Culture is NOT Your Friend: How to be a Human
Culture: The Ultimate Cult
To the extent that you assimilate yourself to a given culture, you become but a cog in a mimetic machine to be used and abused by the objectives of that system. And that means, to use the words of the late psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna, “Culture is not your friend.†Culture is the ultimate cult. The cultures of the world are diverse, but they each in their own ways are insidious. Culture is a dehumanizing and infantilizing element designed to make you into little more than a good machine able to sustain the habitual socioeconomic objectives of a particular time and place.
Hyperreality
In postmodern philosophy, particularly the philosophy of the late French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (pronounced bow-dree-yar), there is a term called the “hyperreal.†Hyperreality is the simulation of something that never really existed. As an example, kids in college see movies about kids in college and try to mimic the actors playing kids in college because supposedly that is how kids in college are supposed to act. As a result, you have a bunch of phony kids walking around college campuses trying to live out an impossible fantasy world.
There are tons of examples of the hyperreal in contemporary culture. Being “gangsta†is a prevalent contemporary example of the hyperreal. In regular reality, there is nothing glamorous about being a poorly educated, strap-packing sociopath who makes poor investments decisions and ends up spending life in jail, or dead. Only in the warped world of the hyperreal could “gangsta†be made into something glamorous. And unfortunately, sometimes the hyperreal “gangsta†meets a real gangster who isn’t just playing pretend and the hyperreal “gangsta†ends up dead.
The hyperreal is a bizarre artifact of culture—especially contemporary culture. When people start trying to live out an idea based on a fictional story, the result is hyperreality. In culture, it is not enough to be a human being, a person instead has to be a certain kind of human being based on a hyperreal role. And in American consumer culture Madison Avenue is more than happy to sell you your own unique image, role, and personality (turn you into a walking billboard) so that you may find what kind of “special†cog you are in the socioeconomic machine.
Make, Don’t Be Made
You know those animatronic humans (pirates, presidents, etc.) they have at Disney World? It takes a good amount of artistry (aesthetic and technological aptitude) to make an animatronic human, but it doesn’t take much artistry for a human to mimic an animatronic human.
This world does not need human robots; it needs humans that can make robots. It needs engineers, not engineered humans. It needs artists, not artificial people. And overall, it needs the creative, not the created. Yet, culture is a force that would have you be like an animatronic robot—an actor playing a mechanical socioeconomic role.
Edges
Culture defines the edges of acceptable reality. And cultures tend to always think they know everything except a few little things that will be figured out shortly. Yet, if people never ventured outside the boundaries of their given culture then the world would be stagnant. Usually the people who end up being the most useful to future cultures are the people who spend their lives unrestrained by cultural boundaries and so discover something new. And ironically, those most useful people are also usually the ones most shunned in order to protect the precious status-quo that makes up a given culture.
Conclusion
Culture is only your friend if you want to be a robot and treat other people like robots. If, on the other hand, you would like to be an actual human being, then you must learn to surf the edges of culture and the known (which is what goes on at TheUniverseAs.com). So give it a go and “Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave (McLuhan)†because there is much to be uncovered.
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12 Responses to “Culture is NOT Your Friend: How to be a Human”
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I really like this one. Write more stuff on this subject. I’ve really liked alot of stuff you have done lately. More people need to find and read your stuff. Your blog has lately been proving better than a lot of very popular blogs I read. Unique
Steve: Well readership is growing. I’m glad you are liking it and I will write more stuff like this.
First off, I’m glad you mentioned about Hyperreality. It’s something I didn’t know about until I read this blog. Additionally, I currently agree that “Usually the people who end up being the most useful to future cultures are the people who spend their lives unrestrained by cultural boundaries and so discover something new.” However, culture
does have some major benefits, especially to those facing racism or discrimination. When the looming majority is standing right in your face, culture is something that provides a sense of belonging for you and does help people to cope under tough conditions. It could be that I have a different interpretation of the term culture (groups of people with a common bond).
I do hate when culture is used in order to control the minds of its members but when used as it should be used. It can accomodate in bringing people together with similar views. A good example being this website with your posts on politics, economics, and philosophy.
