My friend Mike Weiss (http://www.myspace.com/mwdonk), who is also hapa (Pogilicious! Rrrr!), and I had a conversation a few years ago over IM, about what culture means, and I though it would be really cool to post it, since it’s made me (and continues to do so) think really hard. Which is really good.
mweiss@laphil.org says: maybe there is some sense of horror at becoming “american” even when trying to survive in america
mweiss@laphil.org says:
ok thats harsh… I’ve become cynical about “culture”, maybe because I don’t feel any sense of community in my life
mweiss@laphil.org says:
sometimes I think culture is just a diorama in an exhibit at the mall
mweiss@laphil.org says:
sometimes I would equate being “ethnic” with being “country folk”
mweiss@laphil.org says:
ethnic customs are usuall tribal, traditional and usually not performed and perpatuated by the urbane and educated. discuss.
allison says:
ok, i think that certainly the most “ethnic” one can get is by being from or of the background of a rural-ass tribal background, yes, a thing that even the urban or “wannabe urban” immigrants cannot touch….
allison says:
the ones from manila, hong kong, and tokyo, can they really be at the heart of what it truly means to be filipino, chinese or japanese?
allison says:
just living in the city nullifies them a little bit, i think
mweiss@laphil.org says:
ethnicity by degrees may be impossible to measure, but it is possible to be so steeped in locality, so as to be more ethnic, which is not to say backwards necessarily, but more directly impressed upon with a simple sense of right and wrong; a culture
allison says:
yada yada yada culture, i’m starting to think it’s bullshit
allison says:
those people are just taking on what someone else arbitrarily created
allison says:
is that being real?
allison says:
or ethnic?
allison says:
or just doing what someone else told you to do, whether it makes sense or has any sort of good in it?
mweiss@laphil.org says:
I think what I am saying is I don’t know if culture truly exists exept in a vacuum, unless that
mweiss@laphil.org says:
is all you know, unless that is the only culture that exists within reach
allison says:
then that is really what culture is..
allison says:
i don’t know, perhaps it doesn’t matter anymore. the cultural and linguistic mutoids that people like you and i have become-maybe that’s not bad-i mean it’s inevitable, that if you stay somewhere hospitable for a while, like, say, a few generations, assimilation of any kind will occur, right?
mweiss@laphil.org says:
it can’t be bad (to be a godless heathen), but its all very confusing. especially when being educated in a “culture of diversity”, when I was growing up “ethnicity” was something to be celebrated, while lionizing the stories of all the immigrants, but in diversity the real power of culture, is lost, because the notion of culture is something that happens over there
allison says:
i know that is the paradox of diversity
allison says:
one might think think there was a conspiracy on behalf of the repubs to dilute all immigrant cultures by promoting diversity…
