American Culture: I stand corrected

Many of my comrades have heard my usual lament: American culture consists of beer, BBQ, fireworks, and Hollywood.

Alas, my friends, I stand corrected--and now I have a little more pride in the red, white and blue.

(Note: this post does not deny the existence of really stupid aspects of American culture; it only alleviates distress by highlighting positive, pro-intellectual cultural frameworks)

Anthropologist Andrei Simic published a a great piece, Aging in the United States, Achieving New Understanding Through Foreign Eyes. In providing a cultural context for our devaluation of the elderly, Simic asserts, "...independence, self-determination, freedom of decision-making, and individuality are among some of the most widely enunciated and accepted transcendental values in contemporary American society...American children are indoctrinated at birth in the ideology of independence. A central element in this process is...that of privacy with its connotation of the right, pleasure and even necessity of being alone. Most significantly, occupational status has largely replaced kinship as the primary marker of social identity..."

Might I say, what a glorious set of beliefs. The article goes on to say that on the whole, other cultures share space, property and information within tightly-knit kinship groups, and status is based on family.

I am not trying to be a cultural elitist. But I find it problematic that one should be expected to share and create an identity in relation to an arbitrary set of people aka one's family. How is one expected to create an optimal self through forced suffocation with a random group that happens to be one's lineage?

The autonomous individual has the right to pursue the illusive feat of "self" through whatever means deemed worth trying...which can include close familial ties, but needn't necessarily.

Simic also explores the idea of marriage: "Among the most venerable and ubiquitous American images is that of a married couple joined together by intense bonds of communication, affection, and mutual sexual and spiritual love...Such a concept would appear alien, even indecent, in many other parts of the world."

(Well, I'm glad there are others who think this whole soul mate concept is bizarre)

Simic doesn't really engage the whole marriage bit and negotiate it with a idealized script of independence (do the two concepts coexist/why and how). But children are trained to leave the family, and they are also programmed to start their own. In this way, fulfillment is not actually achieved through a continuous state of independence, but through intentional entanglement with other people--known as life partner and children.

This does raise all sorts of fun questions: what is self, what is independence, what is autonomy, what is family. Don't get me wrong...I don't believe Americans are independent in the complete sense of the word (are you kidding? I don't even believe in free will). But it does make me warm and fuzzy inside that what I really want for myself, complete autonomy, is an American ideal. I am just so fucking patriotic.