and what is American culture?

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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in my reading of the “Icon and the Axe” I came across the point
that in Russia from about 1750 to 1850, the cultural battle
in Russia was between the French culture and the German Culture…

Which has gotten me thinking, what is American culture?
my handy dandy dictionary says,

Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual
achievement regarded collectively.
example, 20th century culture…

  1. a refined understanding or appreciation of culture…

and I look at modern America and I see the wasteland of America
having no culture at all…culture requires connection… in other words,
we can use aspects of culture, music, literature, movies, plays, poems
to connect us as people… and today, right now the closes thing to culture
I can see is the MCU universe… I don’t see any type of literature or ARTS
that exists in America today that can connect us together…
feel free to name me an ARTIST, without resorting to Wiki,
that works in paint or in sculpture or even name someone in
literature or poetry that connects us together? I’ll wait…

In other words, we have no culture in America… nothing that tells
us who we are and what is our place in the universe… either written
or in the form OF ART…and even the MCU universe is a backhanded method
of informing us who we are as a people, as a culture…

and then the question has arisen, why do we feel so alienated
and disconnected from each other? Well, the answer might be that
we have no culture to connect us to each other…the balkanization of
such possibilities like music has not connected us to each other, but
rather has separated us… one doesn’t see many country western fans
watching opera… or listening to classical music…or the other way around…

part of the 20th and 21st century disconnection from each other or
from society lies in our having no culture to speak of…

we race about seeking wealth and fame and material goods, the trinkets
of existence but we have no idea who we really are because we have nothing
that tells us who we are, something like culture does… we are in fact, empty
shells who are mindlessly seeking titles or fame or wealth…
things that have no bearing on who we are or what it means to be human…

you want to rebuild America? then you begin with rebuilding our culture,
our ARTS, literature, paintings, poetry…that is the path to overcoming
our empty lives… for it is the food of culture that feeds the soul…
not god, not money, not titles or fame, but the basics of culture…
feel empty… don’t seek it in god, seek it in the creation of culture…
the ARTS, literature, paintings, poems… for every poem created,
we inch closer to having our souls returned to us…
seek to fill the emptiness of existence not with a false return to god,
but within seeking a renewal of culture in America…

Kropotkin

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIbBBh_VFjg[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnPr7kDtivE[/youtube]

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I love it when someone proves
my point for me….

Kropotkin

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You don’t have any points, commie retard. You belong back in preschool. Even that might be too much for your empty noggin.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM9JLFCB_Pg[/youtube]

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If American Culture took a shit, then Kropotkin would be its odor.

Too retarded to hold a simple conversation.

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Culture of no culture = Americanism.

Popularity, trends which can be manufactured and changed continuously, this is American culture-of-no-culture.

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K: note, that I am not posting random, pointless video’s, that have no relevance
to the thread at hand…thanks, for once again proving my point…

Kropotkin

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K: ok, and now what? give us a solution…

Kropotkin

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Ha!
I do.
Seek out your ancestors and your ancestry…if you have not been completely miscegenated like many have in the US.
Return to the original worship of one’s dead ancestors, and then climb out of the hellhole they put you in…rediscover nature, the cosmos, from the ground up.

If you’ve been miscegenated to the point where you don’t even know from where you come and can only identify with a skin pigmentation “white”, or a concept “freedom”, “nationality” rather than ethnicity…then trace your ancestry back as far as you can.
Know thyself…

Three levels of identity in sequence of importance.
1- Genealogy, DNA - primary. Past
2- Memeology, Culture, (language) tradition - secondary. Present
3- Ideology, conviction, choice - tertiary. Future

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K: an interesting answer… so, please tie up the thread message about culture
and your answer being “ethnicity”… Not, as you put it “skin pigmentation “white”
or concept freedom, or nationality” please connect up these two idea’s…
as I am rather confused how they connect…as I am confused as to how
genealogy, DNA solves the issues of global warming, or income
inequality or pollution… your answer seems to leave a lot of holes within
it…if you would be so kind as to answer those holes…I thank you…

Kropotkin

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You want to solve global warming, and income inequality…and all the world’s injustices and woes?
Why do you seek American culture then…like a Christian seeking a non-existent one-god?
Some “injustices” are natural, and cannot be “corrected”, other issues are rooted in man’s confusions and how he has been trained to believe that future is better than past, and more is better than less.
Like fiat money, disconnecting form natural limits, creating imbalances he then wants to correct when they are the by-product of his own meddling.

The issue here is culture and if the US has any…and it doesn’t.
It is this absence of a unifying culture that is Americanism.
Nation states are not ethno-states.

I gave you the three criteria of belonging to an ethnicity.
For now this is the context.
The rest must be unfolded gradually…for the topic is huge and complex.

A factor is absent accessible frontiers, necessitating nihilistic spiritual and secular/political dogmas…such as Americanism which is a nation state produced by the excess of ethno-states and so symbolizes the last earthly frontier, if we exclude the Antarctic which remains inaccessible for other reasons.

