i think my great grandfather was in war of 1812 and maybe revolution and have ansestors on both sides maybe tories as well
some of the new arivals may as well be from mars they know so little and care nothing for what usa is and they look at me like im from mars with these grim serious faces some of these weird immigrants ,not all just some i guess-then again noone seems happy in usa anymore -so they all look like serious grimsters
some east indian girl saw me in a store and just smiled
i think east indians are about the friendliest people in the world maybe
What the hell are you on. Your posts sometimes are like this tossed word salad. It's just a bunch of words all tossed into a bowl and then stirred about.
"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." - Ron Paul
i laugh to myself because i know ya'll are lined up by the thousands trying to get in. and i'm not talking just mexico. every country has applicants to immigrate here.
So? What's your point exactly?
this poster said america doesn't have a culture. our culture began in the 17th century. with a group of people willing to take a chance on the unknown and inspired only by a dream.
I think you're being rather romantic here.
that group of people forged what is now known to the world as freedom. what existed prior was monarchies and dictatorships.
What?
we invented the freedom of speach you enjoy now.
I repeat: What?
but when you attack a culture or the people themselves; that is wrong. so please; we respect your opinions but don't attack a culture or the people themselves.
I kind of agree with this. Not completely though. I think America has culture but I think a lot of it is horrid, especially modern American culture. But the US has produced tons of brilliant writers, bards, actors, musicians ...
You respect her opinion but you still call it "ego-centric; condecending; short sided; and narrow minded". You have a weird definition of respect, imo.
You choose to call it 'attack a culture'. She probably calls it voicing her opinion, exercising her freedom of speech, which you "invented".
and that is probably true, but slightly different from what i thought you were saying originally. you were talking about how culture is stupid and should be done away with and i disagree. i take great pride in my irish history and many other cultural influences that have helped shape who i am. doing away with them would do away with things that are important to me. and many others are the same.
what you're arguing against here is prejudice, or stereotypical views of individual people based on misperceptions about what their culture is or means and what kind of control it has over who they are. and i agree with you there.
Yeah, and I still have my job and everybody is super nice to me there, so obviously I have no grounds to be genuinely concerned about racism. And that's a point which you made that I can't disagree with.
But, I'm just approaching this from a purist's point of view. Being that I have no ethnic culture that I consciously identify with, it's not hard for me to imagine a world in which ethnic cultural identifiers do not exist. In other words, I've learned to define who I am by other identifiers that I believe to be more specific and tangible. And as I practice this approach to identity, I start to think that everybody else can probably experience the same finite sense of self-awareness.
But, I don't disagree with the notion that a person's persona is greatly determined by his ethnic cultural heritage.
The first guy to actually identify hispanics as a target market segment proved this point. He went into hispanic homes and began identifying patterns in their ways of thinking. He used this data to develop marketing strategies that made him super rich apparently. I heard him speak at some Hispanic Cultural Education Organization type event a few years back.
So, obviously, it's not really all that closed-minded to identify personality traits by ethnicity. I just think it's a scary concept, and that it's one that we should be working towards bringing more awareness to, but without pressuring people to take action.
did you just get off the boat? what do you mean america has no culture? i could write for hours about american culture. ever hear of a museum? american culture may have been pushed aside to allow minority groups to cover the culture; but come out west and tell someone america doesn't have a culture. except california maybe.
America has no single unifying culture. We are the "melting pot" for a reason. Unless you wanna say THAT is our culture, but then you have to acknowledge every culture that makes up that melting pot... but then we are back to where we started saying that many individual cultures make up American culture. America has MANY cultures. I live in Appalachia and I know that there is one culture here that is radically different than the culture that is further south or north, and that if I went to say... Pennsylvania there would be a radically different culture there... and then there is the beach culture, city culture, rural culture... then on top of that you've got individual ethnic cultures, but no single unifying culture the way other countries have. Counties like Ireland have one culture, so does Sweden, and Italy, and Arab countries, and African countries... all have a single unifying culture, but American doesn't have that. We may have something like that eventually, but 200 years of trying to throw things together does not a culture make.
so now we edit quotes to turn them around i see. and by the way, i just wanna say that i love monkey felching whilst covered in peanut butter and singing the Sesame street theme tune.
and that is probably true, but slightly different from what i thought you were saying originally. you were talking about how culture is stupid and should be done away with and i disagree. i take great pride in my irish history and many other cultural influences that have helped shape who i am. doing away with them would do away with things that are important to me. and many others are the same.
what you're arguing against here is prejudice, or stereotypical views of individual people based on misperceptions about what their culture is or means and what kind of control it has over who they are. and i agree with you there.
