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Does America have no culture?

I once heard a foreign person say American has no culture, it is just cowboys and Playboy. That made me think: what is our culture now?

Actually, we do have profound writers, poets, artists, philosophers, intellectuals. But mass media popular entertainment has so inodiated society that is all most Americans know. They have never read Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglas, Thoreau, Melville, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickenson, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain and our other great writers and thinkers.

I think this lack of wisdom teachers in our culture has left millions of Americans feeling empty. The mass media tells us mostly only about greed, selfishness, materialism, shallow entertainment, cynicism. That is not a diet for the mind or soul to thrive or develop. We need our truth tellers, the wisdom seekers, to guide us, to give us spiritual enlightenment.

We need to reclaim our meaningful culture. It is out there - waiting to be re-discovered.
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America has dozens or hundreds of subcultures, for example:

☑ The blues, soul music, bubblegum music, jazz -- all musical subcultures with strong adherents who make these forms of music central to their identities.

☑ Muscle cars, Cadillacs RVs, Harleys
☑ Open source software, public domain encryption, Wikipedia
☑ Movie & TV fan conventions, fan fiction, cosplayers
☑ War reenactors, Guns guns guns

Just a short list for example purposes. there are many more.
Sure... it has it... is it always promoted appropriately??? No...

We know that America is "The home of the Biggest"... yet, we're more likely to hear more about the huge meal/drink somebody got than we are to hear about the biggest chair, the biggest shoe or the biggest pencil combined. Why is this???

Even the Grand Canyon (one of the more dangerous travel destinations gets more promotion than something that is relatively safe and right there in an environment where you don't need to send search and recovery teams to locate and rescue people should they have a heart attack or suffer from dehydration.

They know where to send rescue to if they're told "I'm right on top of a massive needle".
BohoBabe · M
They'll say America has no culture, meanwhile almost all of the movies they watch come from Hollywood.
WolfGirlwh0r3 · 36-40, T
Salmonella Lysteria and Ebola are all cultures that can be grown in a lab and the US currently has them
peterlee · M
Add the music of Sondheim, the plays of Arthur Miller, the richness of the Afro American poets, The Blues, and you begin to scrape the surface.
everyone in this world knows America has culture

one of America's greatest export is the culture

you even have Australians on this website pretending they are Americans and making 10 posts about Trump, the GOP, and our politics every day

if anything the world is OBSESSED with American culture
@badminton People are full of shit in general so I think most culture is actually not terribly meaningful.

Half the people think angels are real, spend money playing lotteries, and think the arrangement of stars when you were born affects your personality.
Crazywaterspring · 61-69, M
@unsociableAnthony They also think trump is a business genius who surrounds himself with good and competent people.
SkeetSkeet · 100+, F
Yes
But we usually steal it from other culture
badminton · 61-69, MVIP
@cherny I think we need to look to our own writers, intellectuals, artists, of the past and present. They have wisdom that is especially relevant to America.
Convivial · 26-30, F
I think the shortness of attention is your main enemy...
badminton · 61-69, MVIP
@Convivial Very good point. I think the internet is to blame for that.
Convivial · 26-30, F
@badminton I think the internet is just a response to a trend maybe... Blame advertising, trying to get the message across on s30 second ad, or politicians with a sound bite... There's many reasons I think
ArishMell · 70-79, M
It does, but the worthwhile creations of its own struggle to emerge from under the flood of meretricious tripe and prostituted versions of other countries' culture, that its massive companies export.

It's that shallow stuff that forms the stereotypes like "cowboys and Playboy".
swirlie · 31-35, F
I've lived 20 miles north of the Canada/US border my whole life and what I've come to realize about Americans is that there is no 'set' culture that abounds across the USA that defines Amerianism or Americans for that matter. From my own observations, there appears to be 52 different cultures happening simultaneously within the homeland that Americans call "USA".

From my perspective as a Canadian, the entire concept of having 52 States (50+2) is what has caused the USA to fail as a cohesive, inclusive nation. That is because each State or District has it's own unique culture, it's own set of police rules and it's own distinct identity set apart from each other which each State calls it's own and does not share with other States. Despite being called "United States", there is actually no such thing happening in the USA nor has there ever been.

What we have then in the USA are 52 unique and very different cultures happening simultaneously among each State's populace which does not spill over into an adjacent State. That is why "State Lines" are so strongly respected among Americans. Cross a State Line and you cross into another country for all intents and purposes, as far as Americans are concerned, though sharing the same flag. Big deal, but who really cares? The USA therefore in practical reality is a country made up of 52 different countries that are jammed into one half of the territorial boundaries of North America of which Canada occupies the other half.

To suggest that the USA has "culture" is actually a misinterpretation of terms. To say that the USA is made up of 52 different cultures, none of which meld in perfect commonality with other States, is more closely related to the truth of what the USA really is as a 'perceived' nation.

 
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