03/15/2022
For 25 years, give or take, you learn to live. My mother called it ‘learning to be people’. “David,” she would say, “You’re just not people!”
And she was right; I wasn’t.
Then, after 25 years of learning to live, of learning to be ‘people’, you finally are ‘people’. Now at last, you can begin to live…other people’s lives. You’ve learned to be ‘people’, but the people you have learned to be are ‘other
people’. So congratulations, you just spent 25 years of your life learning how to be someone you’re not…and be really good at it!
That’s what we call ‘culture’: learning to be ‘people’, other people, and learning to live other people’s lives. If the purpose of acculturation is to limit behavioral variety across a species, I’d say ours is working very nicely, thank you.
More later…
-David
For 25 years, give or take, you learn to live. My mother called it ‘learning to be people’. “David,” she would say, “You’re just not people!”
And she was right; I wasn’t.
Then, after 25 years of learning to live, of learning to be ‘people’, you finally are ‘people’. Now at last, you can begin to live…other people’s lives. You’ve learned to be ‘people’, but the people you have learned to be are ‘other
people’. So congratulations, you just spent 25 years of your life learning how to be someone you’re not…and be really good at it!
That’s what we call ‘culture’: learning to be ‘people’, other people, and learning to live other people’s lives. If the purpose of acculturation is to limit behavioral variety across a species, I’d say ours is working very nicely, thank you.
More later…
-David