Category: Culture

The Sub-Cultures – Staight Edge & Hardline

Posted February 5, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 13 Comments

Disclaimer: While I don’t agree in the whole Sub-Culture labelling it does play a big part in culture itself. So I will try to remain unbiased and not try to stereotype any sub-culture.

“Clear Body, Clear Mind”

The lifestyle choice of Sobriety and Chastity

Both Straight Edge and Hardline sub cultures are not only originated from a punk rock scene, it is more of a philosophical choice for them.

Difference Between the Two

The common lifestyle choices between the two are; no drinking, no smoking & no drugs (even in some cases no promiscuous sex) but Hardline take it one step further than Straight Edge; they also have a bio-centric view of the world and pro-life stance on abortion.

Why be Straight Edge or Hardline?

It is important to know that both cultures are not religious or political based.

It’s a lifestyle centred around personal development and well being, while encouraging fun and togetherness. The movements wish to attract people away from dependancy lifestyles centred around drug habits (legal or illegal) and unhealthy and exploitative eating and general living habits common in modern cultures.

While Straight Edge is not dogmatic, Hardline is.

The X on the hands

A common practice at all-ages punk shows was to mark minors with an “X” on their hands so they couldn’t buy alcohol. As the straight-edge philosophy grew popular, punkers who were older than 18 but didn’t drink for ideological reasons started to mark themselves with the X in a show of solidarity.

The Sub-Cultures – Emo

Posted February 1, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 3 Comments

Disclaimer: While I don’t agree in the whole Sub-Culture labeling it does play a big part in culture itself. So I will try to remain unbiased and not try to stereotype any sub-culture.

Possible one of the most misunderstood sub-cultures is the Emo movement. While there is a lot of stigma with this group there really aren’t grounds for it. The Emo movement is based around the rock genre of the same name, though no band claims to be an Emo band.

The Non-Existent Genre

The genre of music began in the mid 80’s as an off shoot of the Hardcore and Punk genre. In those days these styles and even grunge music was very political based and the people listened to it, while they enjoyed the music didn’t really care about politics. So a whole lot of bands started popping up that would start singing about something other that politics, they started singing something more personal. Those bands were labelled Emocore or Emo, the artists themselves never claimed to be apart of the genre, they just claim that they writing songs about their emotions and what’s going on in their world. If no band claims to be an Emo band, can it really be a music genre? Thus the reason why this is a non-existent genre

The Sub-Culture

“We’re all alone, together”

This is the response a girl said when asked about being an Emo. While amusing it does sum up the movement pretty well. The whole culture has been considered to be all about social withdrawal and suicide but the people that do claim to be Emo would probably say otherwise. They would probably say it’s not about self injury but more about expressing emotions, speaking out about the feelings of alienation, depression and angst.

Revisiting an Old Movement

The whole culture behind Emo’s is nothing new, in fact it’s almost modernising the whole Romantic Movement. There is so many connections between the two, both Romantism and Emo focus on the emotion and not order and both would be considered socially outcasts in there relevant societies.

Ultimately the whole movement is a much mocked, maligned, and misunderstood term for melodic, expressive people.

Poetic Shock

Posted January 29, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Art, Culture / 0 Comments

Possibly my favourite Surrealist would be René Magritte, one of the main reasons what because he ignored the previous 30 or so years of art and went back to basics, combining realism with surrealism. For example: in the painting ‘The Son of Man’ he painted an apple that looks like an apple (realism) but the apple was placed in front of a mans face (surrealism). Another artist that did some similar was Paul Delvaux and his reason for this; “to produce poetic shock by putting heterogeneous but real things together in an unexpected way.”

Poetic Shock has been used a lot nowadays, most notably in the 70’s by British graphics arts group Hipgnosis. The difference between Hipgnosis and the Surrealists was not only LSD, but the graphic design group used Poetic Shock to send very basic messages. Look at two Pink Floyd albums done by the group, Wish You Were Here and Animal. Wish You Were Here depicts two business men shaking hands but one is on fire (Getting burned in a business deal) and Animal simply has an inflatable Pig floating through the air (Pigs can fly). Magritte’s The Lovers shows two people sitting back to back with their face covered by a white sheet. Though Magritte never explained the meaning of his paintings, many have believed it’s a picture of loneliness and alienation.

Poetic Shock has also been used in Movies to scare people, one of the best example of this is the 1980’s horror classic The Shining. Danny was riding his bike around the Overlook Hotel and ran into the twins. Where normally people would think nothing of this, in the movie the twins were not expected to be there, leading to a perfect example of Poetic Shock in a movie.

The Medium Is The Message

Posted January 27, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 0 Comments

Canadian philosopher/scholar Marshall McLuhan’s work is sometimes referred to as the cornerstone of media and communication theories. But what exactly does the phrase “The Medium is The Message” mean?

Well you could read his book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man” to understand it fully or I will attempt a brief sum up. McLuhan believed that the media and not the content that had the affects the society. Let me try to break this down by trying to explain this by using three different times of History.

Ear Oriented: In the early days stories and knowledge was passed down verbally, from elders to the younger. This was the social norm; to get all the knowledge told to them verbally. This means that the media around back; their medium for getting the message out there would be verbally.

