I've been studying culture a lot lately. Its been a subject in 5 of my 6 classes and the basic conclusion is that we are slaves to our cultures. Our culture pre-determines everything for us. It tells us what is cool, what's healthy, what's good or bad, and what's beautiful or not. It even affects how we look at other cultures in such a way that we are judgmental if the other culture doesn't meet standards of our culture.
On top of that, almost everything presented to us as good through society brings a profit to someone. All the things promoted as cool are multibillion dollar industries: Nike, North Face, the Music Industry, vegetarianism, gym memberships, smoking, the hipster movement (through the clothes), Apple, High Fashion and name brands. These things we think are cool because thats whats promoted. Its promoted because its paid for. Millions go into advertising because ads tell us what's cool. If somebody paid enough money to promote Light-up superhero shoes as cool, the next generation would wear them faithfully (i say the next generation because our generation is influenced by our culture and we'd still see them as such).
My main question during all these discussions was how do you get rid of it? How do you null the agreement you made with your culture to live by its standards? How do you create a you that doesn't have to abide by the laws set up by culture?
Even if you completely remove yourself from the culture contract [basically by becoming a hermit], your life will still be influenced by what you learned from culture. You will have remnants of the culture hanging from the clothes you like, the music you listen to, the books you read, and the tv shows you watch. Even if you claim to be a rebel to society and you say you only do things that nobody else does; the 'I don't wear that cuz too many people have it' types. Okay you light your incense, smoke your weed, grow your hair out, pierce your face, tattoo your skin, and bum around, all of that is still influenced by culture. In fact you're fitting perfectly into the niche for 'outside' insiders that society has slowly been creating.
The truth of the matter is that as long as you are letting someone else influence what you buy, what you listen to, read, work or go to school, you are still being controlled by the culture. So whether you're saying "I'm gonna do this because everybody is doing it" or "I'm NOT gonna do this because everybody is doing it" you're decision was still influenced by 'everybody'.
In actuality culture is so deeply ingrained in us that we don't know how to live without it. Say you were given the chance to pick your favorite band again, after learning about culture and its influence, would you still pick the same band?
Its a trick question. If you decide to go with a different, maybe less known band, you could be saying "I'm gonna pick this because no one has heard of them". If you pick the same band or another equally popular band you could be saying "I'm picking this because its what everybody else likes". Its a VERY thin line between the letting mainstream society influence you, letting your own thoughts and feelings influence you, and letting the underground society influence you. In the two extremes the influence comes from an outside source.
We really don't know how to live without our culture, and claiming that you've shed all of your societal influences is completely impossible without shedding essential parts of yourself.
My solution to all this is that you can't completely get rid of culture's affect on you. It will always have some bearing in your life. What you can do is significantly decrease the hold it has on you. The way to do that is by doing what you like, what makes you happy. If Soulja Boy is genuinely what you like and that makes you happy listen to that. If reading Conspiracy theory literature is truely what you like and truely what makes YOU happy and what stirs creativity and thought in you; do that. Don't do things looking for approval, thinking that people will see you doing this or that and give you points for it. That's definately letting society rule your life.
And even this solution is not foolproof because despite of what we try to do, the things we like are still going to be influenced by culture. But in becoming one with yourself, removing yourself from others for a while and really getting to know yourself you'll discover things you like that are purely you, without the shadow of culture. Its a combination of these things; ones society imposes upon us, and ones we discover within ourselves that will allow us to be a well rounded person capable of being a part of society while being an individual.
There are probably people who argue that you can never escape culture, and those who argue that you can. I'm not trying to escape culture. I want to live with it as an equal. In the current state people are living with culture as a tyrannical dictator. This culture-personal relationship, I believe, can be altered into an equal partnership. We will never completely escape culture, but we don't have to either. Put it this way:
There is a worn trail to the destination of happiness, forged through thousands of years, that will undoubtedly lead you to success (culture). You can take that trail, never creating your own and be successful in life of you can go off the path (individualism). You can forge your own way to happiness and success influenced in part by your time on the worn trail, but not ruled by its standards (culture-personal relationship). The biggest fear for us is leaving this beaten path and failing to find success.
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