
We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it - enginnr
https://medium.com/hand-brain/william-gibson-57e75f87e525
======
ThomPete
One of my biggest eureka-moments I had when I moved to the states from Denmark
— wasn't what I learned about the US — but what I learned about Denmark.

I suddenly saw things about my own culture clearly when I wasn't surrounded by
confirmation bias of specific ways of looking at things.

One of the most eye-opening experiences for me; If you wan't to understand
something you need to understand it through things that are related to it not
the things themselves. I have applied this to many other things in live (want
to understand design, read about the things that are related to design instead
of design itself.

~~~
drumdance
I think international travel should be mandatory, especially for US citizens.
The longest I've stayed anywhere overseas is a month, but even a few days in
another country can be eye-opening.

~~~
superuser2
Transatlantic roundtrip airfare for a family of 4 at a time kids will have off
from school is around $5500. That's before you start getting places to sleep
for any appreciable amount of time, car rentals or train tickets (which are
quite expensive), etc.

Median income in the US is around $50,000. $7-8k is a family car, most of
somebody's student loan balance, the entire electronics budget for ~5 years.
You want them to piss it all away on a week or two? Fuck no.

International travel is a luxury for the extremely privileged. Hell, I was
pretty privileged - my parents made a total of around $110k in a low-cost-of-
living city - and $3,500 for New York City was a once-in-a-lifetime treat.

Granted, there are ways to do it outside of the family, like study-abroad
programs. But then in addition to the cost of the vacation you're paying full
tuition to not take real classes and (if you're in a field like CS) delaying
graduation by a semester or more because you're not making any progress on
your major.

Analysts say current airline prices are hilariously, unsustainably low. It's
only going to get far, far worse.

EDIT: I should say that vacations are important and we do take them. We drive
10-15 hours and stay at AirBnbs in other 3rd-string US cities that, while
pleasant, are not high-end tourist destinations. Nashville, Lawrence, Raleigh-
Durham, Cape Cod, far-flung D.C. suburbs, etc. With a Prius and more than 2
people, driving far is cheaper than flying pretty much everywhere in the
continental US.

~~~
Nadya
Without even getting into money - try taking 2 or 3 weeks off work and see if
you still have your job in most places... taking time off is a rarity in the
U.S for anything short of maternity leave. Meanwhile many other countries have
_mandatory_ time off. As in "you better take off at least 21 days this year."

Seriously, just take a look at this. [0] United States has _0_ days off. Over
half the list is >15 days. Those people have time off to go on a 2 week
vacation.

You might note that US workers can "earn" up to 20 days. Taking off those days
is usually looked down upon and can hurt chances of promotions. Being fired
shortly after returning from an "extended leave" is not unheard of.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_empl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country)

~~~
superuser2
Unfortunately, many people will look at this list and tell you that's why the
United States is so much more prosperous. Vacation time and workers rights ==
laziness in many people's minds.

------
carapat_virulat
"I already am eating from the trashcan all the time. The name of this trashcan
is ideology.

The material force of ideology makes me not see what I am effectively eating.
It’s not only our reality which enslaves us. The tragedy of our predicament
when we are within ideology is that when we think that we escape it into our
dreams, at that point we are within ideology."[1]

This is a really nice documentary about all the unspoken assumptions that
permeate our day to day lives, I would really recommend everybody to see it.

None of this is scientific or empirical, but the thing is, neither are the
myriad of day-to-day assumptions that we usually take as obvious or common
sense.

[1] The Pervert's Guide to Ideology (2012)

~~~
orthoganol
I thoroughly enjoy Zizek, and to actually understand him I would recommend
reading his work, because the Zizek of cinema or Youtube really is a
confusing, tiny glimpse of his thought.

I'll also note that he's pretty unpopular in this forum. He can be pretty
brutal to thinkers popular here, such as Steven Pinker. [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800&feature=youtu.be&t=1h56m30s)

~~~
igravious
I both agree and disagree with both of your points. Heh : )

a) I think that The Pervert's Guide to Ideology is quite self-contained and
digestible without the need to read his (entire) work. There are YouTube clips
of some of his talks/lectures that are pretty standalone as well.

