A Common Thread

A Common Thread

We as a society are surrounded by life, as we know it each day. Never stopping 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 have 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 use of the Balinese cockfight. Amazingly enough Geertz used what some would call a primitive culture to show us the aspects of our culture and the role these aspects play in our culture. Social 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 perceive it, is less a flow, a directional movement out of the past, through the present, toward the future than an on-off pulsation of meaning and vacuity, an arrhythmic alternation of short periods when “something” (that is, something significant) is happening and equally short ones where

“nothing” (that is, nothing much) is- between what they themselves call “full” and “empty” times, or, in another idiom, “junctures” and “holes” (387).

Patricia Limerick in her essay “Empire of Innocence” exposed many ot...

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... the effectiveness list would be John Wideman’s “Our Time.” Wideman continues building on all the other author’s information by showing us how the rules that have been established for culture apply to family, race, and the pursuit of happiness.

Considering 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 complete 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 Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The American Scholar.” Rpt. in Ways of Reading.

5th Ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/

St. Martin’s, 1999. 304.

Geertz, Clifford. “Deep Play.” Rpt. in Ways of Reading. 5th Ed. David

Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,

1999. 387.