A man, born and raised in rural china, the elder of his village, speaks only his native lounge. He drinks the finest teas on a daily basis, meditates several hours a day, offers prayers to the buddhas and thanks to his ancestors. He has memorized the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching. He spends a month of each year in silence, and practices Chi Kung each morning and each evening. He moves to France. Meanwhile, a cultural anthropologist is writing a thesis on the culture of France. Shall we expect him to describe French culture as “(They) drink the finest teas on a daily basis, meditate several hours a day, offer prayers to the buddhas and thanks to (their) ancestors. (They) have memorized the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching. (They) spends a month of each year in silence, and practice Chi Kung each morning and each evening.” Presumably we would not. The Chinese man living in France is not representative of French culture, he is representative of the culture of the Chinese village from whence he came. Culture is not a construct of geography, which is to say, that which is in France is not necessarily French culture. Culture is a coalition of ideologies, ways of thought, patterns of behavior, codes of ethics and locusts of control. A culture is the general algorithm by which one operates, within a distribution curve, the most extreme ends of which do not end at the farthest point of any person found within a land associated with a culture, but rather found to be at the farthest point a thing is a variation as versus a deviation from the status quo. This said, then, a man, having been born in France, but acting as I have described the Chinese man to act, would still not be a representative of French culture. His actions would not be within standard variation, would not be found on the bell-curve that is French culture. This is not to be confused with a sub-culture. A culture may have numerous sub-cultures, which, though not associated with the standard bell-curve, have been assimilated into a multiple function equation inclusive of all subcultures as variations of the culture at large. The man described is not accounted for by the standard French culture algorithm, nor any of its attached sub-types. It belongs to a bell-curve usually but not exclusively associated with the geographical region of traditional rural china (especially in a mid-southern region, a few miles west, say, of Yunnan). I will contest that I am a member of a society with a single proponent. I am the sole representation of Brandonian society, disassociated from whatever the society is most associated with the geographical region in which the ambassador of Brandonian culture may currently be station.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 05:12:08 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015