Illusions like self-esteem, self-worth, the Sigmund Freud’s ego, superego, ID, and our body image. Those images are not real. Nothing really of substance. They are not worth anything really. What does culture mean to the youth in childhood, boyhood, the sister act, adolescence and adulthood? In the beginning the mind’s eye, psyche and intellect of the youth is like a Doris Lessing’s golden notebook.
Everything that hurts, that wounds, that increases faith, loyalty that challenges, goals, dreams, desire, wants, needs, the gap that brings closure when facing loss, denial, death, defeatism is written in that golden notebook (the mind’s eye, psyche and intellect). And then the culture from childhood is still by some pure stroke of genius still there. It announces itself briefly in adolescence. Now other ideas are formulating themselves. Character and personality. Pride in one self not necessarily arrogance. Pride in one’s appearance or pride in one’s sporting prowess or pride in one’s academic achievements.
When it comes to identity and culture there is no one identity and yet there is one moral code. Multiculturalism has changed the order of history, moral ambiguity, and cast a well-meaning phenomenological spell on the ancient doctrines of religion. The major spiritual trend that is forecasting globally right now is that we all carry pain within ourselves. We all carry a denial a love within ourselves. We call it many things. All cultures are experiencing this at this moment in history. To me a culture, any culture is extraordinary. The heritage of different cultures is a beautiful and dissociative wonderland grounded in the intelligence of heritage and indigenous knowledge systems. For example, a woman carries a purse and white quiet. A man carries a blank slate where his head should be. And now I come to children of different faiths and races. Children are the most vulnerable of all human life on earth. They are also the most
Children, they do not see prejudice as adults do whether they live in a ghost house (for example, an orphanage, juvenile detention centre, whether they are living with a foster family) or a house made out of a heart of gold (born with the proverbial golden spoon in their mouth, born into wealth, prosperity which will ultimately mean progress and success in their future lives if they follow a particular path, the straight and narrow path). There are primitive wonders in the most ancient of cultures in the world. The purpose of culture is for us to learn how truly different we are from each other. The homosexual, the transgendered, the lesbian, the family man, daughter, lover, feminist, father, son, mother and understand that in all these cultures and underground cultures these role players are found. It should be the task of every man, woman and child to taste worldly and rural experience without fear, without arrogance and with humility, and tolerance.
For us to experience and not experiment with God’s interaction with humanity, with human life. We have a new ‘culture’ now. A new identity now it seems. It is called technology. We think words like ‘tech’ and ‘savvy’ are cute. It seems to mean that now pilgrimage, religion, mainstream religion, the church has come to an end, conquering the world, hitting the beach, Europe on a gap year (or has it really). It has come to mean for man, woman and child of different faiths and races, different cultures stopping engaging, interacting with the human and the animal world. How sad. This is what modern society has come to. Loneliness. Aloneness. Finding the innerness in a ‘pomegranate’ primordial soup whirlpool of solitude. Humanity is already spending far too much time alone with her thoughts. The paradigm shift in the world today is a negative, darkness visible, black dog of mental illness one. The black dog of depression, of mania, of hypomania and of addiction. Are we becoming counterfeit images?
What is happening to the third wave in feminism? Is feminism not a part of culture? What would happen if we did not have a Naomi Wolf?
What would happen to young undergraduate women if they did not have Susan Sontag or Sylvia Plath? I watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Some like It Hot, All about Eve. Marilyn Monroe went from extra, naïve ingénue to bankable Hollywood movie star. Films are part of our culture too. If films are violent is that not a reflection of the state of mind of the youth in society today. Gangs and mob justice.
Pornography unveils the education of what a woman feels and thinks about her own physical body. Her sexuality. Her desire to be needed and wanted and loved. Cherished. I am talking about the sexual transaction here now in biblical terms. What does pornography really unveil? It has absolutely nothing to do with a Christian or any other woman of a different faith’s sexuality and sensuality. It is a voyage out. It is a voyage inwards into a man’s empire.
The world when it comes to visual media wants you to reach out and touch a woman’s sexuality viscerally and that is point blank wrong.
Just plain wrong. It is very, very difficult for me to imagine why women would want to be portrayed in that way. Some do it for money and there is always a power struggle. They either want to be dominated (by the director or their sexual partner/s) or I presume they feel that they have all the power, all the status in the world. For me, they are literally destination anywhere, stuck at that fork in the road with no place else to go. Music, (food as I mentioned before), literature, especially literature, charity, philanthropic work are all a part of our culture, my culture and I am proud of it. Of being a Coloured South African of Khoi descent. Whatever happened to the suffragist cities across the world in the different cultural groups and how did it begin to manifest itself? I believe I was a feminist even when I was a small child. Always under my father’s shadow not my mother’s apron strings.
What would happen to the sensitive philosophy in the music of that genius Billy Joel that engenders itself in the spirit of my younger brother when he puts on that CD? There is even culture in the bittersweet squalor, burning in the rain, the comfort of strangers, blood orange of poverty, a bonhomie amongst these stalwarts. Every country in this, the well of this wide, crazy beautiful world of ours has their own cosmopolitan culture just like in the days of Jesus, the days of fishermen, the barley loaves, and fish. Culture is an adventure. Different cultures are meant to be experienced with a lot of bellyaching joy and sweetness and completely uninterrupted. No culture as much as they would like to be presumptuous and think it is far superior to the next culture. America is America. Africa is Africa. Australia is Australia. South America is South America and so forth. Do not let your culture wither away. Of course, in adolescence it does but do not let it wither away.
