10 ms·

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

130 points by enginnr 11y ago

nness 11y ago
Noting before reading that 15mb of animated GIF's is not a great way for an article to make a first impression.
- bonobo3000 11y ago
  With sufficient advances in NLP & ML, i dream that one day you will be replaced by a bot able to generate snarky comments about slow/mobile-unfriendly/ad-riddled webpages automatically.
  - nness 11y ago
    Or better yet, Medium could place a warning that the user has uploaded files with a hefty file-size and how it could cause performance or data issues for their readers. What a bot would be better for is people complaining about people complaining. That'd knock out a good 50% of all HN comments.
    - bonobo3000 11y ago
      touche :p
    - coderdude 11y ago
      Speaking of culture, this comment reminds me of how other communities see HN. We seem to be unaware of our own culture while outsiders can see it quite well. - "Ad hominem" - Causation/correlation - Complaining about ads - Complaining about font color and size - Complaining - "This." (We pinched the laziest one-liner Reddit has to offer) - Anything regarding logical fallacies
      - nsomaru 11y ago
        Add: - confirmation bias - strawman - bubble or not - why disable mobile zoom?
  - thecatspaw 11y ago
    its not like those gifs add anything of value which a still frame couldnt.
- cooper12 11y ago
  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.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - atomlib 11y ago
    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.
  - BillyParadise 11y ago
    ie, Culture.
- trdrake 11y ago
  Not to mention the animations - jittery text on a grainy image - adds absolutely 0 useful information, does it at the expense of a huge download and a headache.
- mesozoic 11y ago
  Also they give me a headache so bonus points for that.
p4bl0 11y ago
> We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it Sounds like a theorem of incompleteness :).
- e12e 11y ago
  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
rogeryu 11y ago
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-that-the-last-thing-a/ http://stoweboyd.com/2013/07/12/marshall-mcluhan-once-said-t...
- MIKarlsen 11y ago
  Donna Haraway makes a similar point with the concept of "situated knowledge" [1] - the fact that we are all situated in our own practices, and as a result, objectivity becomes hard to claim. [1] https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1988.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1...
- x5n1 11y ago
  It's possible to recognize it, just watch old commercials or look at old home videos with clothing and hair styles. Make a list of differences then look for the differences in contemporary terms.
  - orthoganol 11y ago
    Those are superficial examples. It's things more like social pressures that exist that you may not even be aware of. Acting and thinking in certain ways without fully knowing why.
- vacri 11y ago
  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.
  - 11y ago
carapat_virulat 11y ago
"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 11y ago
  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&t=1h56m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800&feature=youtu.be...
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I wouldn't say he's unpopular around here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zizek&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zizek&sort=byPopularity&type=c...
    - orthoganol 11y ago
      Too many entries to sift through if you sort by all time, but I recall him being called a charlatan here, which is what Chomsky once called him (which might explain it). Otherwise I feel the tech community in general rejects the field of critical theory. I don't think Zizek is just a critical theory guy - he identifies primarily as a scholar of Hegel - but he's certainly the best known among critical/ literary theory types.
vlehto 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
      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 11y ago
    I've heard house mates talking when high on cannabis - while I was not high. They had incredible ideas and were really enthusiastic. The only problem was that it was impossible to make any sense of the ideas they expressed.
geomark 11y ago
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.
SolaceQuantum 11y ago
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.
ThomPete 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - cryoshon 11y ago
    Agreed. Traveling internationally has been an eye opener for me, although it also confirmed many of my deeply held biases about my own country. Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.
    - refurb 11y ago
      Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff. I don't know any Americans who do that.
      - WalterSear 11y ago
        I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture. Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.
kitd 11y ago
> 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.
- noja 11y ago
  > It is exactly what 'prayer' is Huh? Using what definition?
- mfoy_ 11y ago
  Perhaps you confused "prayer" with "meditation" or something else?
  - jblow 11y ago
    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.
- vlehto 11y ago
  I think the real deal is to examine the confines of your perspective, not to try and abandon it. If you notice you are biased, trying really hard not to be will more likely to result lying to oneself than unbiasing oneself. Best you can do is to learn the signs. And when you can check the boxes look for help. After all, we are all here for each other. Meanwhile my perspective is incomplete, biased and ugly. But it's mine and I love it.
llamataboot 11y ago
Terence McKenna - Culture is Not Your Friend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_lS6IuLeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw_lS6IuLeQ
- vlehto 11y ago
  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.
RodericDay 11y ago
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."
iamsohungry 11y ago
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?").
jlg23 11y ago
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
redmaverick 11y ago
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.
dredmorbius 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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.
nashashmi 11y ago
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.
snowwrestler 11y ago
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.