Random question, how much time do you spend on average reading about politics, economics, philosophy, or anything else non-related to “pop culture.” I’m curious about the habits of people in bettering their education and their selves and the amount of time they spend bettering themselves or eroding at the hands of pop culture.
Tys
Tyson: Congratulations, you win the award for the most thoughtful comment on this young blog so far.
“Culture does have some major benefits, especially to those facing racism or discrimination.†Well culture is a double-edged sword. Cultures do bring people together, but they do so by establishing what I call “discriminatory unions‖which are enclaves of difference and specialness. I think of cultures as groups of like-minded people with similar objectives. And since they are like-minded that like-mindedness tends to become habitual over time and becomes ideology. And so you have all these groups of people bonded by shared culture yet you also have cultures alienating people due to cultural differences. And when these differences become particularly acute all sorts of problems arise, namely physical violence. So the medicine is often just a new infliction.
Culture is a record of historical knowledge and its preservation is essential, yet it is by no means a complete record. Thus, people should use culture, but not be used by culture. People should be connoisseur of culture and not committed hosts of one particular culture.
A legitimate bonding agent must be all inclusive and not exclusive like cultures tend to be. Cultures are an artifact of the human minds that made and maintain them. And the essential quality of cultures is that they are “discriminatory unions.†As long as people have the psychological desire for “discriminatory unionsâ€, culture will continue to quench the universally deep-seated motivation of community born of specialness (exclusivity). So, even though the varieties of cultures are countless, the deep-seated motivation is the same. And the cultures that become the most popular and make up pop-culture are merely the ones that are most profitable.
So, when I think of what I intend to facilitate with this website, I intend a community of culture surfers and not a particular culture—people with the motivation of inclusiveness and not exclusiveness. When in Rome do as the Romans do, but don’t become one. Be a cultural chameleon.
And you ask “how much time do you spend on average reading about politics, economics, philosophy, or anything else non-related to pop culture?†I enjoy pop culture as an observer in understanding the deeper motivations and psychology behind it all. And a person can enjoy pop-culture like that if they also balance it with unpopular-culture, which I do. For every bit of time I spend on unpopular culture, I usually spend an equal amount on pop culture. The problem with pop culture is mostly just that it is the only culture most people get. And if a person only gets one culture, whatever that culture may be, that cultural narrowness is going to be a limiting force and thus a brainwashing force. And since the motivation of pop culture is profits, indulging only in pop culture turns a person into a robotic consumer.
I’m a free-market guy and if we have to have cultures due to deep seated psychological motivations then I’d just like to see as much variety as possible. Cultural variety is the perfect wave action for a culture surfer like myself. And it facilitates the right conditions for more people to become culture surfers. I don’t want to belong to any cultures, I just like to surf them in order to find out what they say about people.
Anyway that is all I’ll say here. I’ll have to put together a post on this subject. Thanks for the comment Tyson. Your patronage is much appreciated.
Alex
Hey Alex,
Thanks for your kind words hehe. I thnk your term
“discriminatory unions” is going a bit overboard but I do agree
with your explanation to describe “discriminatory unions.” I actually like to use the term “tribes” to describe people united by a culture. I’m not sure if it was Jared Diamond who coined the term tribe, chieftain, and state to describe the developments of human society but I think the term tribe does relate well to describe most cultural units.
Since a tribe is defined as a group of kin who do have a basic set of rules, w/o a secular leader but instead with a leader who serves the role of a facilitator, counselor, who makes
decisions about the group with a “high counsel” of respected
members of the kin. The main goal of a tribe being to sustain their tribe and to achieve gains for the greater good of the pact. Which may result in violence of other malicious means of overbearing obstacles in your path.
“Thus, people should use culture, but not be used by culture”
That’s a million dollar quote man. One thing I would like to note is that I think for some cultures its an all chips in process. Either your 100% in or not. On the other hand those that provide a bit more leeway are open for cultural chameleons like us.
