From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun 10 Nov 2002 - 15:25:32 GMT
>Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2002 11:13:15 +0100
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Grant Callaghan" <grantc4@hotmail.com>
>Kenneth
> > >In a sense, mine ' me' is more ' mine ', yours is more social/
> > >cultural conditioned so to speak.
> > >Hope you don 't get me wrong,...
>Grant,
> > I was just trying to point out the fact that we were talking about
>different
> > things. You were talking about not having a particular culture to call
>your
> > own and I was talking about a person who had no culture at all -- no
> > language memes, no tool-making memes, no way to communicate with other
> > people at all. If you knew how to make fire that's a meme unless you
>found
> > a way to do it without being taught by someone. Without the memes of
> > society you would have to invent everything you did from finding a way
>to
> > eat to getting in out of the heat and cold. If you didn't know how or
>why
> > to cook your meat, you would have to eat it raw. These are the
>advantages
> > that culture has given us. Now, instead of worrying about what to do
>with
> > the dead animal we found, we worry about whether we should eat French,
> > Italian, or Chinese food tonight.
>
>Yes, I did understand we' re talking about different things, anyway,
>
>I do have a culture I can call my own, but it is more a matter of
>involvement.
>There is a certain way in the Western culture by which we are/ can
>describes
>ourselves as human ( values and norms), but there is still another way and
>that
>is MY- way. I am called upon to live my life within those fixed bounderies
>of
>social and cultural dispositions. That is, in my development as a human
>being,
>if I want to become authentic/ individualistic in the real sense of the
>word
>I have
>to drop my family, religion, society, school, the nation-state... all
>powers
>of
>convention... Taylor writes.
>
>That is a false picture, because my identity is due by those forces, their
>inner-
>connections and by the people who use them and form an image of me by
>using those dispositions_ for their own advantages most of the time.
>The dialogue between them and me forms in the end the identity which I
>do development during growing up_ the material is given to me by the
>society/ family and friends.
>That is what I see, in your, normal situation.
>But that wasn 't my situation at all.
>
>A part of the dialogue I lost, the supposed identity which I had to deve-
>lopment was breached, the material I was bound to receive never came.
>I filled up the blanks with what you could call ' instincts ' or parts of
>what
>is called existentalism, groundforms/ archetypes of what it is to be human.
>You can make your own choises, but the possibilities where to choose
>from are not yours to make, in a sense I had to do just that_ I had to
>create
>possibilities where, in a later stage of life, I had to choose from.
>Where you we 're given all the collective possibilities I had to restrict
>myself
>to a few.
>
>Regards,
>
>Kenneth
>
I understand what you're talking about. I went through something quite
similar when I joined the Marines at 17 and they sent me to the Far East to
fight in the Korean war. After having been raised in a Catholic school and
indoctrinated by the church and then by the Marine Corps, I arrived in Japan
and was sensually shocked by what I saw. Here was a world that didn't
resemble anything I had been taught was they way the world is. I had to
relearn everything about society and what I was seeing when I looked around
me. Here were people who didn't believe in a God, or freedom and liberty,
or individualism, or much else of what I had been brought up to value. But
they were still good people. They had their own values and those values
seemed to work as well as my own. And so I was left not believing in any
values at all.
I had to create my own set of values based on rethinking what I had learned
about the world as a child and comparing it to the world I was thrust into
by war. It was a double shock to my system and changed how I felt about
everything, how I saw the world around me, and how I interacted with my
fellow man. It gave me an objective viewpoint where I see the world as from
a distance, not really involved in the affairs of man -- just taking note of
what is going on and wondering why and how it came to be that way.
It really helped me when I was next sent to Taiwan and experienced another
culture clash. I was ready for it that time. I dove right in and started
trying to see beneath the surface immediately. It was an enjoyable
experience because I already had tools with which to cope with the shock of
a new and completely different culture. I found the memes I picked up in
Japan and Korea transferable and the memes I brought with me from home were
useful for dealing with two cultures at the same time. In the end, I felt
like a man of the world rather than a man locked into a single culture. My
family, on the other hand, no longer understands me.
Cheers,
Grant
_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun 10 Nov 2002 - 15:28:59 GMT