catapult magazine

Here’s a question from one of the people out here that CAN’T give you a complete history of Alfred Hitchcock’s works cross referrenced with their Aristotelian influences and linked with the recent string of events in Ghana that are only reported in obscure newspapers printed with Soy Ink, whose environmental impact is clearly much less detrimental than normal ink.

A lot of times when I log on to *cino, I feel like a completely ignorant buffoon. I’m perhaps “moderately cultured,” not “very cultured.” I get up, I go to work, I do my job, I unwind in the evenings, I try to stay up on stuff. But here, I have very little to contribute. I have questions: Since Culture is, indeed, Not Optional, is it my duty to become as cultured as Grant? Feel free to say yes. I’m sure I need more discipline on these things. I’m just wondering if there’s something I’m missing. Since about 4 or 5 years ago, I have had to start training myself to like good music/movies. I grew up liking DC Talk and Jim Carrey was the epitome of funny. Thankfully, I think many of my viewpoints and “aesthetics” have changed dramatically over the past several years. Still, I often feel lost. Where do you get the time to take in all this culture (movies, current events, books)? When I read a book, it takes me a long time. I don’t have the cash to see a movie every week. And aside from the newspaper and the television, there’s so many things in current events that I miss, I wonder if I’ve got my eyes closed and everyone else has them open. It seems like too much to be able to hold down at once.

I’m not making excuses for my lack. I suppose no one’s a perfect angel here. I suspect that the cliquishness that’s perceived in communities like this comes from people not knowing what they’ve done wrong when their version of culture is what they’ve been handed and they don’t understand how a group of people can tell them they’ve gotten it all wrong. I think for some people, this stuff comes naturally. Others of us are having to break old, bad habits. And like with most habits, it’s not easy. Maybe some people can empathize with some of the stuff I’m saying here.

So tell me: what do I need to change? Go ahead, give me the easy answer. Give me the in-depth “zeitgeist” answer. You founders: stop preaching to the choir (throught I’d throw that in to link the Rush Limbaugh thing) and preach to me for a second.

I’m obviously being a little extreme here for the sake of the post.
Come on, just go with it.

Amen! I read 80 percent of people’s posts and shake my head in disbelief and awe at the amount of intellectualizing that goes on about any given topic. As I told Norbert in an e-mail yesterday, it often reminds me of discussion groups at UW Madison in my undergrad days – very theoretical … and not often practical enough for me and my life.

I really think what you see here is a concentration of very similar personality and intellectual types, and thus, it’s overwhelming and you feel you’re lacking in something, when you’re probably not. I don’t think you need to be a philosophy expert like Grant or be able to make obscure references to films, books, and music or be able to identify gender issue themes in movies like “Panic Room.” Like you, I do my thing every day and barely manage to know what movies are playing at any given time. I get my news off the internet while my toddler watches cartoons. I’m by no means stupid or uncultured. I’m simply more into arriving at answers than bouncing around theories – my husband and I are both the intellectual types that are into logic, reasoning, pragmatic analysis. If pressed to complete honesty – not to offend anyone – I consider intellectual theorizing as counterproductive bullshit after a point. (I’m running for cover right now) BUT, I could use a little more bullshit in my life. It makes me smile.

The world needs heavy doses of all kinds of mind types or we’d be nowhere as a society. But like I said, so far CINO seems to be made up of one type of intellectual. This board has made me start thinking about things more, but by no means am I trying to become a Grant or a Jonner. Likewise, hopefully the more pragmatic intellectuals will start balancing things out.

