This definition of "culture" remains one of stasis.  it is a comepletely determined by a sort of fate type of system that is out of one's control.  Are you in control of where you are born, what idiot parents bring you up (whereby you realize that they are not idiots, or actually they really are idiots--like the parents in American Beauty), what time zone you were born in, what color you are, what sex you are (more about this later), what planet you are on, whether you are mentally or physically retarded or not, whether you like brussel sprouts or not, etc on ad infinitum.  These are things that distinguish us that we cannot control.  These are the sub plots that play out in our minds yet are left to the determining factor that were in place before we arrived.  These things may change over time (place, religion, political affiliation, even today sexual being--male to female, female to male, transsexual, hermaphrodite, etc), but the essential physical nature and constitution of one is, at the beginning comepletely undetermined by the person.  We do not even come to any real cognizance of any of these things until we acquire (according to Freud, Lacan, Saussure, Churchlands, etc) lanugage and the ability to perceive that I really am moving my hand back and forth in front of my face as i sit in front of a mirror (Lacan's mirror stage of development).  These things are determinates of our undeterminable "culture."

I would argue pretty safely that these are pretty solid characteristics of our being at least until we decide we want to change them, and the one's we want to change usually are not changeable--the fact that we have idiot parents, or that one is heterosexual or homosexual, or asexual, or that my skin will always peel when i sit in the sun too long because i have fair skin rather than dark Mediterreanean skin, etc.  These are the contingencies that are not in control by us, like our digestive system, circulatory system, nervous system--these are all automatic; they are when we are not.  These purely biological functions make up our species chracteristics that differentiate one from a dog, or a cat, or car, or a whale.  These cultural characteristics are the  philosophical a prioris that philosophers are always trying to give meaning to, yet cannot.


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