Remember history class?  At any point.  High school, college, prison…wherever you took a history class.  Remember?

Remember what you studied?  Yeah, dates, events, blah blah blah.  But the important stuff, the stuff that grabbed your attention?

For me, there were two things.  The first was the great leaders in history.  Usually, they were the “conquerors” – Alexander, Caesar, Genghis Khan, etc.

Then, it was the great cultures.  The rise and fall of civilizations – the Babylonians, the Greek, Roman, Aztec, Mayan, Mongol, etc.

The great leaders either represented the pinnacle of the culture they led, or became the representation of that pinnacle – the goal to reach for, for that culture (Jesus is a good example of this latter type).

I’ve been thinking a lot about culture recently.  Ever since I read Rene Dubos’ book, “So Human an Animal,” back in the Spring.

An article in “Trends and Updates” laments “The Culture of Getting and Spending.”  Which is part of our American (US) culture.  The author highlights this culture by quoting from William Wordsworth’s poem ”

There are other aspects of that culture, such as:

• Ignorance of one’s own feelings (lack of self-awareness)
• Self-denial (“needy” people are looked down upon)
• An inability to communicate feelings
• Obsessive Compulsive tendencies
• Tendencies to Hyperactive/Attentional disorders
• Unconscious mythmaking/Idolatry
• Sloth and gluttony (lack of self-awareness in relation to one’s surroundings)
• Lack of general awareness (of surroundings)
• Disdain and/or lack of awareness of nature

There was an article published in the New York Times on September 10th called “Are Your Friends Making You Fat?”

The answer, in short, is YES.

Researchers have found that there is a direct connection between fitness levels/mortality indicators and…friends.

Your culture determines largely what you will engage in or not.  Do all of your friends smoke?  If yes, than you are likely a smoker as well.  Does everyone in your neighborhood play soccer all the time?  If yes, then you probably will as well.

Does your culture believe in faith healing?  If yes, then most likely, you will as well – and not only that, but you will likely be healed by a faith healing at some point in your life.

Sure, you might also die.  But what does that say about you?

The secret here, is to do something.  Thinking about what your culture does is fine, to get better at thinking (specifically, to get better at thinking about what your culture does…maybe not better at “thinking in general”).

If you want to get better at doing things, you have to do.  You cannot get better at doing things by thinking about them.

If you want to get thin – make friends with thin people.  If you want to be more active – surround yourself with people who are active (preferably, who’ve been where you are now, and are now active).

The age of the craftsman has almost entirely vanished.  But in that practice, there was the concept of apprenticeship.  If you wanted to learn a craft, you went and lived with the master.  This used to be true of the martial arts, as well (and still is, for some).  You made sacrifices of your personal liberties in order to learn what the teacher had to teach you.