5 ms·

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 h

• 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.
  • paulojreis 11y ago
    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.
    • deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
• efaref 11y ago
  Like how we never notice air. Oh wait...
  • pavlov 11y ago
    Today we know what air is, but for ancient people it was far from obvious. Plato describes it thus: "There are similar differences in the air; of which the brightest part is called the aether, and the most turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are various other nameless kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles." http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html Mist, darkness and aether are completely unrelated to any modern definition of air.
    • codingdave 11y ago
      But they noticed it. Their accuracy is not really the point - they did notice their own environment.
      • pavlov 11y ago
        They observed effects within the medium like moisture and darkness, but did ancient people really "notice" the medium itself? Depends on the definition of "notice", I guess.
• rogeryu 11y ago
  It's like I have glasses, and most of the time I don't see them and I forget about them. That's a good thing I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I haven't forgot my glasses, while I am wearing them. Then I have to look for them, really look for the frame until I'm assured they are there. Stupid, but this is how it works over here! ;-)
  • hammock 11y ago
    And how often do you think about/are you aware how the fact that you are wearing glasses changes the way people think about you, and the way they interact with you?
    • lfowles 11y ago
      It often surprises me when other people are resistant to wearing glasses later in life. I've had them since second grade, they are just a fact of life!
    • rogeryu 11y ago
      I seldom think about that. My father has glasses, thick ones. What I remember is that his eyes were much bigger when he had his glasses on. That may affect how other people see you. Then the frame changes your looks. German people and especially women have a specific taste for frames that doesn't make them look more sympathetic.
• s_dev 11y ago
  Reminds me of David Foster Wallace's piece "This is Water", powerful stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI