Tag Archives: culture

Adler, Alfred

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adler, Alfred (1870 – 1937): Austrian psychologist and psychiatrist who disagreed with Freud’s idea that mental illness was caused by sexual conflicts in infancy, arguing that society and culture are significant factors. Adler introduced the concept of the inferiority complex.

Adler just wasn’t sexy.

You see, that’s the problem with humanity. It’s not that I’m a prude and object to sexualizing. Anything as vastly accepted, recognized and universally shared as sex is undoubtedly has across-the-board appeal.

But if you mention Sigmund Freud in front of the psychiatric community thinking that you are being wise and inventive, you might need to be prepared to be ridiculed for your lack of information. Making everything in life about sex is like insisting that pornography is a rite of passage for discovering how to interact with members of the opposite gender.

Adler had two major problems: he took away the sexiness AND he inserted the need to question ourselves on whether we felt inferior.

That last one’s a killer. That’s why people aren’t making movies about Adler, but every once in a while Freud gets stuck in because he gave us license to explore our strangeness and foibles by blaming our mother and father for a lack of warmth which caused us to become perverted.

That’s the difference. Freud gave us somebody to blame. Adler made people take personal responsibility for their own actions, their own culture, their own environment and their own feelings of insecurity.

Honestly, which one would YOU choose?

But somewhere along the line, in order for a society to grow out of being stuck in adolescence, people have to admit that they might just be their own worst problem. Yes, maybe our parents were not very good. After all the position comes with neither a manual nor any natural inclinations, contrary to popular opinion.

What we do at age thirty-five needs to cease to have anything to do with what happened to us at age four. Otherwise, we pass on the impression that everyone in the world is really sick, waiting for a diagnosis to come along and rationalize erratic behavior.

Adler may have had a whole lot more on the ball because he asked people to trace ALL the factors of their lives, and also to consider that taking a back seat to others is a personal decision rather than a permanent position.

Freud, on the other hand, made everything about erogenous zones and how we feel deprived, which caused us to act out as little children.

So we have to STOP being “children in the marketplace”–grow up, forgive the failures of our families, and start allowing ourselves to inhabit a persona which is ours alone and not at the mercy of the indiscretions of others.

Yes, if our society does not grow out of its “teenager phase, ” we will continue to throw tantrums, lie and never get our homework done.

And when the homework is not done, the national need will never be met.

Acculturate

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acculturate: (v.) to assimilate or cause to assimilate to a different culture, typically the dominate one: e.g. an acculturated Cherokee.

What IS a dominate culture?

I guess in this day and age it would be the loudest one–or maybe it’s the one that can get the most votes.

Perhaps the dominate culture would be the one that has the most money to buy commercials on television to promote its cause.

Could the dominate culture be the local color of choice?

Is the dominate culture what we feel in the moment, because we are wracked with guilt, teeming with vengeance or overwhelmed with responsibility?

Perhaps the dominate culture is just the one we learned around the kitchen table with those folks who sprouted the seed which became our lives.

Maybe when we use terms like “dominate culture” we are setting a bit of nastiness in motion which can only be resisted by those who object to such foolish wording. I am not suggesting that “acculturate” should be removed from the dictionary, but truly, the only acculturating we all do is the knowledge that we have arrived on a planet called Earth instead of a three-square-foot  space dubbed “me.”

So I can’t acculturate without recognizing the preferences of my Chinese brothers and sisters. And merely calling some nations our “enemies” does not eliminate them from consideration when we’re trying to find ways to cohabit a planet which is shrinking with each and every new advancement in speed.

This is why I’ve discovered that the only viable principle of acculturation which transfers from one border to another, is the statement: “NoOne is better than anyone else.”

Of course, that particular premise may eliminate the need for a personally devised culture in the first place. Since my ideas and your ideas have equal footing, there is no need to act like your ways are slippery and mine are on solid rock.

Do we really want people from Mexico, Central America, Europe or China to come over here and learn how to speak our language with a mid-western accent so we’ll be comforted by their willingness to be “truly American?”

Would I be willing to go to China, learn the language and imitate the local dialect? Of course not–because I’m American and believe that everybody should acculturate to me. And even though the Chinese outnumber us about four to one, it becomes their duty to be more like us rather than we like them.

It’s not just conceit, it’s just unrealistic.

The more we can find things that are free of taste and preference and are brimming with commonality, the better the chance that we will be able to talk with one another–or at least not blow up each other’s lives

Acculturate–I guess it’s finding the dominate culture by first realizing that it won’t be just ours.

It’s going to be what is earth-friendly.

 

Acadia

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acadia: a former French colony established in 1604 in the territory that now forms Nova Scotia in Canada. Contested by France and Britain, it was ceded to Britain in 1763, and French Acadians were deported to other parts of North America, especially Louisiana.

