What is Culture?

What actually is “our” culture? I guess the term “cultural heritage” should have something to do with our current cultural state of affairs, since Conservatives have been in political power recently. Conservatives are resistant to change. They like to keep things as they always have been. Is this good enough to remain in political power in the United States of America? We have experienced nothing akin to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on September ll. Previously we had never experienced anything like the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in l995. We certainly have never seen anything like the mass destruction of the birthplace of jazz music, New Orleans, Louisiana. Should slavery be good enough for us, if it was for our forefathers? Should suffrage? Should prohibition? Should the murdering of our civic and social leaders be good enough? I think all would agree, “Keeping things like they have been,” is not a good idea. Read the news. New events are happening everyday, new issues that demand thought, reflection, and analysis. Illegal immigration, till recently, has not been a problem. This country, culturally, is made up of immigrants who migrated here seeking freedom from their own tyrannous countries. Obviously things change. New needs must be met. The reeds in the swamps resist the hurricanes, because they are flexible; they bend. Unwaivering policies that seek to govern based on extinct cultural practices are an anachronism. Culture changes. It evolves; it doesn’t always evolve. Sometimes it de-volves, and that seems to be what is happening now. Maybe rock music, or mall hair, or break dancing aren’t the cultural pinnacles of the world’s greatest superpower, but at least they give us humanity. I don’t know what our culture is now, or what it is supposed to represent. It seems we have become bullies, bullies demanding the spread of our own system of government unfairly to countries that should be able to choose for themselves. Was the demise of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall what were best for Russia and Germany? They may have been from our perspective, but were they good for them? The threat of all out thermonuclear war has subsided, but have these countries flourished culturally? Less then a decade later alternate countries have resurrected similar concerns over war. Russia used to be a great competitor in science. What are they now? Americanization or the annihilation of unique foreign cultures in the sake of globalization is a mistake. What after all are we as human beings without culture to represent our humanity? I don’t know. What is it we are supposed to do? What are we to aspire to? What things do we hold in high esteem? If tending to the "nine to five," paying bills, buying gasoline, eating fast food, and watching TV are our highest accomplishments or aspirations, then we aren’t much.