Tokyology

website: Tokyology Documentary

found on: BoingBoing

decisions, decisions

unrelated photo of my niece in the Florida Keys, shot through my Blu-Blockers

"Over the past generation, economists have paid increasing attention to the importance of norms and rules in economic life.  Ronald Heiner pointed out that as rational human beings we simply cannot make rational decisions at every point in day-to-day life.  Were we to do so, our behavior would be both unpredictable and subject to paralysis as we perpetually calculated whether we should tip the waiter, stiff the cab driver of his fare, or put away a different amount of your paycheck every month in your retirement account.  In fact, it is rational for people to impose simplifying rules on their own behavior, even if these rules do not always yield correct decisions in every circumstance because decisionmaking is in itself costly and often requires information that is unavailable or faulty." ("Social Capital" by Francis Fukuyama in Culture Matters)

My Global Perspectives professor gives his definition of culture as the thing that filters out 99% of the random data we encounter on a daily basis, so that we can make active decisions on the last 1%.

culture, community, & balance, part 2

(link)
"...the strength of family bonds differs from society to society; it also varies relative to other types of social obligation. In some cases, there appears to be something of an inverse relationship between the bonds of trust and reciprocity inside and outside the family: when one is very strong, the other tends to be weak. In China and Latin America, families are strong and cohesive, but it is hard to trust strangers, and levels of honesty and cooperation in public life are much lower. A consequence is nepotism and pervasive public corruption." (Francis Fukuyama, "Social Capital" in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress)

I love the word nepotism. I always forget it when I want to use it in sentences. Also, I went to a high school where there were multiple teachers and administrative staff who were married or related. This made it quite difficult to bring grievances about a teacher to the principal - who happened to be her husband.

This is a continuation of what I was trying to look at in the last post. Is there a link between how family-centered a society is and how corrupt they are? As a disclaimer (Ailsa), I don't believe that the two could ever be directly connected. But I'm wondering if the same cultural idea that puts a high priority on family also builds a distrust of those who are not family, which is bad for society in general. For a society to run well, there needs to be a certain level of trust between strangers.

Again, with the balance. We must (obviously) value our families. This is an interesting idea, and I want to see where it goes.

culture, balance, & community

"Balance" - won the 1990 Oscar for Best Animated Short

"The truth is that a large percentage of Latin Americans either nurture or tolerate relationships in which personal loyalty is rewarded and merit is substantially ignored. In Latin American culture loyalty rarely extends beyond the circle of friends and family. Thus the public sector is profoundly mistrusted and the notion of the common good is very weak." (Carlos Alberto Montaner, "Culture and the Behavior of Elites in Latin America" in Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress)

A couple weeks ago I was sitting next to Julie in church, acting like a brat. Being a cultural studies major I have a hard time listening to speakers talk about things relating to culture because I spend the whole time quibbling with the things they say inside my head. Also, I'm a senior in college and I think I know everything.

We've all heard the sermons and talks about how individualistic America is and how our utter lack of community is putting us on the road to hell. Right. Well, if I've learned anything from cultural studies, it's that every culture can turn good things into bad by taking them to the extreme. Just like in most things in my life, if I forget to maintain a balance, everything is ruined.

I've been slowly working my way through this awesome book (that I've talked about before) called Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress, and you could basically call it an anthology on how sin affects entire cultures and holds them back. It's sin's destruction and human depravity on a meta-scale: meta-depravity.

The quote above is how Latin America (and other cultures, too) has screwed up a good thing like community and family. When a culture gets to a place where they don't trust the public sector, where individuals cannot win elections or make business agreements without bribery, the reliance on community has gone too far. Henri Nouwen says that (I'm paraphrasing) if an individual cannot be alone, they should not be in community, and if an individual cannot be in community, they shouldn't be alone. Balance.

Cool Blog: Strange Maps

(strangemaps.wordpress.com)

While looking up info on the Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World, I came across the blog Strange Maps. For all you map-lovers, here are a couple maps that are on the blog:

1. Functional Geography, bottle-opener in the shape of Taiwan
2. Where Neil Armstrong walked on the moon
3. The geography (and naming possibility) of the lakes on Saturn's moon.
4. A Surrealist's map of the world
5. Map of temperance
6. And, my favorite map (pictured above) "Area codes in which Ludacris claims to have hoes"

I'm Glad I Found You: World Values Survey

Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World (worldvaluessurvey.org)

There's such thing as a World Values Survey?! Awesome.

"The World Values Surveys were designed to provide a comprehensive measurement of all major areas of human concern, from religion to politics to economic and social life and two dimensions dominate the picture: (1) Traditional/ Secular-rational and (2) Survival/Self-expression values."

This stuff is fascinating to me, I believe that one's values are very influenced by the culture around them. I don't believe that maps like this are exactly true, or completely representative. I do think that they can be very helpful and quite interesting. Values and culture are very related to personality and type, I think. My Dad has an idea for a book that would describe the culture of each country on the planet through the Myers-Briggs type indicator. I think France is ISTP.

