Schmulture

This past Saturday, as the Hubby and I were sitting out on the patio in the (finally cleaned thanks to yet another new maid) chairs, with the crackling fire in the braai making a nice addition to the Brad Paisley assortment (I know. No need to say it. I have gone from a healthy obsession with this guy's music to a full blown sing-him-in-my-sleep-without-realizing-it kind of obsession. From obsessed to possessed. But don't tell him.) blaring out through the open window, spending the day with some of our always-good-for-a-highly-intellectual-discussion-over-plenty-of-wine friends from South Africa and Zimbabwe, we got to talking about culture.

Specifically what we termed as 'European culture'. Or as our South African friend, who had just on that very day, returned from Paris, put it, "Where there is all this culture everywhere around you. Everywhere you turn there's something." He had been to the Louvre of course and seen the Mona Lisa, to Notre Dame, to Montmartre, to Champs Elysees, and to the Eiffel Tower.

He felt a little overwhelmed by it all, but desperately wanted to return right away, show everything he'd seen to his wife, and possibly even live in Europe. Except of course for the price of everything. That was the part he wasn't too fond of. But who is?

Also, he did narrow Europe down to the 'mid-part'. Naturally he wouldn't ever want to live in Finland, since "Finns are a strange bunch, aren't they?" and "Isn't Finland really more like a part of Russia than Europe?"

I got a chance to put my magnificent rendition of the stink-eye into action more than once. And I must say, I'm quite proud of my progress too in the area that covers all the different eyes: stink, evil, googly, rolled, red, you know, and I'm sure you would agree.

*stares at everyone convincingly, albeit slightly menacingly*

But as we chatted about Europe, and my and the Hubby's reasons for not wanting to ever again live in Europe if we can avoid it and instead can just keep alternating between Latin America, Africa and Asia, while the best explanation, even pre-tequila, from me went something like: "Europe is just so... European," accompanied by a self-imposed strangle hold on my throat and a less than ladylike flopping tongue, er, flopping out of the side of my mouth (a natural addition to me talkin' smart), I started to wonder about culture.

Why were we discussing white, European culture as the epitome of culture and not as white, European culture, or white, male, continental European, French, or Parisian culture?

Why is it that in so many minds Europe (the proper Europe that is, not the lake-y part attached to Russia)  has ownership over highbrow culture, America of popular culture, and Africa is a continent somehow void of that mess of things that's the definition of culture, and the only pull of which are the wild, the animals, and the wide open spaces empty of traces of human touch? Or worse yet, something referred to as primitive culture.

After all, here in Johannesburg, we live within a very short distance from the place referred to as The Cradle of Humankind, where everything that we now refer to as culture sprung from. Where we, the makers of all culture and guilty of this thing we call civilization, very possibly can trace our existence back to. And all this while living in a highly urbanized area populated by millions of representatives of not only one, but several different cultures, each more elaborate and intricate than the next.

If anything, there is culture in Africa.

Excuses-moi? Does my culture clash, monsieur? 

What is your take on this? I myself am a little cultured out now. I need you my dear readers. Gimme somthang goood!