyle, I am not debating that here. However, I would like to point out that the lifestyle that many of us are accustomed to is recent in our nations history. For most of this countries history, we were an agricultural society, and it wasn't until the 20th century that that began to change. It wasn't until the great movement into the cities(1920's), and then the movement back out of them into suburbs that our lifestyle became defined(1950's). In fact one definition of our culture is our mobility, I would say. The average American will move 3 or more times in their lifetime, whereas in other nations, you would stay in the same neighborhood, and even home for generations. This could possibly be a reason for the difficulty of defining the culture.

Now we enter into the murky area of values, what are American values? This is perhaps the one area that the government has the greatest influence in, because it drives policy. In a basic sense, our values are the acculumation of the values of the Enlightenment. That of Human Rights, Dignity, and Equality. Of course this is murky, because the nation's retoric does not reflect our actions. One could argue that we have not yet achieved this objective, and that much would be true. Progress has been slow and frustrating in some of the setbacks, but it still progresses. We are a much freer nation that we were at the founding of it, obviously. This is also the area where individuals can have the greatest influence, perhaps the best example is Martin Luther King Jr., he actually forced the Equality part of the American Ideal to the forefront, and we are all richer for it. These ideas are neither exclusevely American, nor did most of them orginate here. We are a nation of mongrels, who borrow from other cultures and systems and adopt them as our own.

That brings up an important point in my little rant, that of cultural influence. Perhaps the most obvious examples of this our in our American foods, another definition of culture, and our language. Tex-Mex is of course a category of food that is a combination of Anglo and Hispanic foods in Texas that happen to taste really good. :) Another example is the changing of our language, we have many idioms, words, and usages that are different from the "Proper" Queens English. We speak American English, which is the Bastardized version of a Bastardization of a Latinized Germanic Language. We are the worlds bastard in both language and culture, and that is what makes us Multicultural.

It is more a statement of fact than of a political position. Simply put the government should do nothing in trying to influence the culture, it should just let it be, with exception as to when it would violate individual rights. This is actually a strength because of what history has taught us, that trying to 'preserve' a culture will lead to stagnation and collapse, think of the history of China. Our culture is, as of right now, in a state of flux due to the large amount of immigration from Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, however this it not a threat, its more of an opportunity. We are becoming increasingly more diverse, and actually tolerance of differences will end up being the norm, I would hope, otherwise we would fall apart, and this "Great Experiment" will fail. OK, rant over, flame away! ;)

as observed by the RoTW...

We GOOD! THEY BAD. Kill 'em ALL. WE got the GUNS!!!

Solon, keep on gathering your thoughts, observances and common sense together and keep on writing! :toast:

wrap your head around. It is hard to define something that is so fluid, and also dynamic at the same time. Love your summary of it though. ;)

Not what you say. Thus Rummy and bushsucks* are full of shit when they say that what happedened in abu graib does not reflect American values.