Melting Pot America

Post Reply New Topic

"Culture" originally referred to the cultured food that varied from region to region before the advent of refrigeration, and only later came to mean the poetry and art and all that.

French cultures were cheese, wine, petit sale, sourdough bread, etc
Other places you could find bacon, hams, sauerkraut, sauer ruben, beer, kvass, injera, kimchee, pickles, tamari, miso, natto, sake, sour cream, kombucha, kefir, amazake, idli, dosas, yoghurt, lefse, tempeh, the list is as long as there are peoples in this world.

Trying to homogenize every culture together is a digestive nightmare. What we think of as "ethnic" groups are people whose bodies have adapted to their local diet and climate. Sure you can try to get everyone on board with One World Culture, like a "Jesus & McDonalds" program, if you're really into hammering the square peg through the round hole.

My friend is mostly Korean. He has flat teeth, good for grinding grains (rice) and salivates more than me. His body works best on a lot of rice and fish. Me? If I eat a lot of rice and fish, I get sensitive to it and get sick. I got fierce canines and northern european blood, and my body tends to be happiest when eating a lot of pork and sauerkraut and vegetables.

One World Culture is completely ridiculous. "Hey, you there, living in that equatorial region. We think you should hibernate from December to March, cause that's how it's done up north and we want everyone to be the same."

Or a stew pot complete with undigestible lumps in it.

ruveyn

don't know quite what you are implying there........i thought the salad thing actually made a bit of sense.

coulda been a reference to a stewpot in which there are some ingredients which are not flavorfully harmonious with the rest. people who engage in FGM are one such discordant ingredient. people that would bomb other people out of the stewpot altogether, are another. if an ultrahot pepper got into your salad you would find it to be 1]indigestible and 2]ruin the flavor of the rest of the salad.

kvass

Tis true, but happened to australia also but I dont here of much racism from that region of the globe, you don't here much of anything from the Australian people.

I do apologize, I wasn't trying to make trite little comments about red herrings. Cultural diversity in the culinary arts, culturing food, is a passion of mine. And the slow homogenization of the global diet, with American fast food restaurants popping up all over the place, is something that upsets me enormously.

I believe perceived conflict in our viewpoints is one of terminology? What you describe as minor regional differences, I consider as "culture." I believe you may be using the term to convey more of a political, ideological or philosophical unity in a region? Sorry for the mix up.

Cultures emerge locally and organically through hundreds of years of experience. A "world culture" is practically impossible. It would be an artificial culture and it would require erasing all local and national cultures.

Those running the European Union aim to mix identities by force. [...] everything regional would be considered intolerant and then erased.

Euro-English Proposal in EU
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkorage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru! And zen world!

I like the salad bowl metaphor better than the melting pot, sweetleaf. Lots of different flavors working independently, but together. Instead of homogenized into one indistinguishable puree. Purees are baby food.

Those running the European Union aim to mix identities using force. If they had their way, instead of just defending individual rights to choose their associations, everything regional would be considered intolerant and then erased.