❀ What do you hate most about your culture?
Reply #16 - January 27, 2015, 07:35 AM
I have never felt a strong affinity for any particular culture. I didn't grow up inside Orthodox Judaism (although I later became Orthodox), which has infinitely more of a cultural identity than the weird cultist shit my parents believed. Ever since I started to read, I'd been fascinated by India, and read ever book I could about India. Not really sure why. There were always Indian people coming and going from my life, but none of them really stuck around long enough to become significant to me until my early 20s.
But even before that, I considered myself a trans-racial Indian. I can speak with a perfect, if a little heavy, stereotypical Indian accent. When I use it, I somehow instinctively use new-immigrant Indian syntax. "How you are doing?" instead of "How are you doing?" for example. I enjoy Indian food, movies, and just everything. I used to break into my Indian accent whenever I was nervous, but I've stopped that now, thankfully.
Mainstream American culture has never appealed to me; when I was younger I certainly despised the moral decadence and hypocrisy of Americans. "Bible Belt" states have a church and a porn shop on every corner, and it's the only place I've ever seen a chain of sex toy/porn shops (and they advertised on full-size highway billboards). Fuck, a church in Mississippi recently decided to hold its services inside a bar. I bet in a few years they'll open a church inside a strip club.
One of my grandmothers moved to Las Vegas when I was 7, so I went out every couple of years to spend a week with her, and the whole culture of Las Vegas disgusted me. Slot machines in every building, from the gas station to the grocery store. The petrol pumps had tiny TV screens so you could play the lotto while you filled your tank. There was not one building on the Las Vegas strip you could go in for any purpose without having to walk through a casino full of drunk men and scantily clad women taking money from those men. If you wanted to go to a show, a concert, a bowling alley, a hotel room, a gift shop, anything, you had to walk through the casino to get there.
And then there's the glorification of violence against anyone who isn't a WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant). The justice system is a joke, and everyone knows it. If you're rich or white, you're getting out with a slap on the wrist; if you're black, you're going to serve a long sentence. If you kill a black man, you'll probably be cleared of charges because he was probably looking at you funny. A member of the KKK can get recognized by the state for his service to the community. And if you're not from the English speaking world? Your life has no value. Torture, bombing civilians with drones, overthrowing governments to make inroads for financial exploitation, setting up puppet governments, yeah, I don't want to identify myself with any part of that.
I haven't really thought about who I identify with culturally these days. Probably no one.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
Topic: ❀ What do you hate most about your culture?