Culture & Cultures

Culture - 

the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement collectively.

Cultures -

the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society.

I enjoy the arts - music, literature, paintings & crafts, drama. I love opera & reading & going to exhibitions. So I suppose I am cultured, but have never thought of myself in that way before. I just know these things give me immense enjoyment & develop my thinking. They broaden my horzons & make me realise how varied, creative & talented people are.

When my husband & I retired we travelled a lot to most continents & some very far flung places. My views on holidays & travel have changed now we are in a climate emergency, but I think we did it in a way that actually benefitted local communities rather than big tour companies. I gained a lot from seeing that there are different ways of living & thinking. We were lucky in that we got to interact with local people & listen to their beliefs & opinions. I learned that our way of living, our culture, is not the only one or even the best one.

Human beings are very diverse in every way, but most countries have some sort of code of belief & behaviour that recognises the sanctity of human life & allows for great individual divergence. For some that comes through religion, for others it is a simple moral code. 

For a minority they have no such guiding principle. I am truly glad that Assad has been overthrown. It is such a shame that the world stood by knowing what he was doing & did nothing to stop him. I hope that the Syrian people can rebuild the country that I visited 24 years ago. It was a country that was very tolerant of all religions. A country of history, wonderful buildings & fascinating landscapes. Assad & his father are responsible for destroying much of that. I hope that we will remember what went before, rather than the last years under criminal tyrants & their followers.

 

Ummayad mosque Damascus

Ummayad mosque Alleppo before & after

The destruction of buildings & culture is awful, but the destruction of human lives is simply dreadful. Yet again we failed. We should have done more. 

Memories

I'm a bit ambivalent about the value of memories.I'm not sure that their impact on what we do or say is entirely beneficial. Even more importantly how they can make us feel is not necessarily good. 

I've never been very good at remembering things that have happened. Friends & family can remember times we shared far better than I can. I have very few memories of my childhood & they are not very clear. I can remember a place in the countryside I could walk to & really enjoy being in very well, even how I got there. I can remember a time in primary school when I was very upset, but not why or what happened afterwards. I can remember playing in the street with other children. I can remember a huge argument about me going to the Ideal Home exhibition with a friend. I can remember practicing the piano in a very cold front room. My childhood is little random vignettes. Even having hypnotherapy didn't help me recall more.

For some reason I don't understand my mind seems to have erased a lot. It isn't a new thing, I've always had a problem with it. 

I can remember far more of my life as an adult, but even then there are lots of events that other people remember & I don't. Mostly what sticks in my mind is polarised, either very pleasurable experiences & places I've been, or the complete opposite. I can remember emotions & feelings. I can remember faces.

My feeling is that it is important to know what has gone before in our lives, but dwelling in the past isn't helpful. It's gone & can't be changed. Everyones memories will be a melange of good & bad. Few of us will sail through life on a rosy cloud. I think that we should try to live in the moment & really value where we are now, what we are doing & who we are with. Life passes by so quickly, it's easy to become a slave to routine & not take chances that are offered.  

I know people who hold grudges, who misguidedly think that everything was better in the past, who hold onto sadness & anger. Lives filled with those sort of memories are not happy. We all need joy in our lives & we need to actively try to create good new memories. 

Now is what is important & what we do with it. 

Memory

Here I sit at my PC losing my mind & minding my loss. As I think I have mentioned before, there is plenty of data in my brain, it's retrieval that's the problem. 

I have just realised that I completely forgot to do my volunteer stint at the community centre last week. Normally it would be on the wipe clean weekly calendar on my fridge, in the paper calendar on my desk & in the calendar on my smart phone. Alexa would then remind me becase she is synched to my phone, as is my computer calendar. None of that happened, so I blithely went on with my day - in the wrong place.

The good side of that is no one needs to worry about me repeating gossip, I won't remember it. I may well not remember that I have told you something though & repeat it. (Please do tell me if I do). I may also completely forget that you have asked me to do something, so you may wait a long time to see it done. 

I am a compulsive note maker in my smartphone - but it isn't infallible because I may forget to look at Notes. Even more likely I won't remember what the cryptic note means!

In common with a lot of my friends I can set off to do something & be distracted & completely forget what it was I was going to do. I can almost feel a thought drifting out of my head. It's no good trying to remember what it was, but it might creep up on me if I ignore it.

All of this can be a bit frustrating, but there is nothing more I can do to counteract the loss of short term memory. I have known several people who had Alzheimers or vascular dementia & I'm reasonably sure I haven't got that, thank goodness. I'm just a bit unreliable. But I know I am & actually it really doesn't worry me much. I don't feel any compulsion to be perfectly reliable & organised anymore.

I think that along with so many physical & mental changes that take place in old age you have to go with the flow. Acceptance is a blessing. 

Just so long as you don't give up or bang on about it!

Christmas Waste

My book club had a clothes swap last night. Great fun & a really good way to recycle unloved clothes, especially when it's the Christmas season & we all need a nice outfit for Christmas day. Fast fashion comes into it's own at this time of year. I know people who buy a new outfit for Christmas every year. Often the clothes will only be worn a handful of times. Nothing I will be wearing is less than a few years old & some items have been in my wardrobe over a decade. I love them & I'm comfortable wearing them.

Christmas must be the worst period for food waste. Sprouts & Christmas pudding are probably the most "marmite" foods we eat at Christmas. I love both, but lots of people don't & a great deal ends up in the green food waste bin. I tried making sprout soup one year, but it wasn't a success. How many people actually use all the left over bits of turkey to make a fricassee for example? Even less people I imagine use the turkey bones to make a wonderful soup. The art of cooking from scratch & not wasting good food has been replaced by the big 5 supermarkets Christmas food.

Then there are the Christmas cards. I stopped sending them years ago & send email greetings & give the money saved on the cards & stamps to charity. I see little point in sending cards to people I can actually wish Happy Christmas to in person. The waste of paper, whatever the source including trees, or even if it's recycled paper, really isn't acceptable to me. My time is valuable, so I send the cards electronically in batches to different groups. Writing individual cards by hand just isn't a good use of my time. If I get cards I do cut up appropriate ones to make gift tags, but I still think it's a waste of finite resources.

Wrapping paper is even worse. I am rubbish at wrapping gifts & doing it causes me repetetive strain pain. I try to take wrapping paper off carefully to re use it, but actually it rarely works. When you see the over loaded recycling bins after Christmas it gives you a small idea of how much waste there is.

The decorations & Christmas tree take quite a lot of effort & money. Goodness knows how many real trees are chopped down every year & growing them must take up land that could be used for food production or re-foresting with deciduous trees. It has become fashionable to change your christmas tree decorations on a regular basis according to the current fashion. I'm pleased to say that my daughter has all my tree decorations & some were her grandmothers. I gave her my artificial tree too. The sales, often starting before Christmas are full of reduced christmas decorations , wreaths & lights. 

Finally, the presents. Many will end up in landfill, charity shops or the "present drawer". I have come to the conclusion that really presents are only appropriate for children. I'm not a scrooge or a grump, but the time spent trying to think of & find presents people will actually want or need is often wasted. I do really enjoy seeing someone open a present that it's obvious they are delighted with, but that isn't easy to achieve. Much of the time people feign pleasure & to be honest what is wonderful about socks, ties, jumpers, nightwear or slippers. Surely we all buy those for ourselves?

https://www.asustainablelife.co.uk/12-not-so-fun-festive-facts/

It's a mad repetetive cycle. We consume & consume & in doing so waste so much. It's completely unsustainable. What are we thinking?

Obviously we aren't!