b) I like Zizek. So he's popular with me for what it's worth. I like Pinker
too though. Hmm. Can we not just all get along?

~~~
orthoganol
a) I disagree still... let's put it this way, on a forum like r/zizek where
people discuss Zizek's positions, it's patently obvious who hasn't actually
read Zizek and who just watches YouTube and the Pervert's Guides, which is
what a lot of Zizek fans do because they find the reading intimidating (it
certainly is, at first). Don't read his entire work, just Less than Nothing,
or one of his self-proclaimned important works.

b) We can like and appreciate both (I do too). They are compatible to an
extent, but some facets of behavior described from a pure evo psych or cog sci
perspective conflict with a Lacanian-Hegelian one. My friend is a Steven
Pinker fanatic, and we are in constant debate anytime we meet up for beers.

------
vlehto
Some of my friends report how eating certain mushrooms made the super
creative. I have asked what they created? Nothing. The reason why they think
they we're creative is because they _felt_ creative.

This article made similar thing for me with respect to learning. I feel like I
learned something. But I really don't remember what.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I actually buy that psychedelics make people more creative. People fall into
more predictable mental ruts than random exploration would, so anything that
kicks the brain out of the patterns it wants to match to is going to help.

~~~
gglitch
Agree. "Creative," may be a misleading term if interpreted literally and
nothing tangible has been created, but colloquially, I think we use the term
more to refer to patterns of thought and behavior that derail the self or
others from their normal patterns.

~~~
soylentcola
Agree. Maybe it comes down to the relationship between "creative" and
"productive". They're related without being synonymous. I think "chemically"
is just one way of accomplishing the goal of thinking differently but as it's
a pretty reliable method (albeit an occasionally overpowered one) it comes up
a lot.

I'll leave the discussions of whether the various drawbacks outweigh the
benefits for another conversation but it's hard to deny that treating yourself
chemically can be a very direct and effective way to ensure your thought
patterns and processes are temporarily changed.

------
rogeryu
Marshall McLuhan once said that the last thing a fish would ever notice in
it’s habitat is the water. Likewise, the most obvious and powerful realities
of our human culture seem to also be the most unrecognised.

[http://stoweboyd.com/2013/07/12/marshall-mcluhan-once-
said-t...](http://stoweboyd.com/2013/07/12/marshall-mcluhan-once-said-that-
the-last-thing-a/)

~~~
vacri
My pet peeve is people who see or read about a single festival in another
culture, then talk about how "we have no culture, not like those people over
there and their rich one". Yet we still go and see movies, wear certain kinds
of fashion, go to sportsball events, celebrate the birth days of those near
and dear, participate in office kris kringles, learn to play a particular set
of musical instruments, eat out at restaurants, live in nuclear families,
argue over how to set the cutlery for a dinner party... so on and so forth.

~~~
paulojreis
The academic definition of culture isn't the one implied when most people say
"culture". The common and daily usage of "culture" is more linked to explicit
"expressions" of culture.

------
dredmorbius
NB: I'm finding this article impossible to read, even in Reader Mode, due to
the animated images within its main body.

1\. Do. Not. Fucking. Do. This.

2\. Firefox: include element blocking / image removal, or at the very fucking
least, animation blocking/suppression, in Reader Mode.

~~~
sotojuan
The animated images are ridiculous. When I read your comment I thought "Oh
great another article using one second gifs of popular tv shows to seem
funny". But it's worse than that. It's literally just text.

~~~
dredmorbius
Jitter-type images are among the more staggeringly annoying.

I'll admit I've been known to abuse animations myself. When G+ introduced
"cover photos" always visible on profile pages which couldn't be hidden and
filled upwards of half the screen, I compiled a set of the most annoying
animated gifs I could find. Out of protest.

------
geomark
Similar, but on another level, is how we can't see our mind very well,
because, well yeah...

That's one of the things meditation leads to, a sort or meta-mind state where
you can observe the workings of your mind. A very subtle yet profound
experience.

------
RodericDay
This concept has been developed very well, imo, by people like Zizek. I
honestly don't care much for his political follies or his real academic
research- when it comes to discussing ideology, he's doing the best outreach
bar none.

Here's him giving a talk at Google:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x0eyNkNpL0)

A friend of mine also parsed it well like this:

> _" I think there is something to be said to the effect that laziness is
> actually where we can find a lot of insight - as it's when we're lazy, when
> we cannot be bothered, or at least where we think it is not essential to
> focus our attention for the sake of the work at least, that we tend to defer
> to the implicit shared attitudes or beliefs about the world to do the
> lifting for us."_

------
jlg23
Sartre described this on a more abstract level in his essay "La transcendence
de l'ego: Esquisse d'une description phénomenologique"[0], which essentially
says that the active level of consciousness can never be reflected upon
because the moment we reflect upon it it becomes passive, being reflected upon
by a higher level of consciousness.

[0] english wp article about the essay:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendence_of_the_Ego](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transcendence_of_the_Ego)

------
nashashmi
In the Quran, it states "We have made you into nations and tribes, so that you
may know one another [... not that you may despise one another]."

We can only see ourselves once we see someone who is different.

------
SolaceQuantum
I suppose I have an "outsider's" view on cultural matters but I've always been
highly skeptical of framing culture in such absolute terms. While it is true
culture is a nebulous concept that has a tendency to leak everywhere doesn't
mean that it's so smoke-and-mirrors that you can never sit back and examine
things. Many people are forced to do this through talk therapy via the
development of unhealthy thinking patterns because of a life circumstance in
which they developed them.

I don't know what this article is trying to say or what it's trying to teach.
It seems to be the word version of a pastel grunge aesthetic blogger.

------
llamataboot
Terence McKenna - Culture is Not Your Friend:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_lS6IuLeQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_lS6IuLeQ)