Waiting...

(allposters.com)

I saw the movie 'the Terminal' last night, and it was pretty good, but kind of forgettable. I think Steven Spielberg is kind of stuck in the late-80s, there were a bunch of shots with streaming light highlighting the characters - reminiscent of E.T.

Oh, and the movie is based on the true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, who lived in the Paris airport for 18 years.

But something struck me - I think people outside of America have a greater ability to wait on things. Working in the computer lab last week, there was a tax help session for international students. Often, the people running the program were 15-30 minutes late in showing up and when I told the students that this was the case they shrugged and said that they would wait in the corner. If the tax program was for Americans, people would get pissy and hang around my desk and ask for information about who they could call.

Perhaps this is because America is a democracy and things get done because people complain about them. Maybe it's because we're more individualistic. Maybe it's because we don't have the normal 20-minute to 3-hour grace period of lateness that many South American and African cultures seem to have. Whatever it is, it's kind of interesting.

Anime Conference of St. Louis

Practically the only character I recognized, Princess Peach in all his glory.

My friends Shannnon (as Cloud from Final Fantasy on the left) and Shaun (Zak from something, on the right)

No idea - help, Patrick?

the lobby of the hotel, shock.

So I went to the Anime conference in St. Louis this past weekend for a bit, to see my friends Shannon and Shaun, who were in town for it. It was stunning. Subcultures fascinate me, especially high-school ones. Every high school I've been involved with or been around has had a group of Anime-enthusiasts, and I want to learn more about it. Here's what I learned from this weekend:

- the sense of community at these things is huge, people yell out the name of the character you cosplayed as and hug you.
- 'Anime' is kind of an umbrella term that includes Star Wars, gaming of all types (there was a Guitar Hero battle room), 'goth' culture, and everything Japanese.
- Shannon told me that the age demographic for Anime conventions has shifted dramatically down in the last decade, from people in their 30s and up to now mostly high school.
- This subculture is mostly caucasian.

Evolutionary Culture + Creationism

brasilmagic.wordpress.com

The definition of culture from my Biological Anthropology (human evolution) class: Behavioral aspects of human adaptation, including technology, traditions, language, religion, marriage patterns, and social roles. Culture is a set of learned behaviors transmitted from one generation to the next by nonbiological (i.e., nongenetic) means.

Ew, how unromantic.

"Proponents of creation science are called 'creationists' because they explain the existence of the universe as the result of a sudden creation event, directed by an omnipotent, supernatural being, occurring over the source of six 24-hour days as described in the book of Genesis. The premise of creation science is that the biblical account of the earth's origins and the Noah flood can be supported by scientific evidence.
Creationists have insisted that what they used to call 'creation science' and now call 'intelligent design' (ID) is as much a scientific endeavor as is evolution, and that there's scientific evidence to support creationist views. They've argued that in the interest of fairness, a balanced view should be offered: If evolution is taught as science., then creationism should also be taught as science. Sounds fair, doesn't it? But 'creation science' or ID isn't science at all, for the simple reason that creationists insist that their view is absolute and infallible. Therefore, creationism isn't a hypothesis that can be tested, nor is it amenable to falsification. And, because hypothesis testing is the basis of all science, creationism, by its very nature, cannot be considered science." Introduction to Physical Anthropology

In my Biology class at my Christian high school, I had learned that Evolution was theory and not science for the same reason - it could not be tested because evolution and transmutation (the change of one species to another) happened over such long periods of time. It seems kind of silly to dismiss either point of view on such simple grounds.

Culture Matters

I'm reading this book called Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress
which was a recommendation from David Brooks in this article. It's awesome.

In my two classes with Prof. Gilles, Social Change and Trends and now Global Perspectives and Realities, we have talked about why certain countries "succeed" and why some "fail" through multiple examples. We read the book Collapse by Jared Diamond for the Social Change class, which was fascinating.

However, there's an issue here. I'm feeling very postmodern by saying this, but, who defines success? Where one ethnic group or country might be very industrious and have a strong economy, another ethnic group or country might have a strong value for the family and community. Which is better or more desirable (because, often, they tend to be mutually exclusive)?

Here's a paragraph from Culture Matters:

"...it is first necessary to define our terms. By the term "human progress" in the subtitle of this book we mean movement toward economic development and material well-being, social-economic equity, and political democracy. The term "culture," of course, has had multiple meanings in different disciplines and different contexts. It is often used to refer to the intellectual, musical, artistic, and literary products of a society, its "high culture." Anthropologists, perhaps most notably Clifford Geertz, have emphasized culture as "thick description" and used it to refer to the entire way of life of a society: its values, practices, symbols, institutions, and human relationships. In this book, however, we are interested in how culture affects societal development; if culture includes everything, it explains nothing. Hence we define culture in purely subjective terms as the values, attitudes, beliefs, orientation, and underlying assumptions prevalent among people in a society." (xv)

So, a culture, as used here, is the worldview, the zeitgeist, the what-makes-us-different-from-them.