There is so much in that definition of Acadia which is bizarre and imbalanced–but still–quite human.

Let’s start out by saying that the Acadians were living in Nova Scotia, which translated, means New Scotland. So already they were presumptuously dwelling under the false concept that they were still in Scotland–just opening a branch. No one in Scotland wanted them. That’s why they were starting from scratch.

So then the arriving British decide THEY don’t like them. They send them to the great trash heap of all English rejects–America. These Acadians go from one community to another, and finally settle in the sediment of the Mississippi Delta–in Louisiana. The only other place left for them to go was the Gulf of Mexico, and it’s just difficult to build a cabin there.

To the credit of these former New Scotland folk, they decide not to be so picky and intermarried with the Louisiana natives, some of them being Creole. They blend, they blur, they mingle, they mix–until one day we end up with Cajuns.

And these Cajuns, who were rejected by Scotland, the British and all sorts of little, prissy towns all the way down the Mississippi River, ended up taking the best of their surroundings and creating one of the more colorful cultures on the face of the earth.

Without them we have no gumbo, jambalaya, and it would be questionable if New Orleans would be so deliciously flamboyant.

So just as my ancestors were rejected from Germany and landed on the shores of the New World, looking for a place to breathe and live free of condemnation, we need to understand that everybody who lives in America was once a reject, floated down a river or two and plopped in a place where they could be free … and pursue their dreams. Never in the history of mankind has such a clumping of losers turned into such a winning formula–making a little, crawling crustacean called the crayfish into a magnificent mini-lobster treat.

 

Abutment

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abutment: (n.) a structure built to support the lateral pressure of an arch or span, e.g., at the ends of a bridge.

There you go. I’ve been looking for the right term, and I think I’ve found it.

I want to be an abutment.

For many years I have been fully aware that there is a need for bridges between people in our society and the cultures in our world. Bridges are easy to understand–they’re just roads we pave to get from one place to another.

But because they have to go over circumstances and the rough terrain of bad attitudes, these bridges between people need to be lifted high, suspended in the air. To do that requires a structure that stands tall and firm in order to uplift the path and permit the bridge to be completed to the other side.

I want to be one of those abutments.

I want to be stubborn about the things that set people free instead of being stubborn about my prejudices.

I want to stand tall on principles that have lasted for thousands of years instead of ideas that have just been hatched and blogged in a thousand words.

I want to hold up the road that crosses the angry waters that exist between human civilizations.

What do I think makes a good abutment?

1. NoOne is better than anyone else. Superiority is the best way to keep us on the low road instead of suspending great ideas to the stars.

2. I’m going to stop blaming everybody for my problems. The day that we started blaming instead of claiming responsibility is the day we found excuses for failing instead of ways to correct error.

3. And finally, I’m not going to judge anyone because I can’t stand to be judged.

Can you imagine, if we just took those three abutments of great ideas and built them up strongly in our culture–how it would sustain a bridge for us all?

Yes, I want to be an abutment. I don’t have to be the bridge. I just need to learn to be strong about the things that are lasting, and admit my weakness about the things that are stupid.

Abaya

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter AAbaya: (n.) a full-length, sleeveless outer garment worn by Arabs.

One of the true signs of prejudice is our incessant belief that our particular selection of wardrobe is fashionable, while all other garments range from the sublime to the ridiculous.

If I was born in an Arab land, I might wear one of those sleeveless tunics. I think what would bother me most about the abaya is that I would have to go through a season of lifting weights to make sure that my biceps looked muscular instead of flabby. Of course, in the process of lifting weights, I might get other parts of my body to become equally as fit and trim. At that point, I would certainly not want to hide these muscular abs under a loose-fitting tunic. So I probably would come up with some silly rendition of the abaya–where there would be a hole cut in the center to exposed my flourishing six-pack. This would, of course, evoke scrutiny and possible criticism from other abaya wearers, who would find it completely inappropriate to ruin the fashion statement by showing off skin.

I would recoil from their criticism and stop wearing my abaya, which would make me feel alienated from society and soon I would stop my exercise regimen, begin to overeat, develop heart disease, and one day be waddling through the market to purchase chocolate-covered dates and fall over dead from a heart attack.

As you can see, an abaya is not for me.

I just want to make sure that I don’t criticize a Middle-Eastern “look” just because I find it questionable.

This may be the best road to peace–if for one week each culture that was ready to go to war just simply had to wear the clothing of the opposing culture, perhaps enough sympathy could be mustered that we would be forced to the peace table.

The nice thing about an abaya is that you could put on ten pounds and no one would ever know–as long as those “chubbies” didn’t show up around your jowls. Then you would have to wear an abaya with a turtleneck, which would probably also be considered inappropriate–even though I’m not sure the goats in the herd care one way or another.