Jiggy 3/18

How can one accuatly define culture? The two ways, as described in class today, are culture as the ordinary behavior of the people and the best that been thought and said. These ideas of culture, by Arnold and Williams, show the polar oppisite sides of the culture debate. The culture that surrounds the everyone on a daily basis I would refer to as the "ordinary behavior", as said by Williams. I see ordinary behavior as normality shared by a large group of people, in this case most often seperated by countries. The ordinary behavior that our culture is made up of is constantly changing to coinside with the adapting subcultures and amerging dominate ideals. This can be seen in global scale with the popularity of Youtube.com, a website created in 2005 that is now one of the most known websites in internet history. Thrown into our culture Youtube.com is an example of a small idea, or subculture, transforming into an international phenomenon. I dont like to think of culture as "high culture" because it leaves out the ruff edges of the histories normality. Though looking back at the times of the greeks and romans is often fixated on the high art created it is often more interesting to see how the average man lived. Imagine if we had to leap 300 years in the future, would our ancesters look at our art works and sculptures or would they dive into the "pop culture". The ins and outs of the average life in any given time period seems to best capture the true culture without creating a notion of exclusivity.