Wednesday, November 16, 2005

postal scrotum: cultural commentary

My good friend Tam Gu Ja writes in--

Dude:

I appreciated your article about The Aquariums of Pyongyang. Given my current line of work I am often astounded by the patterns of willful ignorance and revictimization of the victim that occur in society-- even ours. I often encounter patterns of behaviour about which society tends to pay far too little effort or attention as a whole. Some good examples would be instances of rape in general society (about 1 in 8) versus military society (about 1 in 5), patterns of child abuse, and similar things. There is plenty of ability to quantify, measure, and categorize behaviour in such a fashion that it is easy to see a course of action that would improve the situation, but the flat fact is that most Americans simply don't want to know, or, if they do, don't want to expend the effort to correct matters. It pissed me off to no end.

-Tam Gu Ja

They say you can tell what people really value, individually and collectively, by where they put their money. By that reckoning, what does American society value? Where does most of the consumers' money go? What does Korean society value?


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