What do you when you get a friend who says it's nice that I write but he “has no culture?” I don't suppose that he meant he was totally negated to appreciating anything having to do literature, the arts, music, film or anything else that might be related to culture but I was taken aback by the comment because he is a sci-fi writer and computer programmer. What sort of culture was he referring to then, I ask myself because to be able to put trouble shoot for software problems is not exactly an ability to be negated and is not exactly someone who is void of culture. To put a book together successfully, whatever the subject matter is a daunting task too.
The comment spurned further soul searching of what people might say of themselves. If they only knew they are complete with "cultural" abilities that require reading texts, designing computer platforms and setting up software programs which is a contemporary side to culture in the computerized world, would they say they are void of culture? Or is culture just the art of returning back to the basic elements of reading a good, enjoying a painting at a museum or composing the lyrics for a song? This is the drift I got from my younger friend who might be referring to his lack of interest in any "culture" outside the computerized world.
Then again, for him to have learned the basics to become a computer programmer, took the ability to assimilate information and a minimum amount of appreciating media forms around him. That is having culture as in "knowledge". He must have been referring to his ability to enjoy other art forms for what they are, or made an observation about his lack of interest in them. But how many people take an interest in every art form? They change so quickly with everything else that modernizes.