~~~
vlehto
I think this is great.

He says pretty convincingly that collectivity is bad for us as individuals.
And that individualism is bad for us as society.

Then he suggests that we should abandon society so we could act as
individuals. And abandon our individual habits to form dream society.

This perfectly shows that he is unable to really understand society or
individualism. Which are also essential blocks of our existence. I feel I
understand it better, but probably so did he. Maybe none of us understands it.

------
iamsohungry
This is the obvious answer to the fundamental question of epistemology: would
I think what I think if I didn't think the way I think?

The answer is obviously "no", but the next questions that arise from that are
more complicated ("What would I think if I thought differently?" "Is there a
'correct' way to think?" "How can I validate my thinking?" "Is there a way to
move my thinking towards a more 'correct' way?").

------
snowwrestler
The study of criticism teaches one to crack open cultural artifacts like
novels, paintings, plays, movies, etc. and look for the motivations and
influences of their creators. It is a very useful way to examine a culture,
including a culture you might find yourself in, even if it is a culture that
you grew up in and would therefore be sort of blind to.

And it provides a set of mental tools that can be useful for the rest of your
life, to answer questions like "why did he write that email?" or "why did that
politician say that?" or "what does this news article really mean?" This is
why I recommend that even technical track students like engineers take a few
liberal arts classes if they can.

------
p4bl0
> We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it

Sounds like a theorem of incompleteness :).

~~~
e12e
I wouldn't read too much into _that_. In that vein, I think it makes more
sense to look at culture as the lossy compression we use to store value
judgements of our experience -- accepting that we can only store a fraction of
the "raw" data.

The best way to combat the natural narrow-mindedness that _any_ culture forces
on you, is to travel -- and if possible live for a long time (6-12 months)
submerged in a different culture. The best time to do this, is probably before
you fully become an adult -- living with a host-family as the "child" of a
foreign culture allows/requires a degree of acceptance that is very valuable
if the goal is to widen the idea of culture. Having two cultures that are
sometimes contrasting, but also accepted as "real" allows one to introspect --
and realize that one really have to question _everything_ \-- there are very
few universal truths.

For those that are, or have, teenagers in the house, and have the means -- I
strongly advice to look into international volunteer inter-cultural programs,
like:

[https://www.afs.org](https://www.afs.org)

[https://www.yfu.org](https://www.yfu.org)

------
kitd
> We do tend to have this unexamined assumption that the individual is a huge
> fucking deal. Because it feels to use that we are. Because our neurological
> equipment seems to demonstrate to each of us that we are quite obviously the
> exact center of the universe.

Taking time to practise stepping outside one's own POV and attempting to
measure your life objectively against whatever scale of value you hold is one
of the most worthwhile and fulfilling disciplines I know.

It is exactly what 'prayer' is, though that word comes with the baggage of
traditional religion which may be offputting.

But in reality you don't have to be religious to pray.

