Sunday, December 23, 2007

Replicating culture

Being in a sometimes confusing environment where a lot of people talk , share , participate and generate cultural events at one point you start wondering what and from where does culture come and how does it spread . Some of the answers that popped into my mind here related to the desire of one person or a group of individuals to become part or to express themselves in a larger scene . Thinking from a different perspective culture can be linked to some kind of pattern behavior or a “common ground “ of group and self expression . There are different aspects that can be connected to the term culture some people have a deep academic way of looking at things and outer people take different elements and generate culture in their own way . In many cases this kind of surface mix that is generated by what is called popular culture is reflected in art , film and outer forms of expression .
In the world of today there is a slight contrast between what the globalization brings and the sometimes fragile vernacular culture that is strongly preserved by groups of people . The contrast is generated by the fact that there are still remote places where media ( the carrier of information ) does not have access
and the fact that culture is static in a lot of cases it remains the same and it can be carried by the next generations of people to come : this phenomenon happens usual in traditionalist type of societies where
things are layered in a certain time spam , but in a western type of society were media is the main information transmitter things can be slightly changed and leave to interpretation a lot of broadckasted
events . On the outer hand things can change fast in a media guided culture the things tend to become surffacy and the content can be provided by anyone .
On an individual level culture can be connected to the controversial memes that are cultural information carriers and that spread culture trough a group of people . So basically when a group of people is interracting they make an exchange of information without realising o the spot . The memes where discovered not so long ago and they are part of modern phsicology teories . They are considered controversial because there is no evidence that this is the true way the things work but the meme theory can give a logical explanation to how the things happen on an different level than usual . The mix of culture and cultures that is happening in todays world makes things complicate to explain and to see in advance so if we look trough a postmodern lens and magnify the interconnexions that are happening on a daily basis between people and the that some people influence outer people or groups of people the memes theory can become quite plausible .
Can macro things be reflected in the micro universes that surrounds one individual or a small group of people ? and is it possible that a pattern seen on a scale reflect and repeat itself in a fractalic way in another complete different environment
So going back to the beginning part of things culture can be seen as a perpetual machine that is a web of connections and patterns that function together and bring things from different levels on a common ground that generates the information that is becoming culture . In the same time everyone is a producer of information , so in a society where one person can produce media and transmit some sort of information the question comes if that part of information is culture in a primal faze or if there is a process that filtrates information and transforms it into culture . This another part of the process where memes intervine and become important on some a level ; the part where common habits are transmitted trough the meme way and becomes a common habit or activity .
As a conclusion memes are still controversial terms in the psychology of behaveiour and in the theories related to the way culture is transmitted on a small scale but the way they work is logical and can be seen in a lot of of interaction cases between different individuals .

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