freeze!

This photo inspired this thought.

I find it strange how people can be so culturally different. Coming from SA, it's no news flash that indiviual cultures do things differently (insert DUH here), but what I'm particularly thinking about is how on different continents cultures and groups of people have evolved their own sense of where they are and how they live.
Logical thought would assume that as humans we would all have the same idea of this, that if there is an innate method of life and living then we would all have cities that look the same, we would all eat the same types of food and so on.
Obviously, this isn't the case. Your life experiences dictate what matters to you. Your upbringing allows your parents to influence you with their beliefs on the world, thereby transferring what their parents taught them, peppered with their own learning; and you then take this basis, live your life, make your mistakes, and pass on your own evolved knowledge to your children in turn who mould it in their own way.

Globalisation is putting an end to all diversity, some would argue. I found this photo interesting because of my own attitude towards my own culture. The photographer is American, I assume lives in the place he took this little 'slice of life' photo, and is used to the scene pictured because he might walk on that street every day. His is not a culture so different from my own, considering the South African tendancy to worship all things imported and specifically, all things American.

I feel that the people walking on that street have cultivated a way of life, a routine every day, that I have not, and I'm interested as to what their day consists of and why they have developed this pattern - and, as the converse, why they didn't develop a lifestyle more similar to mine, are the differences that big and why?

Sigh. This isn't coming out right. Maybe it's not stream-of-consciousness enough. Maybe I shouldn't attempt to explain the things that theorists and great thinkers seem to put more eloquently than I. One thing about my theory classes at uni, from first year philosophy to this last course on raced thinking, I have always felt validated when reading the writings of a theorist who managed to pinpoint a thought that has too ephemerally flown through my mind before. I have always felt more understood here at Rhodes than I ever did in high school, because I never had the intellectual means to express the deeper, less straightforward thoughts in my mind. Here, the theorists speak my mind. Sometimes.

There's a lot to be said for deeper, more introspective, more THEORETICAL thought. There's also a great deal of weight to the lighter, 'get over yourself' type of everyday living thought. It's an academic discourse versus 'what kind of beer do I love' discourse play.
Right. Thanks for reading my pseudo-intellectual attempt today. I promise tomorrow I will talk more about the intricacies of beer choice.