So, before any reactionaries miss my point and decide to post a hurt reply, I’d like to summarize my point by quoting two of the world’s greatest thinkers:

“Ebony and Ivory, live together in perfect harmony, side by side on my piano keyboard, oh Lord, why can’t we?”

personally, i’m not much for intellectualizing either, but i do discover a lot of interesting ways to look at things while listening (reading) to others who are more gifted in that area. so i’m not willing to discount it all together.

adam – culture isn’t just books, movies, music and art. it’s everything. culture is your everyday life. *cino doesn’t just want to encourage Christians to get more involved with the arts (although that’s not necessarily a bad thing), we want Christians to realize that all of life should be affected by their faith. what you drive, what you wear, what you eat, how you do your job, etc.

of course, this is where mrsanniep comes in and says, “hey, you just said you weren’t much for intellectualizing and then there you went . . .” :)

well, we are working to make *cino more practical in a lot of ways. we don’t want folks to come over here just to hear themselves talk. our motto is “unite, learn, serve” and we realize we haven’t done enough of the “serve” part yet (as an organization). check out the network section to see some of the things we have planned.

how did I make it into the list? I’m not a cultured intellectual, i’m just a reactionary liberal :)

but seriously, no disrespect to grant intended, but I’d caution you against thinking that anyone here is really an ‘expert’ at culture or philosophy, or whatever. Most people here try to take their responsibility to be culturally engaged and informed very seriously, but that doesn’t mean that anybody’s got it all figured out. And this is one of the places where we can really work through some of those things. We don’t all have the same strengths, nor should we. I can’t hold a candle to many of the people here (say, grant or dvdschp) when it comes to analyzing film, but not everybody needs to. So don’t feel bad when you can’t pull every last theme out of an obscure film, your strengths probably lie elsewhere.

And being culturally involved doesn’t mean flogging yourself until you no longer like jim carrey or DC talk. It doesn’t mean that we limit ourselves to what is considered ‘high culture’ or ‘high art’ or anything of the sort. After all, Jim carrey is (or was) a very important cultural icon and we shouldn’t neglect that. That’s why you’ve seen reviews of things like eminem mixed in with some of the more obscure films and artists that make an impact on our culture. We should be aware of and actively engaged in all culture. But what does that mean? That’s something I’m still working out, but I’ve found that it helps if I think of culture as an integral part of my life, instead of as an external thing that I have to learn about. Plus, I’m fascinated by a huge variety of things, so I can’t help but pay attention to as much as possible. So I guess my best advice is to try to cultivate fascination. But I’m not sure exactly how that’s done in daily life.

You’re right that this place can get a little cliquish, which is probably because a lot of the early contributors knew eachother fairly well on a personal level. I think it’s beginning to change a bit, though? And I think the ‘over-intellectualizing’ is due partly to the fact that there’s really very little place to excercise your mind in this way in ‘real life’. But I don’t think that the theoretical has no practical application to real life. True, it might not spell out exactly how we are to raise our kids, but it influences us on a deeper level — how we view the world. So I think there’s a definite place for theoretical discussions. In fact, i think it’s much easier to be culturally engaged if we don’t make such a distinction between ‘practical’ matters and ‘theoretical’ matters.

Just my opinions.

I don’t have much to add to what everyone has already said, but that won’t keep me from saying a few things : )

Actually, in the first year of brainstorming for this site, we “founders” decided that we wanted this website to be practical. I especially did not want this discussion board to be a whole bunch of theological stuff about the existence of God, or explanations of reformed worldview etc. Of course some of that would be discussed, but we wanted to bring people together who already had a certain perspective and were ready to enact Biblical principles in various aspects of their lives (the network section will most likely display just how practical we want to be—though I consider philosophy discussions to be very practical as well!).

I think all our new and active members are starting to achieve this practical environment on the discussion boards now. I have been most excited about the topics—like the music industry one—where people are talking about HOW to make the changes necessary in culture. I also love it when the real experts are able to display their expertise (mrs.anniep and her experience with political life, jabirdV and his knowledge of frequency allocation, mwooten and his experience with Christian musicians…..). Personally, I have been glad to see more people on the discussion boards because there were days at the beginning where I was holding conversations with myself and I felt like a monopolizing word-hog.

