Our Disappearing Culture

Do you know what this egg-shaped thing is?

Without reading the label on the can, do you know what this is?  And, if you know what it is, why is there a light bulb lying beside it?  If you know, I suspect that your age has something to do with it!  The egg-shaped rock is a darning egg, and the light bulb is a substitute if you do not have a darning egg.  

Now that I have told you what it is, I would bet that some of you still have no idea what I am talking about.  A darning egg is used to darn socks when a sock gets a hole in the toe or the heal.  You slip the darning egg into the sock, and then you can mend it.  Perhaps you are not familiar with mending, nor do you own a needle or keep various colors of thread on hand to match whatever you are mending.

It is not just the language between those with gray in their hair and their grandchildren.  It is our generational differences about whether it is more reasonable to mend the sock or simply to buy a new sock. Both generations see the question as wastefulness, the older seeing it as a waste of money to throw away a sock that can be mended and worn for twice as long, while the younger would see the craft of mending such an inexpensive item as a waste of time. 

This blog is not about darning, but rather is about Cultural Erosion, the disappearance of things taken for granted from generation to generation.  I have blogged about disappearing traditions, such as  traditional ceremonies, traditional crafts, and cultural knowledge.  Once, Americans took pride in being what was called a 'melting pot' of emigrants.  That is not to say we never had ugly examples of shameful abuse--of indigenous people, of black slaves, of Chinese railroad laborers, and Japanese Americans in WW II as obvious examples.  Yet, even those examples ultimately contributed to the American culture--enriching our so called 'melting pot' with such things as food we eat, the music we love, the clothes we wear, the words that blended into the American language, and countless more.  Those things enriched all of us, even if we sometimes need to be reminded.

However, this blog is not about discrimination or any one group of immigrants that created our American mix of ethnicities.  It is about the overall rapid changes in the American Culture--changes that make some of us feel as if the culture we knew is disappearing.  

I used the darning egg as a simple example, not because I expect young people to start darning their socks but to comment on what is called our Cultural Erosion.  Cultural Erosion is defined as when parts of a culture start to disappear or become lost over time.  The term originated with the loss of cultural traditions, causing ethnicities to lose part of their identity, history, and way of life.  For many people, that led to feelings of disconnection, and loss of cultural pride, and I would add, a disconnection between generations.

Today, what I see is not only Cultural Erosion but also Cultural Explosion.  I have blogged about Generational changes over the past century, but Cultural Erosion is more about the impact of changes on people.  Changes have always occurred, but the rapidity of change has become disorienting, and sometimes even frightening.  While we all know that it is impossible to turn back the clock, perhaps some of us have wished at one time or another that we could.  Changes in the past were not so abrupt, nor so personal.  We had more time to accept them.  That is no longer true.  The changes from one generation to the next happen faster and are more extreme.  

As a simple example, my mother's earrings had screws to tighten to her ear.  I had my ears pierced.  Today piercings are everywhere.  Another example is that in my parents' generation, some men got tattoos, but my generation, a few women got tattoos, although generally small and often located where they could be covered for work or other occasions.  Today both men and women get tattoos which often cover large areas of their bodies.  A third example is how we dress for particular occasions.  Sometimes, I don't have a clue!  Cultural Erosion can be disorienting, confusing, and sometimes may seem disrespectful, eroding the cultural thread that binds generations across the decades.      

 We cannot return to the ways things were in the past, but right now we seem to be struggling with our new world.   We cannot go back, nor can we stop the clock, but we can learn things from the past and apply that wisdom to the present.  At least, I hope we can.

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