Cultural Linkage
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
Guest blogger, Steve Bonenberger continues:
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asked at the beginning of the human family.So much these days is being written under the ‘new’ discipline of
CULTURAL LINKAGE. Cultural linkage is the academic pursuit of
community and its language patterns. Cultural linkage is said to be
an emerging body of study. The end game is not yet decided. There
are many academics that are either being pushed to the top of the heap, or rising to notoriety by their own efforts. Here are some nuggets that seem to run concurrent in literature that I have read to date:
a. the globe is shrinking in size
b. distant cultures are just different
c. communication is instantaneous
d. family units are fractioned
e. the human element must be found, fostered and placed front and center
f. no local cultural strain can be determined to be dominant or
above others in value
g. no matter what your passion or purpose…there exists others who
fundamentally agree
h. create methods and systems that locate and unite those who are ‘like you’ in this new global community.
Certainly there are portions of this global language and cultural ‘big
tent’ formations that we find difficult to swallow. Just as certainly
there are pieces of this puzzle that affect us and our works
regardless of our attitudes towards them or our acceptance of them.
In plain English, the world is a very close community now. There
exists the potential for a global audience for your hard pounded out
works.
What to do about cultural linkage? Do we shrink and quell? Do we retreat to our caves and draw stick figures of our faith on the back walls, hoping vs. hope that some archeologists and future spelunkers will stumble upon them and wonder of their hidden meanings? Or do we seek to form up an alliance of like-minded culturalists that seek–as their deep and specific intent–to bring the value of their faith based communication ‘front and center’?
Our assignment, it seems to me, is to write great stories…stories that are compelling and that others will read. Then our second assignment (and in my mind this is just as important as the first) is to take the conversation to the collision points in our society. May the day arrive when YOUR STORIES are spoken round table tops and water coolers with the ease and frequency of last night’s ball game scores.
Will U Lysn