Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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I’ve thought for some time that the US has no real culture (other than maybe some pockets of it in the south / from marginalized groups in the south or elsewhere). But I’m starting to think it and the west in general does have a kind of culture; the culture is being controlling and destructive. Each time a westerner destroys something, they get a sense of pride and power from having been able to make that decision; whether it made sense as a decision is less important than the fact that they were able to make it.
I don’t know, maybe I’m just describing a facet of colonizer “culture” with different words.
Imo a culture does exist, but it’s based on the same individualist and consumerist fallacies as the rest of society. What’s missing is community and respect, among other things ofc.
The historic/legacy countries do have some of that as a remnant, but the manufactured countries like USA AU etc are just “let’s make neoliberalism our culture”
The west is so capitalism pilled, it’s stupid. A fun thought to let wild is wondering if it has anything to do with the fundamental differences between western and eastern religion, where western religion is more top-down (monotheistic god saving individuals directly) and eastern religions are more bottom-up (unlocking oneself and raising others up through it)
Maybe I’m biased but you can even see the difference in cultures between predominantly Catholic countries vs Protestant countries. The former seems to have alot more distinctiveness and (not very, but slightly more) collectiveness
Tru!