I Have No Culture

April 22nd, 2008 Posted in Personal

That’s really not the truth, but living in India sure makes me feel this way. The culture here is so amazingly powerful. I’m just astounded with the strength ideas are shared between generations. You really can’t escape being Indian in India.

It’s well known that even Indians who travel the world keep a strong Indian culture throughout. If you look at many Indians communities in America and England, they seem to have created small pockets of India everywhere. Likewise, other strong cultures such as the Chiense do the same.

It’s funny to hear about an Indian who grew up in America their whole life and still has a strong Indian accent.

Now, what’s so interesitng to me is that I feel like I don’t have a culture. I know I’ve had influences from my Mom or Dad, but all I really saw was a conflict of ideas. It was like the East clashing with the West throughout my whole life.

Instead of picking one side, I was forced to look at both objectively and create my own identity. In a way, I feel like I created my own culture.

So I had a blank slate in life, but how did I build a culture or identity for myself? Initially, I was stuck in the American system where there is a sort of strange consumerist culture. You identity yourself with material things like clothes and cars. Having to deal with this, I followed this type of thinking, but I always resented it in the back of my mind and that’s only because people looked liked they were running around with their heads chopped off.

I then became incredibly individualistic and decided that every idea and concept ever given to me needs to be look at closely and then either tried out or put in the gutter. Slowly I just started embraced what I saw really worked and really helped me cope with the world.

However, a part of me still wants to experience what it would be like to grow up in a strong community based culture like that of most Asian ones. When I look at Japan, I’m incredibly impressed with their system. People’s identity is tied with the country. If the country does well, they feel great.

That makes for one kick ass culture. However, the individual is taken out of the equation completely. However, some of the most out there and crazy ideas come out of Japan to counter balance the strong culture.

I think it would be exciting to create my own culture that started with me. One that is strong, but like water. What I mean by this is that a great culture needs to be flexible which I don’t see in many existing cultures. They resist change which only slows them down.

Yet, I will have strong foundational principles that I will teach to my kids and others that will make sure they can handle anything that comes at them in the future. Our future is now incredibly unpredictable, so it is even more important that we teach our kids to be strong, but flexible.