I’ll have to read up more on my economics before I debate you on that subject. Based on what I’ve read up to now, My current extrapolation is that true Communism is only a dream
and the prime examples of Russia, East Germany, North Korea, and China are key to explaining why it doesn’t work and why a free market is the only way for the advancement of R&R. However, I’m quite afraid of capitalism going unchecked and the focus on the short term which seems to have been the norm at least for a little more than a decade.
I agree with you on pop culture.
Tys
Random note, I havn’t written an article on it yet but I am slowly gathering my thoughts on time. Relating to your other themes, I think time would be a great topic to focus on. Despite time being a measure unit and not physical unit it is amazing how it has such a profound and governing the way people live. For example, people living in fascist Swatchland,
who are constantly looking at the clock and make decisions based on the bearing of the leader Tick Tock. Did you cover a lot about time? Maybe I just forgot.
Tyson: Ha! “Discriminatory Union†too much for you? Well that is just the kind of descriptive vocabulary I use in my own head to set high standards for myself.
“Tribe†is more diplomatic.
Yah study up on economics. I only became intrigued by economics when I started reading the works of the economists from the Austrian school. The only economic system I find perfectly rational and fair is anarcho-capitalism. Which is a far cry from contemporary capitalism, which is really corporatism. There will never be anarcho-capitalism though, except among small groups of people, because it is too scary to most people—too much personal responsibility required—and it requires too much faith in the sum total of individuals acting in their own best interest as being more intelligent than a few politicians, planners, and regulators. Since the two sides of the spectrum will always be battling it out we can only expect compromise, sometimes leaning more one way than the other, but compromise nonetheless.
And yah “time†is a subject I think about quite a bit and it would make a good article topic—particularly psychological and cultural time. I’m interested to see what you eventually come up with.
Hey Alex,
Random note: I think you would like this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QalNVxeIKEE
Author Robert Frank discusses his book “The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas” as a part of the Authors@Google series
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Hi,
“Culture is not your friend ” . Well, this seems to me a bit simplistic. McKenna says that psychedelic drugs somehow “override” cultural neural pathways to enable human beings to truely see the world as it is really is. Without culture ( for instance someone on acid), a human being would be in a constant state of contemplation, seeing things (perhaps a tree) as they really are instead of seeing them through “cultural goggles”. That is seing things without separating them with words (…). Without culture, I think that humans would perish quite quickly. If a lion walked in front of non-inculturated human, that man would probably look at the lion and “think” : Wow! how intricate is this creature’s fur pattern etc… and would get eaten before he would have time to do anything. Cultures developed to allow humans to separate one thing from another in order to interact with the world more easily. Cultural features are the fruits of life experience; cause and effect. Please tell me what you think of this so far ^^.
Pop-culture is a different matter according to me: It is, as described by Mckenna, created by cultural designers in order to turn the average human into a “half-baked moron consuming trash born from the ashes of a dying world” (Mckenna).
Voila, please tell me what you think of all this and thanks for writing about such topics.
Ben (Social anthropology graduate).
Hey, nice one. But please just don’t believe you’re “there” yet. No one is ever there, until they come to see that they are not “someone” at all, actually. Thinking that you are a human being, is an hyperreal role. And believing you’re free from hyperreal role-playing because you are aware of, and write articles about this human-mind tendency might just be the hyperreal role in which you’re trapped.
No one is ever free from role-playing, since being “someone” is the root of all roles. The only way out is the destruction of the root, which is the “I-thought”, the “me”, the ego, the believing that I am “someone”, which I am not.
I am (we are) reality, god, the tao, parabrahman, shiva, buddha nature, call it the way you want. Life is a dream, and it’s time to wake up!
I’ve just checked your bio, it seems you’re already into spirituality.
Check out Jeff Foster, Tony Parsons, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Ramana Maharshi, Jean Klein, and Zen teachings for serious non-dual spirituality. Forget about the marketed, new-age, fake ones like Gary Renard and the like, the “ascended masters” and any other childish fairy tales. Spirituality is about you, here and now, in all its banality. Not about perpetual orgasm nor some glorious mystical future.