Culture

As I sat down to write my paper, I looked up the word culture and started brainstorming. I made a list of words that has to do with culture and then I began thinking about my everyday life and everything I see and do and how it pertains to culture.

-attitudes

-behavior patterns

-development

-growing

-human works

-thought

-lifestyle

-rituals

-civilization

-society

-counter culture

-traits

-expressions

-breed

-social groups

I then asked my friends and family what they think of when they hear the word 'culture', this list is from their responses:

-gumbo

-mardi gras

-dancing

-family traditions

-genealogy

-customs

-languages

-french music

-other world cultures

-holidays dedicated to different races

-food

-coming of age

-diversity

-how people live their life & how they do things

-different religions

-ethics

I then found notes from my human geography class on 'material and non-material culture':

Material culture: physical objects that represent a cultural practice, for example Muslims adamant about wearing a headscarf because women could be seen as sex symbol. This is also an ex. of CODE OF CONDUCT

Non-material culture: wide-range of customs and beliefs passed from one generation to the next

Universalism: certain characteristics among cultures that is a universal range of knowledge, interests, and activities.

When I googled the world culture and looked through the images, this is what I found:

Outsider

So here's my first blog for the semester. I finally figured out my login info, so I'll be posting all the entries I failed to over the past several weeks. Topic: pretend you are an outsider looking in at something in the world, describe what you see out of the ordinary.

Walking around campus, you learn to take in a lot of things by observing whats around you and whats going on. In my spare time, I have come to enjoy this walk, especially in the quad- where most of the action stays. Others walk around with devices attached to them; they cannot function without them. It makes me wonder if these certain things are running our lives like robots. This dependency on technology has certainly taken over our lives. I stare as people run into walls and nearly each other, staring down at this little box in their hands. As I turn the corner, I see people shaking hands, each with matching objects held to their ears. "How rude?!", I think.. and then begin wondering what life would be without these devices.

Others have white wires hanging from their ears, and walk looking straight ahead like they are being controlled by a game. I begin to put myself into a whole different perspective, I pretend that I am in the game also, wondering who's really behind the controller. I realize that people have to have a companion, or another object with them; the people that don't have devices attached to them have someone walking along side of them. I realize that humans have an obsession with needing someone or something else in their lives. No one can walk alone in this game, no one is strong enough to. Each object they posses or protect becomes their obsession, whether its a companion (another being) or simply just an object (technology). This is a fun game to play.