130 points by enginnr 11y ago

nness 11y ago

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

bonobo3000 11y ago
With sufficient advances in NLP & ML, i dream that one day you will be replaced by a bot able to generate snarky comments about slow/mobile-unfriendly/ad-riddled webpages automatically.
- nness 11y ago
  Or better yet, Medium could place a warning that the user has uploaded files with a hefty file-size and how it could cause performance or data issues for their readers. What a bot would be better for is people complaining about people complaining. That'd knock out a good 50% of all HN comments.
  - bonobo3000 11y ago
    touche :p
  - coderdude 11y ago
    Speaking of culture, this comment reminds me of how other communities see HN. We seem to be unaware of our own culture while outsiders can see it quite well. - "Ad hominem" - Causation/correlation - Complaining about ads - Complaining about font color and size - Complaining - "This." (We pinched the laziest one-liner Reddit has to offer) - Anything regarding logical fallacies
    - nsomaru 11y ago
      Add: - confirmation bias - strawman - bubble or not - why disable mobile zoom?
- thecatspaw 11y ago
  its not like those gifs add anything of value which a still frame couldnt.
cooper12 11y ago
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.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- atomlib 11y ago
  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.
- BillyParadise 11y ago
  ie, Culture.
trdrake 11y ago
Not to mention the animations - jittery text on a grainy image - adds absolutely 0 useful information, does it at the expense of a huge download and a headache.
mesozoic 11y ago
Also they give me a headache so bonus points for that.

p4bl0 11y ago

> We can't see our culture very well, because we see with it Sounds like a theorem of incompleteness :).

e12e 11y ago
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

rogeryu 11y ago

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

MIKarlsen 11y ago
Donna Haraway makes a similar point with the concept of "situated knowledge" [1] - the fact that we are all situated in our own practices, and as a result, objectivity becomes hard to claim. [1] https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1988.pdf https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1...
x5n1 11y ago
It's possible to recognize it, just watch old commercials or look at old home videos with clothing and hair styles. Make a list of differences then look for the differences in contemporary terms.
- orthoganol 11y ago
  Those are superficial examples. It's things more like social pressures that exist that you may not even be aware of. Acting and thinking in certain ways without fully knowing why.
vacri 11y ago
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.
- 11y ago

carapat_virulat 11y ago

"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 11y ago
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&t=1h56m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kugiufHh800&feature=youtu.be...
- icebraining 11y ago
  I wouldn't say he's unpopular around here: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zizek&sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Zizek&sort=byPopularity&type=c...
  - orthoganol 11y ago
    Too many entries to sift through if you sort by all time, but I recall him being called a charlatan here, which is what Chomsky once called him (which might explain it). Otherwise I feel the tech community in general rejects the field of critical theory. I don't think Zizek is just a critical theory guy - he identifies primarily as a scholar of Hegel - but he's certainly the best known among critical/ literary theory types.

vlehto 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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 11y ago
  I've heard house mates talking when high on cannabis - while I was not high. They had incredible ideas and were really enthusiastic. The only problem was that it was impossible to make any sense of the ideas they expressed.

geomark 11y ago

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.

SolaceQuantum 11y ago

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.

ThomPete 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  Agreed. Traveling internationally has been an eye opener for me, although it also confirmed many of my deeply held biases about my own country. Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff.
  - refurb 11y ago
    Americans will be shocked to learn that people in other countries don't walk around thinking about America or wondering what "the Americans" are going to do about stuff. I don't know any Americans who do that.
    - WalterSear 11y ago
      I know plenty that think the US is the center of the world. This very discussion is about why you might not have noticed that part of American culture. Why do you think that our democratically elected leaders feel so comfortable bombing, invading and murdering? They know much of the population ultimately feels that it is the US society's prerogative.

kitd 11y ago

> 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.

noja 11y ago
> It is exactly what 'prayer' is Huh? Using what definition?
mfoy_ 11y ago
Perhaps you confused "prayer" with "meditation" or something else?
- jblow 11y ago
  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.
vlehto 11y ago
I think the real deal is to examine the confines of your perspective, not to try and abandon it. If you notice you are biased, trying really hard not to be will more likely to result lying to oneself than unbiasing oneself. Best you can do is to learn the signs. And when you can check the boxes look for help. After all, we are all here for each other. Meanwhile my perspective is incomplete, biased and ugly. But it's mine and I love it.

llamataboot 11y ago

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

vlehto 11y ago
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.

RodericDay 11y ago

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."

iamsohungry 11y ago

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?").

jlg23 11y ago

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

redmaverick 11y ago

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.

dredmorbius 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.

nashashmi 11y ago

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.

snowwrestler 11y ago

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.