Hacker News Reader

Comment by rogeryu | Hacker News Reader

Marshall McLuhan once said that the last thing a fish would ever notice in it’s habitat is the water. Likewise, the most obvious and powerful realities of our human culture seem to also be the most unrecognised.

http://stoweboyd.com/2013/07/12/marshall-mcluhan-once-said-t...

View on HN

My pet peeve is people who see or read about a single festival in another culture, then talk about how "we have no culture, not like those people over there and their rich one". Yet we still go and see movies, wear certain kinds of fashion, go to sportsball events, celebrate the birth days of those near and dear, participate in office kris kringles, learn to play a particular set of musical instruments, eat out at restaurants, live in nuclear families, argue over how to set the cutlery for a dinner party... so on and so forth.

The academic definition of culture isn't the one implied when most people say "culture". The common and daily usage of "culture" is more linked to explicit "expressions" of culture.

It's like I have glasses, and most of the time I don't see them and I forget about them. That's a good thing I guess. Sometimes I wonder if I haven't forgot my glasses, while I am wearing them. Then I have to look for them, really look for the frame until I'm assured they are there. Stupid, but this is how it works over here! ;-)

And how often do you think about/are you aware how the fact that you are wearing glasses changes the way people think about you, and the way they interact with you?

It often surprises me when other people are resistant to wearing glasses later in life. I've had them since second grade, they are just a fact of life!

I seldom think about that. My father has glasses, thick ones. What I remember is that his eyes were much bigger when he had his glasses on. That may affect how other people see you. Then the frame changes your looks. German people and especially women have a specific taste for frames that doesn't make them look more sympathetic.

Donna Haraway makes a similar point with the concept of "situated knowledge" [1] - the fact that we are all situated in our own practices, and as a result, objectivity becomes hard to claim.

[1] https://faculty.washington.edu/pembina/all_articles/Haraway1...

Like how we never notice air.

Oh wait...

Today we know what air is, but for ancient people it was far from obvious.

Plato describes it thus:

"There are similar differences in the air; of which the brightest part is called the aether, and the most turbid sort mist and darkness; and there are various other nameless kinds which arise from the inequality of the triangles."

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html

Mist, darkness and aether are completely unrelated to any modern definition of air.

But they noticed it. Their accuracy is not really the point - they did notice their own environment.

They observed effects within the medium like moisture and darkness, but did ancient people really "notice" the medium itself? Depends on the definition of "notice", I guess.

Reminds me of David Foster Wallace's piece "This is Water", powerful stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMI

It's possible to recognize it, just watch old commercials or look at old home videos with clothing and hair styles. Make a list of differences then look for the differences in contemporary terms.

Those are superficial examples. It's things more like social pressures that exist that you may not even be aware of. Acting and thinking in certain ways without fully knowing why.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com