Kids at the Opera in China

A participant plays a game on her phone as others watch during a break in a traditional Chinese opera competition at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts in Beijing

Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

America almost gleefully throws out cultural traditions of the Elders but the photograph shows what happens when that doesn't happen.  The outfits the kids are wearing may date back centuries and yet they're fixed on an iPhone ... at least until it catches fire.

Ed:  you're thinking of Samsung!

They catch fire as well but iPhones have done it too.  Instead of catching fire lately, usually iPhone battery just shuts off.  Apple has said it will replace the battery for no charge when that happens. 

We see the garb of these children and recognize it immediately as part of the Chinese culture.  It goes the same way with lederhosen and an alpenhorn for Bavarians or the tribal garb of American Indians.

If you ask Americans about any cultural garb, they will get all confused and may offer the outfits of American Indians as examples.  If you go further that Indians must therefore represent America and everyone else is something else then they get all confused and start babbling "The Star-Spangled Banner."

America really doesn't have a culture and, in the view of the Rockhouse, it's why there is so little national pride.  They would love to be proud of something, they're just really not sure what it is.

Sometimes they will tell you, well, America's culture is jazz, man.

Except most people hate it.

Ed:  they're slugs!

Be that as it may, slugs don't like jazz.

The purpose here isn't gratuitous America bashing and those who perceive it as such have probably already bailed but they're the ones who are most lost since the culture, for them, has become only the militaristic aspect.  They revere "The Star-Spangled Banner" but it's just a battle song and every country in the world has one of those.  Much as they may argue, that's really not much to do with a national culture when it doesn't differentiate anything.

Jazz is a great thing and it's a marvelous thing if you really dig it but jazz still doesn't represent.

This topic pops up with the Rockhouse periodically with the question, 'if America has a national cultural identity then what is it?'

Usually we hear at that point, 'America is too big for that,' but tell that to China.  For me, that answer just blows it off.

Maybe America just isn't old enough.  The country has only got about four centuries on the clock and most countries aren't even out of diapers by that time.  There may have been some form of civilization in China going back ten thousand years so, yah, they have had the time.

There's also a great sense of displacement in America since almost everyone came from somewhere else and they get stacks of confusion from that since they don't know whether the traditions from the old country or the ones from the new are really 'their' traditions.  It's not the same in Europe since you can go from one country to another but you're still in Europe and that's not true on coming to America.

Ed:  you just feel the displacement more because you're first generation

That's really not true since I never felt connected to anywhere in the first place.  In each country they wave flags and sing their songs so I didn't see much difference and still don't.

This inquiry ends up in the same place many times but it's a good place.

The song probably gets any expatriate from Australia weepy while anyone in Oz now laughs.

There's no particular reason the song should get a reaction in me since it's one folk song out of millions in the world and folk songs aren't any more native to Australia than they are America.  All of them go back to the old country in Europe somewhere and, to this point, I'm ignoring Africa, China, or anywhere else which may have been a source of music.

The point regarding Europe is in the context of the doctrine of perpetual allegiance which mandates you're a citizen of wherever you were born and this cannot be changed.  In the matter of law, we don't care; in the matter of what we are, the interest is high.

Ed:  you just wrote we don't know what we are!

We don't and the Rockhouse view is we don't because what we are is somewhere else.  That creates a cultural anomie in which people may get weepy for someplace they may have never even seen.