Shubhransh Rai, at Medium
(so excellent that I've purloined the whole text)
what even is culture, bro— it smells like uppity out there man
young josh was a lad of the olden breed,well shubhransh, what the f*ck was that?
he'd kneel before custom, in word and in deed.
he'd sip his soup clockwise, then thank the divine,
for grandma once told him "that's proper, that's fine."he bowed to the priest, to the sky, to the chair,
and once even blessed his own underwear.
he studied tradition till his mind went grey,
then forgot how to think his own thoughts one day.now he lives in a church with his portrait hung —
saint josh, patron fool of the culturally strung.i can't even imagine what my loyal readers are thinking right now
dude just go back to writing about stocks and geopolitics, why you tryna be some philosophical mumbo jumbo
i don't know what to tell you guys other than the fact that i'm no philosopher, that would either require me to be smart (i was rejected from every ivy college) or be a south californian 19 year old.
i'm neither.
bummer :(
(and yes my writing style is different and casual, because guess what, this isn't wall street gradient)
BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT.
what i am, is a random guy with no college education sitting in the middle of nowhere talking about one of the most intricate topics known to mankind.
so you know the information is accurate.
alright, on with it.
what is "my culture"ever heard someone say that? always perplexed me honestly.
because, truly. what is YOUR culture?
culture is basically humanity's group project that never ended
and just like every group project,
nobody knows who actually did the work.
someone in africa invented rhythm.
someone in china drew dragons.
someone in india wrote poetry about spirituality.
then europe stapled it all together, called it "civilization,"
and now we all plagiarize each other for likes.every country acts like it's the original author,
but history's basically a shared google doc
with 8 billion anonymous editors
and zero version control.
when exactly does it become "my culture" in history?ok this is actually mind boggling if you've never thought about it.
when did your culture become your culture?
what point in history do you look at and say "that's my culture" and why not before that and why not after that?
when does my culture become mine? at point in history?
when my ancestors used it?
when my government markets it?
or when i start gatekeeping it on twitter?the funny part is: nothing ever started where we think it did.
culture's basically humanity's version of "who wore it first?"
so when does something become yours?when your great-great-grandfather picked it up? when your nation's textbooks declared it sacred? when netflix made a documentary about it?
no one knows. because culture is a relationship, a continuous transaction of meaning between the living and the dead.
take yoga, for instance. born in ancient india, repackaged in california, now streamed globally through an app made in china, taught by someone named "sky." at what point did it stop being "indian" and start being "human"?
the answer: probably around the moment someone, somewhere, needed to stretch after sitting too long. (and cheekily told their instructor they could feel their third eye)
why, though?christianity came from the middle east, brown people in desert heat talking about compassion and sandals. then europe repackaged it, slapped it on cathedrals, and painted jesus to look like he just stepped out of an nordic skincare ad. now americans wear crosses made in china and call it “"our heritage."
chess started in india as chaturanga, spread through persia, then the arabs, then into europe. every civilization took one look and said "yo that's mine now." by the time it reached london, the queen was the most powerful piece on the board — which is hilarious considering england still hasn't emotionally processed feminism.
paper money? china, baby. thousand years before anyone else. europeans saw it and said "wow, what a strange, magical concept," then copied it so aggressively they invented inflation.
and democracy, the west's favorite word, was invented by people who owned slaves, silenced women, and thought bathing twice a week was luxury. so next time someone lectures you about western values, just remember: those "values" probably smelled bad.
everyone's been sampling everyone since forever.
the whole planet's one giant Spotify playlist of plagiarism.tacos? arabic immigrants brought shawarma to mexico. mexicans swapped the bread for corn tortillas. boom — tacos al pastor.
the middle east sneezed, and mexico caught a delicious cold.hetti? invented in china, shipped to italy by marco polo. italians added sauce and passion. now they act like they personally discovered noodles.
music? blues born from african spirituals; jazz evolved; rock stole from jazz; brits stole rock; americans stole it back as "classic rock." meanwhile, k-pop just said "what if we take all of that, add glitter, and choreograph the everything down to the most minute detail to create the most consumerist product in the name of art, let's go unchecked capitalism!"
india sends buddhism to china ==> china sends zen back to japan ==> japan sends minimalism to ikea ==> ikea sells enlightenment in flat-packs.
france gives the world democracy ==> america turns it into hollywood ==> hollywood gives france Emily in Paris. karmic justice achieved.
british empire steals spices ==> goes home and invents the blandest food known to mankind out of spite.maybe culture isn't something we create at all.
maybe it's the residue of our fear of silence.we're born on a damp rock spinning through the void, surrounded by cold stars and unsympathetic physics.
so what do we do?
we hum. we dance. we paint. we name things.
we drape meaning over chaos the way a child throws a bedsheet over monsters.that's culture.
not marble temples or national flags, but the simple, desperate human habit of decorating survival.
it's our collective attempt to make impermanence feel cozy.every loaf of bread, every painting, every ritual — all of it says the same thing:
"we were here. we felt things. we didn't know why."
food is hunger made beautiful.
music is noise that learned empathy.
religion is pattern recognition dressed as hope.
memes are modern cave paintings, scratched on digital walls by apes who still can't deal with boredom.culture doesn't just exist — it grows like moss on the stones of time.
and moss, you'll notice, doesn't care who the rock belongs to.
it spreads where there's light and moisture, indifferent to flags or ownership.
that's what we are: creative spores drifting across centuries,
finding each other in trade routes, wars, and wi-fi connections.we inherit our ancestors' fears, remix them with our own, and call it "heritage."
but heritage isn't a museum. it's compost.
every civilization dies and feeds the next one.
rome fertilized europe. baghdad fertilized the renaissance.
america fertilized the internet — and the internet, god help us, fertilized everything.when we say "this is our culture," what we really mean is
"this is the current version of humanity running on my operating system."
culture is the firmware update for existing.
it patches our bugs, adds emojis, removes dignity, and keeps the species entertained until the next crisis.and that's sacred.
because every piece of culture is a confession.
every dance, a heartbeat translated into motion.
every story, a flare shot into the void hoping someone will see it and whisper, "me too."if aliens ever visit, they'll probably find our world littered with ruins ——
stadiums, temples, memes, and graffiti that reads "live laugh love."
they'll try to decode it all and realize that we,
the clever monkeys of earth, were terrified of being forgotten.we built cathedrals and youtube channels for the same reason:
to echo.
to make the silence after death sound less final.that's the secret heartbeat of culture —
it's the art of pretending we're eternal,
even when the universe keeps reminding us that we're not.so maybe that's what's left.
not the artifacts or the customs or the borders —
but the gesture itself.
the reaching.
the defiant act of saying,"we may not last, but we will leave something beautiful behind to prove we tried."
culture is humanity's love letter to the cosmos,
written in a thousand languages,
sealed with laughter, prayer, and paint.it's not about who owns it.
it's about who feels it.
and that's everyone —
because no matter the flag, the accent, or the god,
we're all just children drawing on the walls of eternity,
hoping someone, somewhere, will look at it and say:"yes josh, that's proper. that's fine."