I hate to kick this thread up again, but I was re-reading it out of sheer boredom and discovered that I did not really read this post before quoting it last time.
To be honest, I at some point guessed that you were probably Irish. I have a friend who is Irish and there's something about that culture that makes him swell up with pride. Well, that and the fact that he's originally from Montana are two things that make his posture stand up straight. It's all in his mind if you ask me. To me, there isn't anything particular about him that makes him Irish save for the fact that his blood is Irish.
So, I'm not necessarily referring to negative misconceptions or even specifically control over who people are. But, those are examples that are still relevant.
What I'm really talking about is simply the distortion of the self. You might see yourself as Irish and whatever other cultures, but that's not what you really are. Instead, you're a person who is descended from people who lived in those parts of the world.
If it wasn't for cultural influences, what would you be? My opinion is that you would be yourself. And if you prefer to be a certain culture instead of the self, then the question has to be asked: What was wrong with the person you were prior to cultural influences? What is it about Irish culture that is better than the person you naturally are?
And that's why I say the elimination of culture is not something I am calling for. Again: I'm not saying culture should be eliminated.
The reason why I say it shouldn't be eliminated is because I know that people will see the truth only when they want to. I just think culture is stupid. I realize it's common for people to think that when they think something is stupid, they also think they automatically have a right or duty to call for its elimination. So, I can understand why you would think that to be my intentions. But, again, I just happen to know that the quest for truth is a voluntary experience. So, no matter what I say, you will continue to believe that your Irish culture is who you really are until you voluntarily decide to see past that.
You say that ethnic cultural pride is good because it makes you feel good. But, what I'm saying is that just because you feel good about something doesn't mean that certain thing is good.
A recent statistic came out which said that the countries with the highest average math scores have math students who feel the least confident about and get the least sense of enjoyment from mathematics.
Americans scored much higher in "confidence" and "enjoyment", but had significantly lower test scores.
And I think the same goes for self-identity. We look to ethnic cultures to give us a sense of pride, but that pride comes at a cost of reality. So, that's all I'm really saying here. We as a society have learned to ignore certain aspects of ourselves because those aspects do not fit well with what we preceive as "acceptable". So, we invent identities to comfort ourselves. Ethnic cultural identities are the biggest culprit, IMO. We think to ourselves, "How can I be anything but great when my culture is so great?" It's a sham, and it slows the development of our moral compasses.
Most Americans think that they watch the Saddam video because they need a sense of closure. I think we can both agree that's a bunch of bullshit. But, that's an example of how afraid people are of seeing who they really are. Recent studies of the brain's reaction to pain sensations showed that when a person's ego has been bruised, the brain sends out signals that closely resemble those it sounds out for actual physical pain.
That's why we as people tend to distort truths and resort to hypocrisy on message boards when we are losing an argument. We would rather lie to ourselves than experience the virtual physical pain of having a bruised ego. "Pride" in one's own ethnic cultural background is an accomplice in this act of self-deceit.
Comments
What the hell are you on. Your posts sometimes are like this tossed word salad. It's just a bunch of words all tossed into a bowl and then stirred about.
So? What's your point exactly?
I think you're being rather romantic here.
What?
I repeat: What?
I kind of agree with this. Not completely though. I think America has culture but I think a lot of it is horrid, especially modern American culture. But the US has produced tons of brilliant writers, bards, actors, musicians ...
You respect her opinion but you still call it "ego-centric; condecending; short sided; and narrow minded". You have a weird definition of respect, imo.
You choose to call it 'attack a culture'. She probably calls it voicing her opinion, exercising her freedom of speech, which you "invented".
naděje umírá poslední
Yeah, and I still have my job and everybody is super nice to me there, so obviously I have no grounds to be genuinely concerned about racism. And that's a point which you made that I can't disagree with.
But, I'm just approaching this from a purist's point of view. Being that I have no ethnic culture that I consciously identify with, it's not hard for me to imagine a world in which ethnic cultural identifiers do not exist. In other words, I've learned to define who I am by other identifiers that I believe to be more specific and tangible. And as I practice this approach to identity, I start to think that everybody else can probably experience the same finite sense of self-awareness.
