Thoughts on (lack of) Swedish pride

[Allfader]

It seems to me like you're making culture, first, "eternal" and something almost sacred. And then you're also making it something contradictory: that is, my culture and your culture cannot coexist and become nearer, instead one destroys the other and everything is lost and this is _bad_ because it destroys something "eternal and sacred." I would counter, however, that culture is not binary. It is not on or off, yes or no.


The point I'm making here is that your arguments contradict: On the one hand you're pointing out that the creation of Chile came at the cost of the indigenous cultures of the region; and on the other hand you're appropriating those cultures into Chile and arguing that anything that changes that from the outside is "false" and that people are losing their "true identities." I see these points as contradictory.

No, I'm not saying that. I'll attempt to explain better this idea: it's not like culture it's something that don't change, it's the opposite. It's a fact that culture as a whole changes at the same pace in way society itself does. What I was trying to say was that the problem - at least here - was that exact thing you address as my argument: it was a racist thing that attempted to destroy the original culture and beliefs to force people to change unto the 'new' thing brought by 'new' people, instead to make it cohabit in a harmonic/pacific/comprehensive way to enrich both and eventually create a new culture which would be conformed by elements of both 'worlds' (see this concept as a cultural construction completely unrelated to each other). Of course, spanish conquerors didn't give a fuck about this, but once the war finished and the occupation was done, there was no attempt at reconciliation and after all, the racist and dominant attitude of 'white' people has been sustained to these days and the evolution of our culture was until not so long a very forced process where just the 'strongest' put the rules.

My point is that, while Chilean society (thus culture) was evolving into what is today, there was a unstoppable agenda to 'kill' part of what it was in the first place and that's what I'm attacking, cause I (and many others) feel myself more identified with that. It's a established and relentless/sustained racist protocol which have made culture a fractured phenomenon which keeps the social construct called Chile divided - and this is not a personal appreciation, it's something of common knowledge and conscience. I won't expand on the politics anymore, cause this feeling has been more accentuated thanks to 2 non democratic goverments; Allende's communist gov and Pinochet's Military gov.

Till today, you can find plenty of mapuche communities that try to preserve their way of living and culture in a pacific way (and being open to any interested on knowing and sharing it) but the government, instead of helping, they keep doing the same thing that spanish did before: taking their lands to sell them to large corporations, opressing them and simply isolating them instead trying to incorporate them into society.

Hey, this might be a very weird way of saying this, but compare it to Vintersorg's discography. You can say that Orkan or Visions are albums in a very advanced point of evolution, but you can still trace its origins. Why can't I want the same for my culture?

 

[Naglfar]

It's a fact that culture as a whole changes at the same pace in way society itself does.

...

Hey, this might be a very weird way of saying this, but compare it to Vintersorg's discography. You can say that Orkan or Visions are albums in a very advanced point of evolution, but you can still trace its origins. Why can't I want the same for my culture?

Because your first statement is not true, whereas it leads you to the second one under the false premise of the first. Culture(s) are predatory; it's lots of stuff being developed all over the place at a different time. Nationalism provides us with the idea that there's an essential, primordial "American" or "Swedish" or "Chilean" or "Otaku" (just kidding) culture. Orkan and Visions are actually the result of an amalgam of cultural influences. I mean, it's SWEDISH HEAVY METAL. Just by the medium it's already many things we consider quintessentially Swedish only as of the late 1990s. If this were the 70s, Mr.V would be producing disco albums set to glaciers and exploding stars.

It's ok to want to defend certain kinds of cultures, and to subjectively argue some are better than others (there, I've said it). But by defending "culture," you have to understand you're defending a continuing evolving, splintering, and constantly redefining norms and practices. Which is why people often complain of losing their culture... it's not so much that something that always has existed is lost, but no one is reproducing these things anymore.

I guess, if you listen to Mr.V's music, that's perhaps inevitable entropy. I don't think it's necessarily that we accept his right to be proud of things Swedish; rather, his expression / formulation of what is Swedish, Swedish music, Swedish lyric, impresses us. So we get this idea that he's all celebratory, when he does represent a very concerted effort to produce a cultural artifact that we interpret.

I think I hurt my brain.

 

[Defiance]

Oh this is a cool thread. I'll re-read it.