Culture: October 2008 Archives
The New Atlantis » Technology, Culture, and Virtue
"t has been during this short period of industrialization that most of our longstanding cultural forms have attenuated, faded, or gone wholly out of existence. Writing as a farmer, Berry has repeatedly lamented the decline of the family farm as a locus of human community and the embodiment of numberless forms of cultural knowledge and practices. But everywhere we see around us the ruins of once vibrant culture. Most of us know little or nothing of how to produce food. More and more of us cannot build, cannot fix, cannot track, cannot tell time by looking at the sky, cannot locate the constellations, cannot hunt, cannot skin or butcher, cannot cook, cannot can, cannot make wine, cannot play instruments (and if we can, often do not know the songs of our culture by which to entertain a variety of generations), cannot dance (that is, actual dances), cannot remember long passages of poetry, don't know the Bible, cannot spin or knit, cannot sew or darn, cannot chop wood or forage for mushrooms, cannot make a rock wall, cannot tell the kinds of trees by leaves or the kinds of birds by shape of wing--on and on, in a growing catalogue of abandoned inheritance....
"By disconnecting culture from nature and regarding nature as an enemy to be conquered, we have, above all, disconnected ourselves from the most important aspect of culture: the inexorable lessons of the limits of human power and the pitfalls of human efforts at mastery."
Brit Gal' in the USA: A momentous day remembered
On the third anniversary of her move across the pond, Sarah reflects on the stresses and surprises of starting over at mid-life in a whole 'nother country: "You don't know what to dial for local and long distance calls, you don't know any street names, directions are given with north, south, east, west - not left and right. You have no idea where to go to shop for certain things, most of the store names are alien to you. Everybody you meet is new to you; your brain rapidly goes into overload with new names and faces to remember. You're driving on the wrong side of the car and the wrong side of the street. The food is very different, products are different, some things you love you can no longer get at all. All the measurements you have known all your life have been thrown out the window; whether it's shoes, clothes, cooking or weight. Everytime you open your wallet you are faced with different currency and coins are very confusing."
Brit Gal' in the USA: Okie's may have the cleanest mouths ever!
Sarah, a British expat living in small-town western Oklahoma, writes: "I kid you not, it's probably been a good few months since I was in the company of anyone who swore publicly! Coming from England, where I don't think you'd get through more than a couple of hours without hearing someone swear, it is quite bizarre."
