When a fantasy turns you on, you’re obligated to God and nature to start doing it — right away
Paintings by Dale Frank
Paintings by Jennifer Coates
The study of culture is useful in the way it allows us to predict the behaviors of future generations, and be more tolerant and closer to cultures other than our own. A culture is simply a blueprint for life in a certain group in time and space. The blueprint, if you will, is a “design for living”, a term coined by scholars Will Kelly and Kluckhorn (ha). The design for living was not purposefully put in place as it is, rather has evolved throughout history, growing new branches and pruning back old ones. This design is structured as a system, allowing each specific part to effect every other part, and integrating the people of a group into a common philosophy of life. Within a group, these philosophies can be communicated literally (through language and discourse), however most philosophies manifest in unstated premises about how to treat the environment and oneself.
In a new culture, like I’ve been experiencing in Montreal, I’ve been sometimes unable to tell how I effect my environment, since the design here is entirely different. Even though there are similarities, the small differences relate to and alter the entire system, thus Montreal beginning to change my whole philosophy of the world as I see it…
The most important part of trying to influence my environment in positive waves has been through expressing myself properly. In order to take all dimensions of communication into concern, I find it important to not only say what I feel but to look how I feel…To choose the right words for the person I’m speaking to, to choose an outward appearance that shows who I am, to use body language in addition to speaking and writing. When everyone is true to the system, everyone gets more out of it.
In this way, a design for living also leaves room for individuality, at least in some cultures. “Most cultures, like most personalities, can be regarded as equilibria of opposed tendencies”…there are ideal patterns, and then there are practiced patterns. The culture has an ideal design for living, yet as the quote mentions, this design must consider all opposing viewpoints and elements of the system…just as each of our individual personalities often have conflicting beliefs.
Culture is like an ego, trying to mediate its own confusing, multi-faceted identity.
Paintings by Keith Tyson
Markus Mrgulla
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