40 Year Culture?

So.. after my "Get Fuzzy Thursday" I find myself staring relatively blankly at various blogs by folks in Korea and wishing I were there.

It occurs to me that the thing I'm really liking is generally the thing that is new to me. This is less than epiphanic. People like shiny new things, I have the attention span of a gnat with ADHD, and I have now been in my current job (if you exclude "boring drunkard" which, since I've never been paid for, I think it is fair to exclude) for twice the period I have held any other single job. I've probably only lasted this long here because I've worked at different locations and for about 14 different bosses in the six years I've been here.

But I also wonder if I'm bored because the United States has become predictable (stupid?)?

• Is there an active and shared culture in the United States or have contesting cultures retreated into vast mountain retreats from which the survey others with disdain? Politically this seems to be obvious. I blame the Ipod. ;-)

• Has culture become a Bloomian zero-sum game in which giving credence or play to one book or belief is to necessarily take credence or play from another book or belief?

• Is it moronic to try to judge the "culture" of a country that has only formally been in existence for slightly over 200 years? I mean, crap, I love England, but how many years did they spend painting their asses blue and fighting over dry waterholes, drier women, and wet tribal leaders? It took a few decades to get to Shakespeare, if I remember 11th grade cultural history correctly.

• If you don't become obsessed with one aspect of culture or another, is this a "40 Year Culture" in the sense that you'll pretty well have it figured out by that age and thus it loses lustre? And would that be any different in Korea or Sudan - I mean, I suppose most 40 year olds have their cultures pretty wired, no matter where they reside in those cultures.

It is the days that questions like this occur to me that I am thankful that I have never been a quitter. Specifically, I still drink...

Time to draw a red stripe over these freshman level questions.. ;-)

And I suppose I have answered my own question in a way. Any culture that can produce "Get Fuzzy" is still a valuable one.