I would encourage anyone who feels threatened by the dialogue here to throw there “fitty” cents in, just as Adam did. I know that all of us who were here since the beginning believe the web site will be more effective with more members. The more members we have, the more connections we can make so that Christians can find ways to use their gifts where they are at.

as someone who often feels unintelligent in the context of some…wait, make that many…of the discussions on *cino, i’ll try to put in my “fitty” cents (grant, you do know how to make me laugh). in respose to adam’s question “where do you get the time to take in all this culture?”, my answer is: i hang out with grant. let’s all take a moment to immortalize grant some more.

okay. now the real answer. i don’t. nor do i have an interest in investing ALL my time to pursue ALL culture. that’s partially why i find *cino so great. it brings together people who might have already invested a lot of time into a specific cultural area and provides a medium for them to discuss it. in this way i get to glean some of my culture from that. don’t get me wrong. i do put effort into experiencing it outside of a website, too. in fact, one of the primary reasons i moved to chicago last year was to surround myself not only with people i knew were more “advanced” in certain aspects of culture than me, but i also put myself into a location where culture was readily available for me to experience so i don’t have an excuse for avoiding it.

i’ll admit. i’m lazy sometimes. and being “cultured” doesn’t come naturally for me. and yes, not all the discussions here are practical to me, but that’s the beauty of being the diverse people God created us to be. we have different interests, different practicalities, if you will. we learn from each other. i’m a lead administrative assistant at a denominational headquarters. my gifts lie in logical order (some call it anal retentiveness). if anyone wants to hear about practical ways to organize your work desk, color coordinate your clothing, and keep your hundreds of cds in an easy to find order, talk to me.

i’m getting to a point where i keep writing things, then erase them as i see they’ve already been pointed out previously here. i’m going to just go ahead and say ditto and let the more eloquent writers take over. (ahh, yes, yet another thing that prevents me from writing too often. it takes me an hour to write posts like this that aren’t entirely that profound)

I have to say it’s really refreshing to read this conversation. I’ve had many of the thoughts already expressed here, and I didn’t quite know how to think about them. I’m really encouraged to hear laurencer and grant talk about how they intend *cino to be about all culture, and that by culture they mean everything. I’m in a Master’s program right now in teaching English as a second language, and I feel like there are lots of cultural issues that I’d like to discuss, but I wasn’t sure this was the forum—it seemed too artistic. I taught overseas last year, and ever since then I’ve been thinking of “culture” very differently than I did when I was in college. I’d be curious to hear other people’s definitions of it, and how it can be explored through *cino. Any takers?

All I can say is I’ve been reading philosophical treaties of one extreme or another most of my life, and I cannot come near to verbalizing my thoughts the way Grant does.

Grant…sniff sniff…your my hero, man…

:)

To be a part of this board I think all you have to do is care. Care about the world around you. Care about figuring out what makes life tick. Care about where we are headed as a nation, and where you are going as an individual. Caring about those around you and those you might meet tomorrow. Finding ways to meet the needs of the needy…even when one of the needy might be yourself at times. We are all looking for answers, and hopefully find some of them in the meaningful conversations we find here. I love this place!

bridget, i would love to hear you talk more about your teaching experiences and i think this is a great place to do it!

having been forced to define culture better for friends and family since we’ve started this organization (with the pleasantly complex name), i’ve started relying on a use of the word that doesn’t immediately come to mind in this context. i ask people, “what does it mean to study a person’s ‘culture’—as in, when we study a culture of the past using artifacts and writings? it means we study everything about them—what they ate, what they ate with, what they slept on, whom they lived with, what they lived in. everything.” so that’s the definition i’ve been going with and being in contact with people whose sphere of responsibility is not as wordy or intellectual as mine has required me to define it. just an example of how our diversity keeps all of us grounded somewhere between the mundane and the abstract.