But, I don't disagree with the notion that a person's persona is greatly determined by his ethnic cultural heritage.
The first guy to actually identify hispanics as a target market segment proved this point. He went into hispanic homes and began identifying patterns in their ways of thinking. He used this data to develop marketing strategies that made him super rich apparently. I heard him speak at some Hispanic Cultural Education Organization type event a few years back.
So, obviously, it's not really all that closed-minded to identify personality traits by ethnicity. I just think it's a scary concept, and that it's one that we should be working towards bringing more awareness to, but without pressuring people to take action.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
America has no single unifying culture. We are the "melting pot" for a reason. Unless you wanna say THAT is our culture, but then you have to acknowledge every culture that makes up that melting pot... but then we are back to where we started saying that many individual cultures make up American culture. America has MANY cultures. I live in Appalachia and I know that there is one culture here that is radically different than the culture that is further south or north, and that if I went to say... Pennsylvania there would be a radically different culture there... and then there is the beach culture, city culture, rural culture... then on top of that you've got individual ethnic cultures, but no single unifying culture the way other countries have. Counties like Ireland have one culture, so does Sweden, and Italy, and Arab countries, and African countries... all have a single unifying culture, but American doesn't have that. We may have something like that eventually, but 200 years of trying to throw things together does not a culture make.
Peace and Love
Deni
Whatever turns you on dude! :rolleyes:
I hate to kick this thread up again, but I was re-reading it out of sheer boredom and discovered that I did not really read this post before quoting it last time.
To be honest, I at some point guessed that you were probably Irish. I have a friend who is Irish and there's something about that culture that makes him swell up with pride. Well, that and the fact that he's originally from Montana are two things that make his posture stand up straight. It's all in his mind if you ask me. To me, there isn't anything particular about him that makes him Irish save for the fact that his blood is Irish.
So, I'm not necessarily referring to negative misconceptions or even specifically control over who people are. But, those are examples that are still relevant.
What I'm really talking about is simply the distortion of the self. You might see yourself as Irish and whatever other cultures, but that's not what you really are. Instead, you're a person who is descended from people who lived in those parts of the world.
If it wasn't for cultural influences, what would you be? My opinion is that you would be yourself. And if you prefer to be a certain culture instead of the self, then the question has to be asked: What was wrong with the person you were prior to cultural influences? What is it about Irish culture that is better than the person you naturally are?
And that's why I say the elimination of culture is not something I am calling for. Again: I'm not saying culture should be eliminated.
The reason why I say it shouldn't be eliminated is because I know that people will see the truth only when they want to. I just think culture is stupid. I realize it's common for people to think that when they think something is stupid, they also think they automatically have a right or duty to call for its elimination. So, I can understand why you would think that to be my intentions. But, again, I just happen to know that the quest for truth is a voluntary experience. So, no matter what I say, you will continue to believe that your Irish culture is who you really are until you voluntarily decide to see past that.
You say that ethnic cultural pride is good because it makes you feel good. But, what I'm saying is that just because you feel good about something doesn't mean that certain thing is good.
A recent statistic came out which said that the countries with the highest average math scores have math students who feel the least confident about and get the least sense of enjoyment from mathematics.
Americans scored much higher in "confidence" and "enjoyment", but had significantly lower test scores.
And I think the same goes for self-identity. We look to ethnic cultures to give us a sense of pride, but that pride comes at a cost of reality. So, that's all I'm really saying here. We as a society have learned to ignore certain aspects of ourselves because those aspects do not fit well with what we preceive as "acceptable". So, we invent identities to comfort ourselves. Ethnic cultural identities are the biggest culprit, IMO. We think to ourselves, "How can I be anything but great when my culture is so great?" It's a sham, and it slows the development of our moral compasses.
Most Americans think that they watch the Saddam video because they need a sense of closure. I think we can both agree that's a bunch of bullshit. But, that's an example of how afraid people are of seeing who they really are. Recent studies of the brain's reaction to pain sensations showed that when a person's ego has been bruised, the brain sends out signals that closely resemble those it sounds out for actual physical pain.
That's why we as people tend to distort truths and resort to hypocrisy on message boards when we are losing an argument. We would rather lie to ourselves than experience the virtual physical pain of having a bruised ego. "Pride" in one's own ethnic cultural background is an accomplice in this act of self-deceit.
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825