Who Is Right?

Welcome to my first blog. I am Jeff Porth, a second year student at Columbia majoring in Cultural studies. My only real hobby is thinking, and I find myself doing so a little too often. When I was younger, I thought I just over-analyzed things, and even thought it a bad thing. But I have grown to realize that what a lot of people consider over-analyzing, others call Philosophy. I suppose that explains my interested in Philosophy, and the humanities in general.

Or to put it in a better way “O sancta simplicitas! In what strange simplification and falsification man lives! One can never cease wondering once one has acquired eyes for this marvel.” Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, pg. 35

I see culture as an umbrella term referring to mankind in general since man’s “will to knowledge”. Since man, consciously, or sub-consciously, realized, that in life there were things that helped us, or were good, and there were things that were harmful, or bad. For example: A culture decides food is good and necessary for the continuation of life. Poison on the other hand, when ingested, kills. One can see how poison, in the view of this culture, is bad. But to a second culture, the same poison is used for military reasons, to be placed on the tips of their arrows. With this technology, the second culture has improved their society’s security and thus, their life. To the second culture, poison is not only good, but could even be though of more highly then farming or food. (If you control a people who farm, and can provide food for your people, why farm when you can control?)

So who has the correct idea about poison?

I feel that culture is primarily man’s struggle to figure out the best possible way to live. But then, the question becomes, what constitutes the “best” way of life? If one takes all the possible responses to that question, numerous as they are, I believe that is the number of different possible cultures.