What does it taste like?

"If you can't see your culture or religion in another person's, then you don't really know your culture or religion."

Most people when they study culture, do so by noting the differences and then often link differing cultures by technological levels or similarities in rituals or some such method.

I can't discount this approach as being without any merit. Nonetheless, this is very low level study. In fact, it is so low, that I do not even consider it to be cultural study at all.

I've read that there is a trend for cultural anthropologists (Danny, you might like to confirm this for me) to let the cultures that they are studying to 'speak for themselves'. In otherwords, , not to interpret the culture but to just publish what they literally say. (Even though the process of translation involves interpretation not to mention the context of study...)

In budo, we learn that it is not the form that matters, it's the spirit, the feeling behind the forms. Of course, I believe this to be true so the question needs to be asked, how does one actually 'study' culture?

I believe that the ONLY way to study culture is to LIVE and EXPLORE your own culture. As my introductory quote suggests, if you can't even know your own backyard, how can you make judgements about someone else's?

Now, I don't mean to be a jack-of-all-trades, I'm talking about the capacity to naturally understand.


Sleiman Azizi