Culture, I has it?
Sometimes I feel very disconnected, disenfranchised, and marginalized in the world.
It’s not that I feel “alone”, per se. It’s more my inability to identify with things that may be taken for granted as part of the ‘cultural markers’ I carry.
As a first generation immigrant (we emigrated from Korea when I was little) it’s always been easy for me to blame my being Korean in a sea of Midwest White as the reason for why I looked different, why the kids at school made fun of me because my mom packed me kimbop for lunch, and why everyone assumed I was good at math, bad at sports, and had a small dick (2 out of 3 ain’t bad).
And I don’t recall whether it was intentional or not, but I assimilated like a motherfucker. TV was my portal through which I was able to see how “real Americans” lived. To see what their “home lives” were like. The things that they wanted, celebrated, cheered. Good vs bad. Hot or not. Where I could learn all this without asking (it’s a trap!) how life was supposed to be lived in America. I was a good student. (Teachers note: Child shows great ability in practical application of lesson material.)
The assimilation happens subconsciously. Unconsciously. You start dreaming about American stuff. (dream tangent: after we had just moved to the US, one of my earliest memories is going to a Korean church somewhere in Chicago. There was a Sunday school teacher lady there that was very nice and was telling us all about Jesus. Later that night, I had a dream about meeting Jesus. Only it was that Sunday school teacher, wearing a sparkly wig and beard. I knew it was her, and I knew it was fake, but I went up to her and hugged her tight, while saying “예수님” (“Jesus” in Korean) like a good little Korean).
And then it all becomes a balancing act for as long as you can muster, until you just can’t keep up the act. One of the things that helped chip away at this was when I visited Korea at the age of 20 for a Summer Korean Language Program at Yonsei University. I was in college, getting my first taste of adulthood, when I was faced with the fact that this entire part of who I thought I was was completely foreign to me. Sure, I spoke the language, grew up eating the food at home, etc. But even just seeing an entire city street full of black hair — and the fashion! — threw me for a loop. And the feeling was mutual. I was a big, fat, tanned football playing sumbitch from Illinois, dressed like a poor impersonation of an Abercrombie ad (but always mindful to hide the manboobs). I stuck out like a stuttering, baby-phrase using, thumb.
Some people (I feel like the number was likely decidedly higher in the old days) are able to pull their shit together, stop paying attention to that identity dissonance and grit and grind their teeth through life, maintaining the act but never understanding the plot (hint: it starts with an L and ends with an OVE). Never really exploring or coming to a deeper understanding of who they are. Forever stuck in feeling like a guest in their own home. A body without a soul. In exchange, you can leave all the big decision making and risk taking up to others. In exchange you get to earn points by living up to people’s expectations, even if you don’t know what you expect from yourself because you don’t know who you are.
So, like I was saying. I don’t feel like I identify personally/exclusively to any particular group or culture. But I think that’s the whole point.
Culture isn’t a roadmap, although you can choose to use it as one. Culture is an amalgamation of the ways of doing things consistently in a certain area over a period of time. That’s it. Like anything else, culture can be wielded as a weapon or as a shield. But because it exists doesn’t mean that you are beholden to it.
In fact, one aspect of culture that I feel is limiting/suffocating is the reverence of the past. It’s like a collective nostalgia that keeps people focused on the past instead of taking the pieces before us and working to build a future instead.
As Terence McKenna famously said “culture is not your friend”. Here’s what he suggests we do instead:
“We have to create culture, don’t watch TV, don’t read magazines, don’t even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you’re worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you’re giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told ‘no’, we’re unimportant, we’re peripheral. ‘Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.’ And then you’re a player, you don’t want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
― Terence McKenna
The fact of the matter is this: everyone is responsible for their own journey. The cultures we come from color the experience, but do not define it in any way shape or form. The impact of culture is on our history, not on our future.There is no such thing as “good” or “bad” culture. The only determination we make is whether we want to keep or throw away the things we’re presented with, and to make that decision with hope and love as the drivers as opposed to fear and distrust is the only thing, really.
We can learn from the past. We can overcome stifling/abusive/oppressive cultures. We can create it all new in the way we see fit. But it all starts with how it is that we as individuals want to contribute to the culture we want to build together. Stop being a victim of culture. Start creating the culture of your dreams.
So, yes. Culture. I has it. And I’m creating that culture every day in the way that I live my life. :)
