A Common Thread Essay -- essays research papers fc

A Common ThreadWe as a society atomic number 18 surrounded by life, as we know it each day. Never tenia to look around and absorb what is going on around us. Our surroundings pass us by and we never take a glimpse at what those surroundings may hold. Our society presses forward without looking over their shoulder to see where we deplete been. Without acknowledging our present culture and studying our culture in the past, where are we going? Studying Clifford Geertz, Patricia Limerick, John Wideman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson has made it easier for me to answer my own question. These four authors of varying expertise tied together a common thread called culture.Clifford Geertz in his essay Deep Play brought us the world of cockfighting in Bali. In this essay he portrays the culture of our present American society through the enjoyment of the Balinese cockfight. Amazingly enough Geertz engaged what some would call a primitive culture to show us the aspects of our culture and the rol e these aspects play in our culture. accessible structure, family, tradition, and money are just a few of the aspects brought out by Geertz that govern our present society. Geertz sums up our culture when he states, Their life, as they arrange it and encompass it, is less aflow, a directional movement out of the past, throughthe present, toward the future than an on-off pulsationof meaning and vacuity, an arrhythmic alternation of improvident periods when something (that is, something significant) is happening and equally short ones wherenothing (that is, nothing much) is- between what theythemselves call full and empty times, or, in anotheridiom, junctures and holes (387).Patricia Limerick in her essay Empire of Innocence exposed many ot... ... the metier list would be John Widemans Our Time. Wideman continues building on all the other authors information by showing us how the rules that have been established for culture apply to family, race, and the pursuit of happiness.Cons idering the facts that the essays discussed here were written at different times and encompass various subjects, we have torn them into pieces and used the pieces to double-dyed(a) one puzzle. Upon completion of the puzzle, we now have a picture of culture. Furthermore, the essays have given us a common thread that we can now use to tie our puzzle pieces together. This common thread is our culture.Works CitedEmerson, Ralph Waldo. The American Scholar. Rpt. in Ways of Reading.5th Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. capital of Massachusetts Bedford/St. Martins, 1999. 304.Geertz, Clifford. Deep Play. Rpt. in Ways of Reading. 5th Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston Bedford/St. Martins,1999. 387.