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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 10:23:08 GMT
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
I have some thoughts myself, but I'd like to hear what other people think.
Anyone who uses the phrases "it depends on what you mean by culture", or any variant thereof, will be instantly fed to the piranhas. This is not the Irish Catholics Forum.
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Post by Séamus on Dec 8, 2018 11:54:11 GMT
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I have some thoughts myself, but I'd like to hear what other people think. Anyone who uses the phrases "it depends on what you mean by culture", or any variant thereof, will be instantly fed to the piranhas. This is not the Irish Catholics Forum. I was reading about the Italian town of Lecce today in a travel column. It's famous for it's buildings of Lecce stone, so much of the town is made of this that there seems to be a certain 'purity' about the streets.... How many citizens and visitors since the baroque era have been involved in building and designing and how many were purely simple farmers etc who passed through, perhaps without really appreciating it all could be asked many times over... I suppose culture is the difference between living and merely existing. We cook our food, we wear clothes when we could exist with raw potatoes and Tarzan-leopard-skins: the difference between living and existing. We have only to think of the flatness and uniformity of human existence as portrayed in the likes of Brave New World, not, mind you,a completely Orwellian novel- people were happy, people were entertained, people weren't oppressed, but, even putting ethics aside, which I'm sure Huxley did, who would want to live such a society? "all around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces, getting ready for their morning races, going nowhere...want to bow my head and drown my sorrow. No tomorrow,no tomorrow" I'm actually a person who isn't musical, has never created an artwork, couldn't write anything significant or be a linguist,dance a reel or do a million-and-one other things you could mention, I'm not highly educated- I'd be very much one of poor and humble farmers walking through Lecce on the way to the market square... and yet couldn't live in a society where people don't create and do these things. |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 12:08:33 GMT
Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I have some thoughts myself, but I'd like to hear what other people think. Anyone who uses the phrases "it depends on what you mean by culture", or any variant thereof, will be instantly fed to the piranhas. This is not the Irish Catholics Forum. I was reading about the Italian town of Lecce today in a travel column. It's famous for it's buildings of Lecce stone, so much of the town is made of this that there seems to be a certain 'purity' about the streets.... How many citizens and visitors since the baroque era have been involved in building and designing and how many were purely simple farmers etc who passed through, perhaps without really appreciating it all could be asked many times over... I suppose culture is the difference between living and merely existing. We cook our food, we wear clothes when we could exist with raw potatoes and Tarzan-leopard-skins: the difference between living and existing. We have only to think of the flatness and uniformity of human existence as portrayed in the likes of Brave New World, not, mind you,a completely Orwellian novel- people were happy, people were entertained, people weren't oppressed, but, even putting ethics aside, which I'm sure Huxley did, who would want to live such a society? "all around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces, getting ready for their morning races, going nowhere...want to bow my head and drown my sorrow. No tomorrow,no tomorrow" I'm actually a person who isn't musical, has never created an artwork, couldn't write anything significant or be a linguist,dance a reel or do a million-and-one other things you could mention, I'm not highly educated- I'd be very much one of poor and humble farmers walking through Lecce on the way to the market square... and yet couldn't live in a society where people don't create and do these things. Excellent definition. "The difference between living and merely existing". Culture can mean folk culture, high culture, popular culture, or simply the "life-world" of a given people. I think these all exist on a continuum. It's an interesting question, how much culture matters to "simple" people like the farmers you mention. There's a good line in the film Local Hero where somebody says of a scenic but impoverished area, from which people often emigrate: "You can't eat the scenery". And yet sometimes culture, in the sense of tradition and heritage, seems more important to poor people than rich people. |
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 12:18:13 GMT
I think culture has many purposes, but one thing that I think it does is "domesticate" the world, to a certain extent. When you look at it on the most basic level, the world is a bewildering flux of sounds, shapes, incidents, obstacles, etc. What to make of it? It's not just that it's confusing, it's that it can seem like a chaos. This can be quite chilling and alienating. I think culture gives us some vicarious familiarity with the world, through the experiences of others. In big ways and little ways-- for instance, a novel might help someone going through puberty, or bereavement, or parenthood, since they can identify with the protagonist. But also in little ways-- like, for instance, feeling awkward at a party, or waking up in the middle of the night.
Culture lets us look into the flux, the chaos, and see patterns and regularities.
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Post by cato on Dec 8, 2018 14:52:17 GMT
At its most basic it is about our worship and how we make sense of the surrounding Chaos Maolsheachlann mentioned above and to some extent control or orderit so it makes some sense . Culture and Cult went hand in hand. To really understand Europe for example we need to understand Christianity specifically its liturgy , sacraments , the bible etc. Even in modern secular terms ignorance of these severely limits our understanding of Art , literature, law , social attitudes , history etc.
Rituals are a very important part of culture .
Originally Culture in primitive times was explicitly religious but in post religious times we see a wide variety of new cultures reflecting the breakdown in traditional national and communal cultures. This is a huge fascinating subject!
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Post by Maolsheachlann on Dec 8, 2018 14:59:06 GMT
At its most basic it is about our worship and how we make sense of the surrounding Chaos Maolsheachlann mentioned above . Culture and Cult went hand in hand. To really understand Europe for example we need to understand Christianity specifically its liturgy , sacraments , the bible etc. Even in modern secular terms ignorance of these severely limits our understanding of Art , literature, law , social attitudes , history etc. Originally Culture in primitive times was explicitly religious but in post religious times we see a wide variety of new cultures reflecting the breakdown in traditional national and communal cultures. This is a huge fascinating subject! There are questions for both believers and unbelievers. Having been an unbeliever, I have had the experience that culture seems to confront one again and again with the question of the numinous and the sacred. God may be exiled from everywhere else but He seems impossible to remove from the arts. As for my time as a believer, I have often found myself pondering the nature of culture, and our apparent need for it despite faith. What can we find in a poem or a film that we cannot find in Scripture and the sacraments? (Or whatever religious forms that might apply, to other religions?). I can't exactly say, and sometimes I find myself reading Yeats or some other author and thinking: "Why entertain these ideas that I believe are fundamentally mistaken?". Perhaps it is simply the old saw that it's the exploration that is important. |
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