mono no aware @meltme - Tumblr Blog

Pearl, Water Colors, Early 1960s - Ph. James Bidgood

the more i talk w/ leftist friends the more i start to realize that they think culture is only defined by food or "traditional" (i.e. "ethnic") garb and nothing else

mentioned how white americans do in fact have a common culture and they genuinely thought i was joking. culture isnt something only granted to the Cool People of Color. just feels like among progressive groups there's this dichotomy created in which only the virtuous oppressed minorities have culture and anyone who is privileged some sort of void cultureless being

pigeonsplease

When I visited Chicago, the very first thing to weird me out from the airport was… how almost everywhere had revolving doors.

I’m Australian. Sure, we do have those doors, but the vast majority of places in Sydney are automatic sliding doors or old-fashioned manual push/pulls because we don’t need to block out the cold and wind the same way here.

So every day I experienced a culture clash with something as basic as what doors were normal for me.

Americans who say they don’t have a culture are plagued with defaultism beyond belief. Culture isn’t just made up of costumes and language and the largest stuff, it’s constructed of a billion small things you do every day that you never even consider could be different because that’s just “normal” to your daily life. No one has no culture just because they’re not adhering to the biggest markers they can consciously recognise.

aichu-dechu

The iceberg concept of culture: only 10% of what most people immediately think of as their culture is above the surface, and the deeper you go, the more emotional depth it gets.

nervebynerve

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin