Cyndi's Two Cents

Defining our culture

Commentary.

A couple of months ago a subsidiary of our electric cooperative delivered an opportunity many of us in the rural hinterlands had anxiously awaited for several years:  a fiber-to-the-home communications network.  The same electric cooperative that lit up the dark in the rural Midwest of the 1930’s brought us internet, telephone and television packages comparable to that which our friends in larger towns have accessed for many years.

I’ve never been one to plant myself in front of the television for hours on end, but having access to programs featuring Chip & JoJo and American Pickers did help me get through a long week-end of healing up from bronchitis.  I might have binge-watched some Hallmark Christmas movies, old Gunsmoke episodes and cooking shows as well.

I especially enjoy programs featuring archaeological excavations. Growing up I spent many hours with my family walking the fields in search of shards of pottery and hide scrapers, beads and tiny spear arrows, axe heads and drills. There’s something about finding artifacts left by people who lived on the land many years before that piques my interest.  It is amazing what those pieces of bone and shards of pottery can tells us about the men and women and children from which they came.

By studying artifacts, anthropologists and archeologists are able to identify how these people lived.  The artifacts tell the story of how they cooked, how and what they ate, how they hunted, where they lived, and what mattered to them.  The behaviors and beliefs of these early people can be determined by what they left behind.  How and where they buried their dead tells us about their religious practices and cultural interactions of others living at the same time.

I hear people toss the word “culture” around in conversation a lot these days.  Usually they are talking about values, goals, practices, or shared attitudes that characterize a particular religious, racial or social group. But they might be referring to an intellectual or artistic appreciation or awareness.  I think either definition of culture in our world today could use some attention.

When anthropologists one thousand years from now define the people who live on the land today – specifically you and me and our rural neighbors – how will they consider us?  How will our culture be viewed? Will we be defined as a people who placed more value on things than on relationships with one another?  Will we be evaluated as a people who spent most of the time looking at a smart phone or computer or television screen than interacting with family, friends, neighbors or strangers?

Advancement and availability of technology is very important to our society when it positively impacts our lives and our culture. Whether it is improved communications, medical or agriculture technology, we need to act responsibly.   We need to be good stewards. At least most of the time.