The Modern Culture

A few years ago I started to realize that I am out of touch with what is called "the popular culture". Now I seem totally in the dark, and I like it!  I think age makes us drift toward that because we simply don't want to give up what we already treasure.  If we do we lose an identity that we need.

By popular culture I refer to what is currently embraced in art, literature, film, TV,  music, technology, recreation, social norms etc. by most of the people in it.  In some areas of the popular culture I have no affinity for what is current. Music, film, TV and technology are good examples for me. I not only don't participate much in those areas but am clue less about what they contain. Yet there are other areas of the popular culture in which I am still fully invested.  Politics is an example there. It's probably because politics changes less and is effecting us the same regardless of generational view than the popular culture areas in which I have no interest. Conversely, those areas that are faster changing have the least appeal to me.

I think as most of us age we seek refuge in our pleasant past memories, maybe because of a fear or dislike of the current. There is security in what has already been defined, and the current never seems as welcoming. TV is an example of this, I think. I watch little of it outside of sports, news and a few informational programming. The rest bores me. Yet, I do sometimes watch a few programs on the nostalgia channels and not only remember some of them, but feel a sense of security they give me that the "good old days" live on in our remembrances and re runs. As long as I have good memories I do not mind living in them.

I also wonder what kids today, when older themselves, will idealize from their present. Can it be an endearing look at the first cell phones and the wild (rude) behavior people exhibit when using them? I do hope civilization will have come to or replace cell phones thirty years from now with more civil communications. Since technology is such a large part of the lifestyle of the young I suspect that this young generation will always embrace with good memory the kinds of technologies they use today. When older, every generation idealizes the past in its own way and in some way disdains the current. That seems to be the natural process for humans to engage.

I often vent and rant at what I see as the vacuous nature of modern culture, its too great emphasis on informality and its lack of
substance beyond the flash. But that might be a greater normality than to my "adapting" to the current things that I find so distasteful. Too, I think it is good that one lost in the present can point out how he or she is alive in the past. It does give a perspective to anyone floundering in the present.  Maybe that's the way it ought to be. It's hard to both belong to one culture and yet feel comfortable in another. Hmmmm I wonder what is on nostalgia TV tonight....