Eye Oriented: With the invention of the printing press came a change in the way people would get there news. Socially, people changed the way they receive their news. Have you heard the saying ‘I won’t believe it until I see it in black and White’? That is a shining example of the shift in society.

Now Days: Now with the invention of Television and The Internet people will get their news both audibly and visually. The AV society is moving towards a different and completely new way to obtain the knowledge. I have no fancy name for it like McLuhan did with Ear and Eye Oriented but I believe that people are choosing to gain the information themselves.

Soon it will be “You are the Message”

With the resources on the internet, people are choosing not to believe things from one source but looking though different sources to gain a better understanding.

Does this mean we will have a society with individual opinions?

Will people become only have a tiny bit of information on a broad range of subjects? And will this be the end of the so-called experts?

Benjamin Franklin & Perfectionism

Posted January 27, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 0 Comments

Benjamin Franklin was a brilliant scientist but one thing people don’t know about him, is his desire to be morally perfect. This is often known in philosophy as Perfectionism. It is important to know that the perfectionism does not believe that one can attain a perfect life or state of living. Rather, a perfectionist practices steadfast perseverance in obtaining the best possible life or state of living.

Benjamin Franklin set himself 13 virtues to live by in his attempt;

“TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
“SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
“ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
“RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
“FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
“INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
“SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
“JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
“MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
“CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.”
“TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
“CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
“HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

Cultural Profile – The Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood

Posted January 24, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Art, Culture / 0 Comments

I mentioned avant-garde in the previous entry so I thought it was only fitting to look at the originals. The Pre-Raphaelites Brotherhood has been considered the first avant-garde movement in art. They throw away the rule book of art to create something different and exciting. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on the academic teaching of art, hence the name Pre-Raphaelites.

The brotherhood rejected the rule and formula of art that were been taught by Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Royal Academy of Art. They considered the work ‘sloppy’ and formulaic, they believed that Sir Sloshua (Sir Joshua) was stopping them explore other styles, they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Quattrocento Italian and Flemish art.

The brotherhood stop up against the norm and followed their own doctrine:

To have genuine ideas to express;
To study Nature attentively, so as to know how to express them;
To sympathise with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parodying and learned by rote;
And, most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.

Influenced by Romanticism, they thought that freedom and responsibility were inseparable so they followed the principles of realism. The Brotherhood was met with lots of controversy in there struggle against the Royal Academy of art, but ultimately they influenced and changed art history as well. When the brotherhood disbanded the artists who had worked in the style still followed these techniques (initially anyway) but they no longer signed their works with “PRB”

Disarm – a Modern Frankenstein story

Posted January 22, 2010 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 0 Comments

Billy Corgan from The Smashing Pumpkins wrote the song Disarm about a fantasy of cutting his parents limbs off. Because he hated them, he hated the fact they brought him into this world which is full of hate and all he wants, is to be loved.

“It’s about chopping off somebody’s arms.. The reason I wrote Disarm was because, I didn’t have the guts to kill my parents, so I thought I’d get back at them through song. And rather then have an angry, angry, angry violent song I’d thought I’d write something beautiful and make them realize what tender feelings I have in my heart, and make them feel really bad for treating me like shit. Disarm’s hard to talk about because people will say to me ‘I listen to that song and I can’t figure out what it’s about.’ It’s like about things that are beyond words. I think you can conjure up images and put together phrases, but it’s a feeling beyond words and for me it has a lot to do with like a sense of loss. Being an adult and looking back and romanticizing a childhood that never happened or went by so quickly in a naive state that you miss it.” — Billy Corgan on Disarm

Does this sound familiar?

Well it defiantly does to me, my all time favourite book is “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley which is an amazing story written in two view points. Dr. Victor Frankenstein created a monster and being scared of his creation abandoned it. Monster Frankenstein was a lost soul, with nothing the desire to be loved, yet his creator abandoned him and society feared and wanted to destroy him.

At the very end of the book when asked to justify his actions Monster Frankenstein said something like; “I do this because I feel too much, I was brought into this world with the desire to love and denied it at every turn”

Both Billy Corgan and Monster Frankenstein both wanted to be love but life and society seemed to give them violent thoughts. Billy Corgan expressed his dark thoughts via writing a song but Monster Frankenstein didn’t know how to handle these thoughts.

Support Knowledge Lost and my reading habits, If you wish to get a copy of Frankensteinor the Smashing Pumpkins album which featured Disarm; Siamese Dream do so here.

Modern Day Romantic?

Posted December 22, 2009 by Michael @ Knowledge Lost in Culture / 2 Comments

Recently I’ve discovered the concept of modern day romantics with the help of a very interesting person, Craig Schuftan. Now he wrote a book about the topic called “Hey, Nietzsche! Leave them kids alone. The Romantic movement, rock and roll, and the end of civilization as we know it.” He released a pretty good quiz on the topic.

My Results were; (which I must admit, think are pretty accurate and was very impressed with)

You are romantic to the core, but like to think you have moved beyond its limitations. You are disgusted by the shopkeeper values of modern society, and have replaced them with your own. You identify with strong romantic heroes like Napoleon, Lord Byron, Satan or Ziggy Stardust – those who push against the limits life has imposed on us, who symbolise our desire and be somehow more than human.