as far as feeling inadequately “cultured” to participate in some discussions, i understand that sentiment completely. feeling distinct ownership of this project, it’s been nice for me to come to a point where i don’t have to keep up with every discussion, either because it’s over my head or just because i’m not passionate about the topic being discussed. and i think that’s okay. it’s comforting to me to know that i don’t have to know everything about everything and to be able to trust that there are other Christians who are taking care of that area.

part of my vision for the interaction here and in our other programs is that dynamic relationships will be formed that will fluctuate between peer and student-teacher relationships according to the topic at hand. if we’re talking about music, i can clearly defer to those who know more than i do and seek to learn rather than teach. on another topic, we all might be equally in the dark, seeking to discover truth in more of a peer setting.

Thanks for your definition of culture, Kirstin. I actually had a poster hanging up in my classroom last year from Jason’s show, the one that says Culture is Not Optional, and my kids would ask about it. I always appreciated those times to share my views on culture.

I don’t know how to say this delicately, but it seems like most people view culture as an option. Maybe not so much as an option, but as a sort of personal add-on that some people gain through education or the arts. I’ve found though, through many different experiences in my life such as language learning, teaching in a country like Haiti, and through my studies in linguistics, that culture is so much more than that. Your culture is who you are. The outward expressions of it—our language, our art, our music and foods are just that. They are not our culture.

I’ve been fascinated (and inundated) recently with aspects of sociolinguistics—studying how language and culture interact. It has been amazing to see how much culture influences speech, and in turn how speech influences culture. The reflexive relationships are inherent. (Sorry, I hope I’m not getting too technical…) One thing that I’ve learned in my reading and through discussions in class is that every speech act we perform (something we accomplish through using speech—like ordering at a restaurant, or apologizing) is shaped and form by our identity, and our culture. Another fascinating thing is that almost all cultures share the same speech acts—the same things happen through speech, but howthey are accomplished is different. Simply through what we say we build culture—speech can build solidarity, or create distance. Speech acts can violate or adhere to what is called a cooperative principle.

I’m trying not to get tangled up in the terms here. What my point is, I think, is that for me, my understanding of culture has been broadened. It wasn’t necessarily a discrete point in time, but there have been events that have been more influential than others. Living in Haiti was definitely one of them, as are my studies right now. This sounds cliche, but the more I study and learn about the world (and not just art), I find it to be true—culture is not optional. Amazing.

I hate it when this happens. I start a post and by the time I’m done, someone answers my question, and I have to go back and delete stuff.

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I wonder if it isn’t a bit too broad to say, laurencer, that culture is ‘everything’ or ‘my everyday life.’ To me, culture is what makes my world unique from the world of 3000 years ago (as a simple definition). And the only way I’m going to have a reasonable existence that makes sense and makes the most of my time here is by engaging it, learning about it. So is the way I put on my socks really part of culture? Maybe we use the word culture like we use the word love: to describe several things that deserve their own unique names rather than just one all-encompassing name. Maybe not. I mean, if there’s a section in the newspaper that says Arts and Culture, what is it talking about, if the whole thing is culture?

Concerning the artistic side of culture from a Judeo-Christian worldview, there HAS to be a difference between good art and bad art. So I think there has to be a point where you identify the good as good and learn to identify the bad as bad. Again, our definition of culture comes into question. As a cultural relic, Brittney Spears is fascinating. As art, I find her music and videos irresponsible and commercially driven. Jonner, to further probe your response: If we’re not to try to refine our tastes in music, then why don’t we all have N’Synch, Brittney, and plenty of J Lo in our CD players? Is it nothing more than a matter of taste? It seems to me that it should matter more. We should want to stretch ourselves, not just feel good or chronicle the times.

Admittedly, I think more about art than I do about other aspects. I think I may have a pretty narrow definition here, so I’m excited to hear other peoples’ definitions.

If anyone else would care to share ways that they cultivate fascination, or things they’ve done that have helped to form good habits of engaging culture responsibly, please do.

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