of the immigrant-diaspora-dislocation experience - since it's only dealt with from outside, by western authors, and tangentially, it's only with the internet that you really get the opportunity to compare/contrast the whole we-moved-and-left-most-of-our-culture-behind, BUT we don't belong to this one either, (partly b/c we're building this one out from scratch of bits and pieces all jumbled together from a whole bunch of others as a Group Project) mess that seems to both be innately part of the American Identity and also parts of the Southeast Asian one, or those segments of it which heretofore only show up as bit parts in Joseph Conrad novels...
It goes kind of like this, on my side of the IE divide: We don't know who we are, really, b/c unlike the Romany, we didn't have a strong enough group-self-identity to withstand being displaced from our chosen homelands and stay together. So we can either:
a) pretend it doesn't matter and that we belong to this new place we find ourselves in, which is complicated by the fact that the people who precede us and claim greater rights don't always want to let us into the club;
b) while doing so, create a sort of generic monoculture-by-default which doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but is sort of a flavorless goo (like unflavored cornstarch sauce) made of everything left of human society when you take away the unique and weird bits that come from the originating cultures that make up a "pooled" culture such as found in ports or trade cities.
c) create a new, synthetic Ethnic Identity which may or may not bear much resemblance to your old original ones, and which may or may not be much fun depending on how seriously you take it (ie this can run the gamut from the Embracing Teh Bland above, to the Stormfront/Wotanist "Aryans" or the various Hindu Identity political parties in India, to the Pioneer Myth and Western Culture™ conservatives here, to their polar opposites despite surface resemblance, the SCA and black powder reenactors, or the vast range across the Celtophile spectrum.
d) pretend that We Don't Need Any History/Myth/Colour, Thank You, all we need is Teh Bland Bourgeois Life - until your kids rebel in violent reaction and join communes or become Goths or train under Hopi shamans or go to India or a Buddhist monastery or run away to Tahiti like Gaugin or grad school...
At least, that's the experience of my own acquaintances and relatives, explaining a lot from the Arts & Crafts movement of the turn of the last century, and the Golden Dawn to the Beatniks and New Age and all of it - dude, this is *boring*, let's turn off "Leave it To Beaver" and go look in the attic of our collective selves and find some stuff to play dress-up with...ooh, hey, look, Alexei's got his dyedushka's sword, and Tania's got a crystal ball, and Miguel's got a guitar made from an armadillo, and Eileen's got a harp, and what do you *mean* Robin Hood and Marian can't help Rama and Hanuman rescue Sita? Says who!
i think there's also room for a cross-cultural comparison
It goes kind of like this, on my side of the IE divide:
We don't know who we are, really, b/c unlike the Romany, we didn't have a strong enough group-self-identity to withstand being displaced from our chosen homelands and stay together. So we can either:
a) pretend it doesn't matter and that we belong to this new place we find ourselves in, which is complicated by the fact that the people who precede us and claim greater rights don't always want to let us into the club;
b) while doing so, create a sort of generic monoculture-by-default which doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but is sort of a flavorless goo (like unflavored cornstarch sauce) made of everything left of human society when you take away the unique and weird bits that come from the originating cultures that make up a "pooled" culture such as found in ports or trade cities.
c) create a new, synthetic Ethnic Identity which may or may not bear much resemblance to your old original ones, and which may or may not be much fun depending on how seriously you take it (ie this can run the gamut from the Embracing Teh Bland above, to the Stormfront/Wotanist "Aryans" or the various Hindu Identity political parties in India, to the Pioneer Myth and Western Culture™ conservatives here, to their polar opposites despite surface resemblance, the SCA and black powder reenactors, or the vast range across the Celtophile spectrum.
d) pretend that We Don't Need Any History/Myth/Colour, Thank You, all we need is Teh Bland Bourgeois Life - until your kids rebel in violent reaction and join communes or become Goths or train under Hopi shamans or go to India or a Buddhist monastery or run away to Tahiti like Gaugin or grad school...
At least, that's the experience of my own acquaintances and relatives, explaining a lot from the Arts & Crafts movement of the turn of the last century, and the Golden Dawn to the Beatniks and New Age and all of it - dude, this is *boring*, let's turn off "Leave it To Beaver" and go look in the attic of our collective selves and find some stuff to play dress-up with...ooh, hey, look, Alexei's got his dyedushka's sword, and Tania's got a crystal ball, and Miguel's got a guitar made from an armadillo, and Eileen's got a harp, and what do you *mean* Robin Hood and Marian can't help Rama and Hanuman rescue Sita? Says who!