~~~
mfoy_
Perhaps you confused "prayer" with "meditation" or something else?

~~~
jblow
There are many different kinds of prayer in the (for example) Christian
tradition. You might be thinking of intercessionary prayer, but there is also
contemplative prayer which is indeed a lot more like meditation.

------
redmaverick
I was born and brought up in India and have lived in the U.S for around 6+
years before finally returning back home recently.

Living outside your own country for a significant length time is pretty mind
expanding. This is what I have realized:

Culture is a very real thing. A lot of the thoughts that we have are not
really our own. They are a product of the culture around you. It is pretty
incredible to observe.

This is just from my perspective.

America values rugged individualism while most asian countries including
India, China, Japan, Philippines value the opposite. Here are some things I
found pretty interesting.

America: Family

1\. Your child doesn't owe anything to you. No child asks to be born. You made
the choice to have a baby and so it is your duty and responsibility to educate
them well and provide basic comfort and security. It is your responsibility to
meet your own emotional needs. American parents feel like they are failures if
their kid continues to stay in their home after they reach adulthood. Even the
adult children feel the same way. I remember Travis Kalanick mentioning the
time he was living with his parents as pretty depressing (after his startup
Redswoosh failed) If you want to insult someone here you can say, "Are you
still staying with your parents?. You need to move out of your parent's
basement!"

Once the kids move out, the parents reconnect with each other and will try and
pursue their own interests.

India

Your life is a gift from your parents who will be the number one priority in
your life. You owe your parents everything. Indian parents will do _ANYTHING_
and _everything_ for their kids. They will sell their property and get into a
lot of debt, if it comes to that, to educate their kids and to make sure they
have a great life. Kids are expected to honor and listen to their parents.
Even after marriage there is a tug of war between the mom/dad who feels that
their kid is being stolen from them by the spouse. If you want to insult an
Indian you can just say, "He/she doesn't respect elders". In India parents
work hard so their kids can enjoy their money and property. People admire kids
who stay and live with their parents. Even celebrities who are worth many
millions of dollars stay together with their parents as a family and there is
nothing disrespectful about it. The children are an extension of their selves
and there is a deep life long attachment. The kids will take care of their
parents in their old age. People get very offended if you ask them if their
parents are living in an old age home/retirement/assisted facilities.

"A marriage is considered to be a union between two families and not two
people!", is a common dialogue heard everywhere in India. Most people say this
as if it is the most obvious truth. It's almost like saying the sky is blue.
In the US, a marriage is considered a union between two individuals and not
two families.

Again, here is the question. How come most Americans feel exactly the same
way? How come most Indians feel the opposite?

2\. The need to learn a foreign language.

Most Indians know three languages. 1. Their own native language (like, Tamil,
Telugu, Malayalam, Gujarati etc) 2. Hindi 3. English. A lot of people know and
understand upto 4 or even 5 languages. So, there is nothing special about
knowing different languages. People won't be impressed if you tell them you
know French, Spanish or Mandarin. It's like telling someone that you can hop
on one leg for a few miles. A difficult but pointless achievement.

For many Americans, knowing a foreign language is a big deal. They will go to
great lengths to learn Spanish, French or Mandarin. Mark Zuckerberg showed off
his ability to speak Mandarin a while back. I read one answer in Quora (which
an elderly person wrote) mentioning that he regrets not being able to learn a
foreign language. Tim Ferris shows off his foreign language acquisition skills
to impress visitors to his blog and tv shows.

Again I have to ask the same question: How come most people in the US feel
this way? To an outsider it seems really silly and absurd.

3\. "4 people". In India, many people live for the sake of society. This is
true everywhere. Most people want to impress others but it is at a completely
different level in India. People make life changing decisions not based on
their own interests but for the sake of society. There are 20+ plus languages
in India and interestingly, almost every single language has this phrase "4
people". Are you planning to quit your job at Google to do your own startup?
What will the "4 people" around you think? What do you mean you are not
getting married? What will the "4 people" say? Conformity is everything. If
your older sibling or younger sibling marries someone from a different
race/caste/religion then it means that your family doesn't have a value system
and it will be difficult for you to find a spouse because you come from a
family with no values.

4\. Inquisitiveness. Indian people are very inquisitive. If you are
overweight, they will advise you to start dieting. "Looks like you've been
eating a lot. You need to lose weight", is a common refrain. They will ask you
how much something costs, how much money you make per year and enquire about
your properties and other assets. If you tell them you booked a flight from
L.A to Delhi, the first question they will ask is about the flight cost. If
you are their friend they will quiz you about your savings. Again, this is not
just one person or two but most people in India.

Again, the same question, why do most people born in a certain culture all
behave in a certain way? It's almost like people are hypnotized en-masse into
believing some things as fundamental truths. Pretty surreal to experience it.

~~~
quietplatypus
Do you think either culture can make a case for itself being superior? I have
witnessed firsthand the abuse and corruption that stems from Asian "family-
first, materialistic" approach and honestly believe the American way stands a
far better chance of creating someone who has self respect while still being
able to function in groups.

------
nness
Noting before reading that 15mb of animated GIF's is not a great way for an
article to make a first impression.

~~~
cooper12
And in this case, their being gifs or images add nothing of value to the
article. They're just quotes superimposed over faces with blinking text.
Aesthetics over functionality.

~~~
atomlib
This whole article is something you would normally see on Tumblr. Also, I
can't read text on GIFs, it's very unpleasant and makes me feel dizzy.

