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> the US has no culture How anyone can believe this is beyond me. It is like saying a given atom has no protons, or that a given region of a country has no are

by cbd1984 12y ago

> the US has no culture How anyone can believe this is beyond me. It is like saying a given atom has no protons, or that a given region of a country has no area. It's such a gross misunderstanding of basic concepts it should mark anyone who says it as someone who has no basis for continuing the discussion.

beobab 12y ago
I've always understood the statement "The US has no culture" as meaning that the speaker thought the citizens of the US weren't "posh enough" in some manner or other. I imagined it was probably something terribly elegant and refined like eating breadsticks with a knife and fork.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? I'm not sure how true it is (I've never been) - but I have certainly observed anecdotally that some states are more keenly independant than others?
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? By that token, no country has a culture, because every country (except, maybe, postage stamps like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein) has regions with a distinctive cultural heritage which they don't entirely share with other regions. So, put that way, it's trivially true that the US doesn't have one culture, but then neither does France, or the UK, or China, or Russia, or Italy. Culture is everything which is passed down from generation to generation which isn't encoded in the genes. For example, my dark hair isn't in my culture, even though I got it from both of my parents; my language, however, most certainly is part of my culture. So's most of my taste in food and drink. Do I share all of my culture with the people I live close to? No, but I share a lot of things, some of necessity (language, clothing) and some because it was just how I was raised and what I see around me (hair style, meal times). Here's an interesting website on the culture a large percentage of Americans more-or-less shares: http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html There's similar pages for Canadians, Russians, Chinese, etc all linked off that page.

by cbd1984 12y ago

beobab 12y ago

I've always understood the statement "The US has no culture" as meaning that the speaker thought the citizens of the US weren't "posh enough" in some manner or other. I imagined it was probably something terribly elegant and refined like eating breadsticks with a knife and fork.

Ntrails 12y ago
I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? I'm not sure how true it is (I've never been) - but I have certainly observed anecdotally that some states are more keenly independant than others?
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > I would probably interpret it as saying that there isn't a single cohesive culture throughout the US? By that token, no country has a culture, because every country (except, maybe, postage stamps like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein) has regions with a distinctive cultural heritage which they don't entirely share with other regions. So, put that way, it's trivially true that the US doesn't have one culture, but then neither does France, or the UK, or China, or Russia, or Italy. Culture is everything which is passed down from generation to generation which isn't encoded in the genes. For example, my dark hair isn't in my culture, even though I got it from both of my parents; my language, however, most certainly is part of my culture. So's most of my taste in food and drink. Do I share all of my culture with the people I live close to? No, but I share a lot of things, some of necessity (language, clothing) and some because it was just how I was raised and what I see around me (hair style, meal times). Here's an interesting website on the culture a large percentage of Americans more-or-less shares: http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html http://www.zompist.com/amercult.html There's similar pages for Canadians, Russians, Chinese, etc all linked off that page.