Theory Cartoons—Persistent Identity

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16 August 2013—From the Geil Archive: Southern Mountain Museum
16 August 2013—China's Lunar Calendar 2014 08-16
16 August 2012—Rural Religion in China (12)
16 August 2011—Displays of Authenticity: Mongolian Barbecue

[a] The New Yorker 2014 05-23

An identity never forgets...or does it?

[b] Independent, persistent, right? RF

I have been on a rant lately, and it is because we Westerners are particularly stupid when it comes to thinking about self and society. 

No, I don't mean everyone. There are a few particularly skillful students of the matter, and they are all worth reading (from Charles Taylor to Paul Ricoeur), even if they, too, for all their intellectual firepower...can't quite seem to gain the social nuance found in even the most clumsy grad student in sociology.

Still, it is nice to round out my ranting (it is not particularly becoming) with a little humor. The New Yorker is always good for that.

And what of it? "Well, daughter/son...we've always been (Democrats, Republicans, Lutherans, Catholics, Libertarians, Civil War Reenactors, or Sinophiles."

Does this happen all over the world?

[c] He's always been serious RF

It is arguable that it does, but I'd like to think about the ways in which certain families in Bavaria won't say Tschuß!, or others in Minnesota's Red River Valley would rather bathe in lutefisk than to put any other book on a shelf with the Holy Bible.

"It has always been that way."

"We've always done it like this."

So how does stuff change? If you have noticed, big changes are happening all over the world, and anyone convinced of the slowly-a-building theme of "progress" better check before his Whig flies off in the winds of change (click the link).

Maybe I've always been a curmudgeon. 

Why change now?

[d] Curmudgeon RF