Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

My friend’s and I try to enjoy some culture that doesn’t fit our lifestyles.

As some of you may have noticed already, my tagline looks a bit different than it did 24 hours ago. This is because with combing through, blogs, news, music, art and a few closets and kitchen sinks last night, I had what philosophers call an epiphany, or more basically, a moment of clarity. I realized my tagline didn’t fit this blog. It has news of course. But it is really about lifestyle? No, it’s all about culture.

Since I started this blog in April, I’ve had the intention of addressing issues I feel pertinent to not only me, but to most critically-thinking people in general. Better still, I wanted people who don’t usually examine the world and realities around them to do so. “Lofty goal!” you say. Yes, but I always believe in trying to understand a point of view rather than dogmatically and stubbornly trying to conform to an idea because of any popularity or majority consensus. Urban legends are wildly popular for instance but all categorically false. Pop, Rocks and soda have never burst anyone to piece who didn’t already have a bit of spontaneous, human combustion in his or her medical history. So while many true things and ideas and popularly known, many popular beliefs are just so purely because people know how to talk but not because they know what they’re talking about at all. So in this vein, I started this blog to try to bring a balanced perspective to issues as best as I could. Still none of these goals had much to with lifestyle.

The term lifestyle has much to do with personal habits (i. e., what we wear, eat, drive, play, celebrate and the like as individuals. Culture has much more of a collective connotation (i.e., what we wear, eat, drive play, celebrate and the like as a group.

Lifestyle:

Noun 1. lifestyle - a manner of living that reflects the person’s values and attitudes

“When lifestyle became popular a generation ago, a number of critics objected to it as voguish and superficial, perhaps because it appeared to elevate habits of consumption, dress, and recreation to categories in a system of social classification. Nonetheless, the word has proved durable and useful, if only because such categories do in fact figure importantly in the schemes that Americans commonly invoke when explaining social values and behavior…” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lifestyle.)

Culture:

Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior — an abstract “mental blueprint” or “mental code.”

Must be studied “indirectly” by studying behavior, customs, material culture (artifacts, tools, technology), language, etc.

1) Learned. Process of learning one’s culture is called enculturation.

2) Shared by the members of a society. No “culture of one.” Blogger’s Note: Lifestyle therefore can have a “culture of one” aspect if as it is centered on an individual’s life.

3) Patterned. People in a society live and think in ways that form definite patterns.

4) Mutually constructed through a constant process of social interaction.

5) Symbolic. Culture, language and thought are based on symbols and symbolic meanings.

6) Arbitrary. Not based on “natural laws” external to humans, but created by humans according to the “whims” of the society. Example: standards of beauty.

7) Internalized. Habitual. Taken-for-granted. Perceived as “natural.”

- From the Eastern Oregon University website

As you see, both lifestyle and culture have common ground, but because, this blog is not about personal habits, much less my own, I’ve decide to change its tagline from “News and Lifestyle with a Twist of Poetry” to “Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry.” This way all bases are covered and I don’t have to start writing about my teeth brushing prowess or pancake-making abilities and I can focus on politics, religion, philosophy, art, history and much more interesting stuff of the sort… Thank goodness!

Viva la wax!

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