Of course, some cultures can have more healthy traits than others and can love honesty, integrity, and charity more than other countries or groups. But most cultures tend to be a mixed bag. Is globalization (by the definition I learned from Thomas L. Friedman - free economies, free business trade - free, not necessarily fair) really the best thing for everyone? The guys in Culture Matters say yes, if it provides better health care and overall well-being for everyone. Of course, it is kind of undeniable that a group or country with the least deaths from preventable diseases wins. I don't know...

hahahaha...look at more of it here: Lark News

Life, it is.

As I am working towards to goal of defining what my life passions are, different words, phrases, and ideas seem to fit together to create the larger vision. One of them comes from an email that wasn't written to me by a professor at Covenant Seminary. It is a broad question that shapes a lot of who Covenant Seminary is and their mission. This question makes me want to go to seminary there. "What do you see in terms of spiritual yearnings within contemporary (popular) culture (in the U.S.A. and globally)?"

I was sitting in my 'Cultural and Intellectual History of the US' class this morning and another image came to me. In contemporary church culture, so much is made of Acts 17, when Paul is preaching on Mars Hill. I think Christians enjoy the image of Paul citing the contemporary secular poets and thinkers to make his own case for the existence of one God and for salvation in Christ. It makes the case that the church shouldn't be a fortress on a hill, separated from society by huge walls of distrust and misunderstanding. It should be a city, with streets leading out, inviting trade and dialogue.

It just occurred to me that that is what inspires me too. My favorite part of being at Mizzou as a Christian is being in a sociology class and being able to see the image of God in the writers and other students as we all discuss culture and the nature of man in society. It's fantastic seeing that what the Bible says isn't all crap and that what it says about human nature and the way God created us in His image can be seen in everything we do. Even the ways we set up power elites and have class warfare speaks to our desire to have the God-like power that got us in this whole mess in the first place (Garden of Eden).

In my history class, my professor acts kind of like an Old Testament prophet, highlighting trends of thought that shifted the American culture. I want to learn how to do that. I want to look at a culture and say, "Here is the foundational issue. Here is where we do not believe God." That would be so cool.

Classes That Should Exist

Mizzou has a massive amount of classes that are offered each semester. I tried scrolling through all of the classes for next semester and there are literally thousands. I just found out that there are riding classes you can take at Mizzou - like horses. Who knew? But anyways, if I could invent classes at Mizzou that they would teach, these would be them.

Well, first of all, I would have them make a real Cultural Studies major (named after me - in the style of Stephen Colbert naming things after himself - Canadian hockey team mascot and Hungarian bridge). Having a real Cultural Studies major would make things a lot easier, who knows, it might happen in the future. But here are my classes:

Philosophy of Advertising
Sociology of Fashion and Trends
Sociology of Blue and Red States
Intro to Cultural Studies
Cyclical History
Postmodern Literature
MTV and Modern Media
Globalization
Geography for Americans
Current Events
Generational Interactions
Cultural Movements
Collective Behavior (as in, actual crowd behavior, not the sociology class on 'how to protest stuff' under this title currently)

That's all I can think of right now, I'm sure there's more. I've already taken most of the ridiculous I-can't-believe-this-is-a-real-class classes so far. Conspiracy Theory, the Amish one, I almost took a class called Grapes and Wines of the World where you do wine tastings a lot but I heard it's actually pretty hard and you have to do chemistry. Boo. I'm pretty excited about my Home Horticulture class next semester.

Next Up to Read:

I want to work for this guy: Michael J. Bugeja...and Facebook

While researching for my 'Culture, Change and Trends' class research paper on social networking websites, I ran across this guy: Michael Bugeja. He's magical. He teaches at Iowa State University, if it was a cooler place I would totally go get my Masters under him.

He wrote a book called Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age
(description of the book here) where he discusses "the void that develops when we spend too much time in virtual rather than real communities, neglecting our primary relationships. In this innovative book, Bugeja traces media history to document how other generations coped with similar social problems during great technological change and makes a compelling case for face-to-face communication in an increasingly technological and world." It sounds really cool. I have to pick it up soon at the Journalism Library for my group project on Schizophrenia in modern communication technology.

Last night at Veritas Luke Miedema spoke on Facebook and he had a really good title but I didn't write it down. It was something like "poke others as you would have them poke you" but a little less graphic. He said some really interesting things all the way through, but I thought his most interesting point was that Facebook makes us think about ourselves more, which is never a good thing. He spoke on the format of Facebook, which is kind of a purified and distilled popularity contest (who's talking to whom, wall posts, etc.). Also that everything is 100% editable. Nothing shows up that we don't want up there. We can untag ourselves in unflattering photos, delete wall posts, etc. Therefore it's kind of like a quasi-reality in which we can have on-demand access to our friends and leave when we want. I had never thought about the pure self-centeredness of Facebook before, interesting.