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as I hold everything, everything is connected…
thus, I hold that our lack of culture plays a role, a rather
significant role in our inability to solve such issues as global warming
and income inequality… the glue to a society is the culture…
every civilization, society and state is held together by its
culture… for culture is the thing that connects us together…
our common heritage within literature or painting or
architecture is the glue that hold societies together…
or said another way, a society has its stories and those
stories are what hold a society/state together…

and we tell those stories by our acts of culture… by its literature, painting,
poems, statues, building…a citizen of Rome, for example, is connected to
the other citizens of Rome by the statues, building, stories and religion
that they have in common with the other citizens of Rome…

Race or our ancestors cannot, cannot give us this sense of connection because
everyone comes from somewhere different…for example, my wife and I were
born in different places at different times with a different ancestry… she is more Irish
and Portuguese and I am more British… we have a different place of origin…
but that doesn’t prevent our current connection…
to say, my place of origin is America ignores the concepts that make us
American’s… to say, I am French… as a place of origin means one must
be able to state what culturally a French person is…the idea that one’s
DNA is enough to hold a culture in place is simply wrong… it cannot because
we all come from different places with very different DNA…but culture,
one’s culture can be created even if everyone is from a different place,
as American’s are… my upstairs neighbors are from South Korea…
and based upon one’s DNA, we cannot connect, but we can connect
on the idea of culture, of a connection based on language, shared stories,
ART, literature, poetry… but based on DNA, no, we cannot connect
based on one’s DNA… to be able to speak english doesn’t mean I was born
in California as my daughter and wife were and I was born in Minnesota…
for language is just one, one point of connection between us…and a shared culture
is the basis of our connection…we can be American’s and not even be able to speak
English…if we share other points of connections… just not necessarily based upon
the very narrow and false connection of DNA…

and as the GS Warriors are about to start, I shall be focused on the basketball game…
so until later…

Kropotkin

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As the loss of culture does indeed affect individuals producing problems that could have been averted but, also, creating problems where there are none.
In this case the fleeing of the old world, liberating those who were “wronged” by established hierarchies, into a new frontier, liberated and forgetting their past to start anew - myth of American individualism and the self-made, self-creating man is rooted here - therefore a reclamation of what was lost, but not forgotten - since DNA cannot be erased - is a re-colelction or an un-cocnealing - from the Greek Alethiea, i.e., un-forgetting.
The genetic memories already exist in you.
Early paganism worshipped the dead ancestors, who guided and aided them because they remained present in the believer as memory - DNA. So, the believer delved inside if himself to find guidance and strength in memories he had no accessed. Later nature became the source of guidance and empowerment.
One worshipped the gods as anthropomorphic representations of natural forces.
One of the gods was the cripple Hades.
The Greeks believed that when a man died he went to the underworld where he crossed the river of forgetfulness, Styx…which was an allegorical way of saying his DNA deteriorated, and his connection to his bloodlines severed, but he continued to exist in the memories of those who knew him and, if he passed on his gens, in his children.
So, forgetfulness ought to be put in this context of severing oneself from one’s past, one’s nature, as the sum of all past nurturing, form his ancestry, and since DNA cannot be destroyed while someone still lives his mind negates his body, himself, itself - mind/body dissonance = mind forgets, denies, rejects the body’s memories to “liberate itself”.
Here we find the source of American individualism.

Part of this forgotten Indo-European tradition - if you are of European descent - is a respect towards nature, represented by the gods.

To be disconnected from oneself, from one’s past, is to be cast adrift, lost on the sea of existence…desperate for any support, any solidity…any product on the marketplace to fulfill your need for identity.
Natural injustices are just that…natural.
Global warming, on the other hand, is a product of this loss of respect…respect being fear/anxiety…necessitating self-discipline.

First step…reconnect your terminology upon the world, from where many of the words you use have been detached, over centuries of nihilistic corruption, via Abrahamism, Marxism, postmodernism.
Start with identity, ‘self’…‘I’. A link in a chain, a continuum - linked by memories you’ve forgotten.
Re-Call, re-collect them…un-forget them.

Words are connectors of mind/body to world.
After centuries of indoctrination they’ve become disconnectors - tools to detach from world.
Nation is a political unity, ethnos is genetic/memetic.
You, like many Americans, have a nationality but no ethnicity. Your only source of identity is an idea, an abstraction.

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Culture is not bounded by arbitrary lines on maps.
There is no American culture.

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This is another fake concept designed to control the people by division.

We have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents
The fourth generation back is 16
5th 32
6th 64
128,256, 512, 1024, 2048,…
In just 30 generations you get 1073741824 potential ancestors was twice more than the population of the workd at the time circa 1300ad.
Which oretty much makes your reliance on ancestors complete bollocks.

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Yes, simpelton…as I’ve noted memes are gene specific but can be transmitted to genes that do not belong to the original genealogy.
With every transmission the meme is modified - mutates, as genes do, as well.

Excellent, simpleton.
Culture is, indeed, a manmade and maintained environment.
It is birthed as a manifestation of a relationship between a specific population (genetic) and a specific environment (world), producing a specific culture (meme).
A culture that can then be transmitted semiotically to other populations, and be changed - warped, corrupted - by the transmission and how these different populations take to it, i.e., understand it, can relate to it…
So, Democracy cannot be transmitted to Bedouin camel hampers, and Hellenism cannot be transmitted to the ignoble nihilists of the deserts, worshipping the nil.

No, simpleton, 3 is about choice…culture is not chosen as one is born into it. When one is born in another culture and chooses a different one.,…that is 3.
An individual may be born Italian, be raised in an Italian culture and choose the cultured of no culture, i.e., Americanism, or choose Buddhism. Get it simpleton?

Simpleton…you haven’t defined “self”…you’ve adopted the American version of being defined by what one chooses from the immediate environment, whatever is popular and available…so you’ve completely rejected, dismissed, your past, as in before you were born…you, simpleton, are Americanized.

Am I surprised?
Given your performance on ILP…not at all.

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xxx

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Always return to what you know…idiocy is your niche.
Stay there.

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[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDvAVhDkPc4[/youtube]