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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