Thoughts on Reading "The Age of Culture" by Paul Schafer
I suppose I most fundamentally think of the world in terms of three elements: People: The seven billion humans, all probably descended from a small band that lived some 200,000 years ago. Evolved from previous manlike species, all people share most of their DNA. We tend to start out pretty similar biologically. The Natural World: If you will, this is the realm of things studied by the natural sciences. The Social World -- the things studied by the social sciences. I like to think of "culture" in the anthropological sense -- the complete pattern that characterizes the social world of a specific society. (See the defination at the end of this post.) Of course, my tripart view of reality is a product of my culture. Moreover: A person's culture affects his/her body and mind. Thus the brain of someone speaking Japanese is actually wired differently than that of someone speaking English, and the bodies the children of Irish can identify me at a distance as a Yank (and have done...