5 Mar
2006
5 Mar
'06
12:20 p.m.
Can't have tons of culture when the country is only
400 years old at
most.
I would second that, as well as your observation that our 'cultural'
influence in the world revolves mainly around our movie industry.
It has been my feeling for a long time that what passes for American
culture is just 'Pop Culture' and the entertainment industry.
Culture stems from shared history and experience, and that which binds
people into a common system of values and behaviors - and it seems that in
America, television, movies and the inescapable crass advertising that
always accompanies it *is* that binding force.
Regional dialects are disappearing as people - especially the young - seek
to emulate the speech, appearance, and behavior of their favorite TV/movie
stars.
I'm afraid Hollywood and McDonald's *is* our culture.
So that's pretty much uniform. And this uniformity
prevents people
from facing 'tons of culture'.
As for the second point I mentioned, people having in general more
interests in things, this is very flagrant with the percentage of
Americans not caring what Bush has lead them to so far. Political
chitchat in America often boils down to echoing something heard on
TV. In Europe you at least get the feel that the individual has given
some thought to the matter.
So true, and I would attribute this to our 'Hollywood' culture as well - it
teaches people to be passive consumers of information and material goods
and to conform to media-promoted images.
Thinking is actively discouraged - I learned this the hard way in college
and graduate school - especially by the rising would-be theocrats
All my friends from foreign countries were so much more open-minded and
willing to question things and consider alternative viewpoints.
They demonstrated an individualism which while supposedly the hallmark of
American society has all but disappeared.
- Maluvia
5 Mar
5 Mar
12:44 p.m.
apt-get upgrade culture
no, really. i like to decry the loss of working class
intellectualism; in my admittedly speculative history of the world
america lost it in the thirties.
best antidote i've seen so far is the emergence of freely available
media production tools, as are refined and developed in forums such as
this one.
certainly america has a culture; it's not one i'm particularly fond
of, but it's also so diversified that i must claim ownership and
alliance with bits of it, and lifelong enmity towards other parts.
still, judging its value as a whole or in part is so difficult as to
be misleading. let's say robert wyatt is my janet jackson - it would
be as rude of me to force others to listen to wyatt as it is of others
to make me listen to janet.
certainly i read this list and work with linux audio tools while my
roommates watch people shoot at each other on the tv. i don't think
i'm any better than those guys - in fact, i wish i were as easily
amused.
i must take the canonized developer's attitude on this. don't like
our culture? submit a bug report, or learn to code a patch.
yours in america, proud land of harry partch and kurt vonnegut,
dan
--
dan(a)towndowner.com dan(a)burntpossum.com daneasley(a)gmail.com
http://towndowner.com http://burntpossum.com
10:56 p.m.
On Sun, 5 Mar 2006 11:44:57 -0500
"Dan Easley" <daneasley(a)gmail.com> wrote:
certainly america has a culture; it's not one
i'm particularly fond
of, but it's also so diversified that i must claim ownership and
alliance with bits of it, and lifelong enmity towards other parts.
still, judging its value as a whole or in part is so difficult as to
be misleading. let's say robert wyatt is my janet jackson - it would
be as rude of me to force others to listen to wyatt as it is of others
to make me listen to janet.
Glad to hear that you have TV and radio music shows that plays more
than the same run-of-the-mill payola without falling into the 'classic
rock' trap. I understand then that you do not feel that a certain
choice of music is imposed on you.
But up here in the northern part of America there's none, even if you
pay $100 per month for cable TV. I do not say that the four basic musc
TV channels in Germany are a lot better, but at least when zapping you
may hear interesting stuff from time to time (like Rammstein's
'Amerika' ;-) while up here it's 100% not interesting.
certainly i read this list and work with linux audio
tools while my
roommates watch people shoot at each other on the tv. i don't think
i'm any better than those guys - in fact, i wish i were as easily
amused.
Strange goal to attain... Especially since there are so many shootings
in schools in the USA (I didn't say there are none elsewhere, I've just
underlined the quantity).
i must take the canonized developer's attitude on
this. don't like
our culture? submit a bug report, or learn to code a patch.
Yes, a cabbage patch ;-)
yours in america, proud land of harry partch and kurt
vonnegut,
Vonnegut recently at a US campus (audience filled at 2,000 capacity) had
quite a few strong words against the US government. Many intellectuals
in the USA do. Take Lewis Lapham, editor of Harper's Magazine
(founded in 1850 something) who was doing a talk at Ottawa University
recently. There's a good number of these fine people in the USA, but
they are outweighted significantly and that's the second point I earlier
mentioned: interest. General interest. When it lies in bing-bang
shootings on the tube, what do you expect ? A strong democratic country
with 4 or 5 strong political parties none of them having the same
financial support background ? I don't think so, and that's the same
everywhere in the world. The mass of people matters, not only
individuals that you see once in a while, because it's after all the
mass that makes the country.
I think the mood is set for some 'Music for the Masses' ;-)
Cheers.
3:09 p.m.
On Sun, 2006-03-05 at 08:20 -0800, Maluvia wrote:
Regional dialects are disappearing as people -
especially the young -
seek
to emulate the speech, appearance, and behavior of their favorite
TV/movie
stars.
Bullshit. People in Philly still talk like they're from Philly. Always
have, always will.
I'm afraid Hollywood and McDonald's *is* our
culture.
Those are the only culture of the suburban sprawl monster that is
chewing up the real America and shitting it out. But that is NOT all of
America, or even the most important part. And, unlike the real America,
that part is doomed in the long run, as it's built on flawed 1950s
premises (that gas will be cheap forever and no one would ever want to
walk when they can drive).
Lee
6784
days inactive
6784
days old
linux-audio-user@lists.linuxaudio.org
3 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
Dan Easley -
lanas -
Lee Revell -
Maluvia