A culture of garbage

A very brief doctoral thesis into North American Culture:

I start with a selection of definitions as stolen from Ifte Choudhury, Texas A&M University. I then slice them apart, looking for the material signs, or products, of a culture.

-- Culture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving.
On material objects acquired by a group: Mostly what we acquire, as a group in North America, is garbage. Currently we produce one garbage bag of garbage per person every 10 days.
On possessions: We use the word "disposable" as a positive. This razor is disposable! This diaper is disposable! This camera is disposable! The best part of my paycheque is my... disposable income! I must increase my... DISPOSABLE income!

-- Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
On knowledge: The great deal of our knowledge is disposable. The first knowledge I must use every morning is how to shut off my alarm clock. Of course, because my alarm clock is very old (VERY... almost TWO YEARS OLD!) I will soon have to learn to use a new alarm clock and dispose of my old knowledge. My son can name 150 different characters in a Japanese Kids' Show, but can't name all 13 provinces and territories.

-- Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning.
On cultivated behaviour: I went in to have my bicycle repaired. "That bike is too crappy to be repaired (obviously intended to be DISPOSABLE) let us sell you a new one..." Sadly, I fell for it and purchased a new bicycle for $25. It did not strike me as strange, because it was part of my cultivated behaviour. Similarly, our relationships are disposable, our jobs are disposable and ultimately, our lives.

-- Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action.
On the embodiment of artifacts: There was a large debate here in 1990s about where to place our new art gallery. The old art gallery had become crowded and full, and a new one had to be constructed. Oh wait... that wasn't our art gallery, that was our dump. Our biggest (by size) legacy passed down to our children will be our garbage dumps...

Related: Why Toronto is so clean