ethnic set creation
heh, i'm still trying to decide how ethnically concerned i am. i think i'm proud of being able to identify with an ethnicity, but not particularly representative of it. well, i'd like to be representative of what i deem to be the "good" parts of it :)
posted by Sharkmeat at 8/02/2005 04:32:00 PM
6 Comments:
and this is the rest of that conversation i had with my friend so far. she is "delta" i am sharkmeat:
(delta) Well, knowing the language is a big plus. That a good part of the culture, your kids and there after will carry that and that’s a way to keep the culture going. It’s very important. Why do you think aristocrats teach their children all those languages.
(sharkmeat) ya but sometimes it is still completely useless. i don't know my language all that well but i know how my parents operate, i think that is where i get most impressions of chinese behavior. i also know how other chinese children operate. i'm really not the norm otherwise i'd be in med school by now
(delta) Oh and I don’t think knowing the language is completely useless, maybe for right now but do you want to be a part of the population whose language is not used anymore because it’s been taken over by what most people say is the most spoken language, which is English. Look what happened to Latin and the thing is that Latin inspired words in English and other languages but no one barely speaks it. And in the future I believe that in order to mesh with other countries more and more people will have to learn different languages, why not teach your kids now they have an advantage for job opportunities. As for the ideas, where are they coming from our upbringing right? And if they come from our upbringing they need to have a slight influence from ethnical ideals. There is a chance though that as countries grow and become developed that those significant ideals which separate us as individuals will become lost. You do have to take into consideration the fact that there are more interracial relationships and so forth. So pretty much eventually we’ll probably become dumb.
(sharkmeat) hehe dumb or just limited. it brings into mind the question whether or not some behaviors are "better", whether there is a darwininian element to social interaction. for instance, i doubt anyone in the future will deem it is anything but superstitious to wear garlic around your neck all the time in order to avoid vampires. but then again there might be new things that come up. i am curious whether the range of human beliefs about social behaviors will expand or consolidate.
the thing about learning about other ethnicities though, it seems there is a tendency to treat it as a phenomenon, turn it into a trend, then assimilate it into culture. chai, green tea, theories behind acupuncture are great examples. then again there are certain other things that are just too "weird" for certain cultures to adapt. bubble tea, for example. or perhaps that will just take time.
perhaps there are certain things that unless you were raised in them you could never adapt to them. i'm sure most people would not be comfortable eating pig's tongue (i even refuse to do it and my parents ate it with some normative frequency). the question is whether in that very far future these things remain associated with ethnicity, or simply become a non-ethnic module.
2/8/05 16:35
I don't know what bubble tea is, but I see stores/carts selling it all the time.
It's hard to say where cultural differences and economic differences meet. Were your parents eating tongue becaue it was a delicacy? Or because they were poor? Or was it because it was just like the ribs or any other part of the poor, poor, pig who died to feed them?
As for language...well, we find it more difficult than, say, Europeans to speak different languages because we don't have a reason to do so. Everyone here and around us speaks English, or a general facsimile thereof. There they are surrounded by different languages so there's more of an impetus to learn them. Then again, we're rather lazy and we tend to focus on utility, so most kids learn Spanish in school and other languages stop being taught because they don't have an audience. People kept telling me to take Spanish in high school...I refused and took French and German instead.
3/8/05 14:07
about tongue - i think it's just another part of poor ms. piggy. perhaps in china it's a delicacy although for the purposes of this discussion it probably doesn't matter so much. you brought up an interesting point though. i think our century progresses so that delicacies become more rare (and things that remain delicacies more valued/inflated). even if tongue is a delicacy in china, here anyone can have it. so the association of having tongue with having wealth recedes. it operates like cultural assimilation where exoticism fades with familiarity.
3/8/05 14:45
tongue is yummy yummy. as is bubble tea.
6/8/05 21:48
Represent, yo!
Tongue is great! And in a pinch, you can even eat your own tongue if your teeth are sharp enough or if you wear a retainer made of razors. Retainers made of razors are also a great way to preserve chinese heritage.
Bubble tea is delicious, but many of the flavors are a bit off from conventional USA flavors - too exotically fruity, etc. Plus, it's only available in small snack shops in chinatown (from what I've seen) which I wouldn't have tried myself had I not been introduced to them by sharkmeat. I think bubble tea would be a HUGE hit if they were made alcoholic :)
9/8/05 10:21
what is sharkmeat? is it exotically salty?
10/8/05 11:50
Kommentar veröffentlichen
<< Home