Oh please don't make me write about myself. It's so... celebrity.
(Thinks a minute.)
Ok fine.
I have lived all of my life thus far in the beautiful US city of New York. I have a small family (2 siblings and a parent) and many others who know me a little more vaguely through radio and internet contact.
I'm what you might refer to as a structuralist.
I believe that culture is not made up of icons, buildings, songs, clothing, habits, media, laws, or history. Culture is made up solely of the daily interactions of the people within it and their outward contribution to one another as well as their inward consumption of one another's influence. In essence, we are what we exchange sociologically with one another.
A structuralist is a self-aware participant in this transaction. I spend great amounts of time and energy reading other people, measuring their needs, their gifts, their flaws, their offerings, and their place. I then compliment the puzzle wherever I can with my own items of the above, based upon the needs I see and what I have to offer. It's like a microcosm application of Kharma. What you put out there becomes what is out there, thus influencing the return felt not only by yourself but by all others in the wheel.
I am a Taoist. The best way to explain this is to say that we are tiny. Life is huge. Life sweeps us around in all-consuming waves but also nudges us in gentle drifts. A taoist disregards all other distraction and social programming just to hear that wave and that drift. The path of least resistance goes the highest and the farthest when we are aware of this.
Like my father, though, I am something of a Confucionist. Not only do I disregard distraction but I also disregard possessions and other vices. The physical gains of our lives are transient. In being temporary they are also dangerous. We kill our spirit to keep them rather than letting these things go to be relaced with what will come next. Many people are content to live for transient gains. I myself am not.
