The raw data of anthropologists can be misleading; it can make the differences in values between cultures appear greater than they are...It is only that life forces upon them choices that we do not have to make.
Scholars note that human reasoning is limited not only by imperfect information and innate intellectual capacities but also by the broader culture that subsequently shapes the very optics that individuals use to categorize the world.
You think you're being brave, you think you're being sexy, you think you're transcending feminism. But that's bullshit. - Susan Brownmiller
The attempt to interpret human behavior in terms of models derived from the natural sciences eventually destroys personal responsibility.
If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia.
The classical anthropological question, What is man?—"how like an angel, this quintessence of dust!"—is not now asked by anthropologists. Instead, they commence with a chapter on Physical Anthropology and then forget the whole topic and go on to ...
Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to def...
The best ship, the best culture, the best knowledge, is the one which allows us to go farther, explore more territories or oceans of reality, and have the least damaging leaks possible.
Jelly had no brain per se but was in essence all brain, a shared consciousness programmed for desire. He had an appetite for everything, voraciously absorbing the culture that surrounded him and becoming it, only louder. In other words, he was extrem...
So pervasively has Enlightenment culture’s anti-supernaturalism affected the Western church, especially educated European and North American Christians, that most of us are suspicious of anything supernatural.
If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called ‘sex’ is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out t...
Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.
Being postmodern, however, is about being complicit rather than virtuous, it is about approaching categories like Good and Evil with a certain ironic skepticism.
I'm tired of feeling like I should be grateful when popular culture deigns to acknowledge the experiences of people who are not white, middle class or wealthy, and heterosexual.
I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internatio...
I think the world is ambivalent about feminism. So I can't blame college students. I think they're reflecting the greater culture's attitude toward feminism. So what I can do is, in ways that are appropriate, advocate for feminism and help the studen...
I basically get stereotyped a lot in terms of being a girl and writing 'chick' music for teenage girls or something. I think, if anything, the press kind of, because of my gender and my age, tends to kind of relegate my work to this sort of special-i...
Every age has its storytelling form, and video gaming is a huge part of our culture. You can ignore or embrace video games and imbue them with the best artistic quality. People are enthralled with video games in the same way as other people love the ...
In this media-drenched, multitasking, always-on age, many of us have forgotten how to unplug and immerse ourselves completely in the moment. We have forgotten how to slow down. Not surprisingly, this fast-forward culture is taking a toll on everythin...
What's interesting about the shift from an industrial age to a technological age is that we keep inventing new media: movies, records, radio, television, the Internet, and now ebooks - and one of the things that's most interesting about the invention...
In Latino culture, the quinceanera's a big thing - it's when a girl becomes a woman. But I think age is just a number - you become a woman with the responsibilities you take on and the decisions you make. I started realizing that every day is a gift ...
