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So....going to the annual fiesta week or whatever is not cultural?
you know the great thing about this country is if you really feel that way you have the power to try and change things with out going to jail or being killed
so i ask you what are you trying to do to change things for the better. and if your answer is nothing but about on spurs talk, well you can do that from any where so get the out
So....going to the annual fiesta week or whatever is not cultural?
Culture can be defined as "the way of life for individuals in a society", or more academically as "a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and at udes that shapes and influences perception and behavior".
Nothing you've said in your posts really has to do with culture, except the bit about immigrants. However, whilst America and Australia are both countries founded and strengthened by immigration, I'd argue that there is a growing anti-immigration movement in both countries, especially in tough economic times (eg. "they're tekken arrr jobs!", the popular South Park refrain).
As someone who has traveled extensively in the US, has many US friends, and has informally studied the US for a couple of decades, I'd say today's American culture is centered around money and consumption, which are the central themes in much American media and in everyday conversation. People's social status is largely defined by their income and the objects they own (what do you wear? what do you drive? where do you live? etc etc), and just about everything comes back to money. Maybe B2B was alluding to this when he said:
"If I had to name what culture America is. Its a slave culture wrapped in a fake freedom security blanket."
The slave culture is slavery to money - once you borrow large sums to buy your car, house, etc. you are essentially a slave to the bank (and to what you own) - and the "fake freedom" is the choices that arise in a culture based on hyper-consumption.
That's what I see, anyway, and I see Australia unfortunately heading down a similar path.
That IS the culture. Culture is not live music and poetry readings, it's what the people do and the way they think.
Just STFU and stop speaking for "Australia". You always get it ing wrong. Nothing you say ever represents the Australia that I know.
My answer isn't "nothing". Shouldn't matter anyway. I love how you take a statement on a message board and turn it into a statement about proactive change. Perhaps you should get the out because you obviously don't understand what a "forum" is. Just to help you along this is a place where people get together to discuss a wide range of things. We are all here to talk, and discuss things on spurstalk. Its the very ing purpose of this place. No integrity lost by bringing the argument forward without physical proactive change because this isn't a physical movement forum.
Fixed.
As an European, I agree with the above. The "ignorant cowbow" stereotype is unbearable and nonsensical. Or some his variations, like the marxist one of alienated masses. Some American intelectuals like Henry Miller, the writer exiled in Paris, were very responsible for the propagation of this myth of America as the land of philistinism and acefalous materialism.
This is a tendency with deep roots in the continental Europe tradition, btw. Napoleon called Great Britain "a nation of shopkeepers". Funny how they kicked his ass a few years later. Hitler said similar things about America - mocking their culture and saying for example:
;
with a similar destiny.
I, for one, share Tocqueville's European filo-americanism. Except when it comes to those sophisticated, over-educated, quasi-Europeans Americans.
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