“We are all products of our environment.” During the last season of “The Bachelorette”, one of the contestants said this as a way of understanding why another contestant behaved the way they did, because their culture and the place they have come from have shaped them as they are and was different from theirs. We are all cultivated by way of society, media, race, class and gender. We get environmental and social cues to guide us to becoming the person that we are right now. When our environment changes we do too, because the cues we are getting are different, our friends and family influence these changes greatly. That is why our versions of cool will have certain differences and similarities because they come from these sources, some that we share, and some that we don’t.
From the cues that we get from our cultural maps, we develop the roles we play and who we think we are. Who we actually want to be comes from cues from our social environments, which is shaped by our status, gender, nationality, culture, and many other factors. We seek to live out the roles we have chosen from the ones available to us. From that we create our own hero’s journey and play the characters we’ve created through our actions (Goffman). How we choose to play out the scene that we’ve been given defines who we are as people. For example in this scene what would you do? Someone you know is being teased. Do we help, do we ignore it, or do we participate? Either way, we’ve made a decision, in that scene we are either the character that helped or the character that didn’t help. If we add enough scenes, the cumulative depicts who your character is.
Because of the way our cultural map is made, we are more open to certain kinds of messages than others (Synder). Certain things will be cool for us to do and certain things aren’t. Much of what we will do and how we’ll act is based on our past experiences, whose foundation is provided by our cultural maps and what is expected out of us. Certain group cultures will tend to have preferences or leanings because of how their environment was. For example, most people from the black culture will prefer hip hop or r&b. That is an effect of how media portrays their culture and closely links the two (Merchants of cool). That’s why in general; there is a preference for music like hip hop over music like country. The images that are more commonly seen and that we associate with more are the kinds of images that we will find cool. Things that don’t relate to us or the values we have from our cultural maps won’t be on our radars.
Roles
Our roles are seen through point of view, which is relevant in how we are seen by people because each person acts from foreknowledge from their cultural maps. So, whether they think you’re cool is based on values held by their cultural map. That doesn’t mean they only think cool is something directly related to their culture, but cool can also be values or qualities seen in a positive way in their cultural map. That’s why there are different versions of cool for each subculture.
Although people act accordingly to what’s expected of them, it doesn’t mean they are condemned to that cultural map, it means they are more likely to follow the standard model of the cultural map, unless something happens that leads them to a detour and they find a different route. John Fanning was raised in a middle class family in a fairly conservative place, but he got a tattoo even though it wasn’t common in his cultural map. That’s because his cultural map didn’t make sense to him and he wanted to find a new one. When he joined his band, he felt as if he finally met people who were “real” and he could relate to them. His discontent with his current cultural map, led him to a new route and he discovered another one that made more sense to him even though it appears to be very different from his previous one. He wanted to find a place that he could belong and the previous place he was at wasn’t it (Fanning).
For the most part, I’m comfortable in my own role. I experiment at times to see how people will react if I deviate from it or tweak it, because I don’t want it to feel confining or limiting. That is so I know that just because this is how someone sees me as; it isn’t what I have to be. But it depends on my environment too because if I see that people don’t really care if I act a certain way then I feel more comfortable acting that way. I keep tweaking my role(s) because I don’t find stagnation cool. I think exploring and finding out what suits you as role is cool.
Nature vs Nurture
The existence of cultural maps also brings up the question of nature versus nurture, whether we choose to be who we are today or were it created by our circumstances. The cultural maps suggest that these events are all circumstantial and to an extent it is. Some of it is nurture, but the two are closely intermixed, because eventually nurture becomes nature. The ideals we were brought up with usually become our own. Our cultural maps begin from our womb. “Sounds, smells and tastes are amongst the first environmental cues learnt, ahead of vision” (Beetle). If a pregnant woman chose to eat garlic or vanilla, then the baby will choose similarly flavored milk over normal milk (Beetle). As we grow older we get them from our parents, our friends, and media.
Conclusion
We take in social and environmental cues, our cultural map and everything else, but it doesn't mean we have to follow what they say (Huang). Having these maps is not necessarily a bad thing because we do have to draw from somewhere, otherwise what are we made up of? It’s unavoidable that these maps would be created because we are made from our experiences, our choices, and other people’s as well. But our cultural maps aren’t so great is when it is limiting or is limiting to us in a negative way. But the limits aren’t always as set or as immovable as we think they are. The child groomed to be a lawyer doesn’t always end up becoming one, they might be an artist or a teacher if they find that they actually enjoy that more (Jed). We use our culture maps as a basis of our structure for being cool, but we combine maps from several different people in order to create one that fits us, that person we want to be rather than the person we are “meant” to be (Jermanski).
Works cited
Dr. Beetle, "Twins and Evolutionary Psychology". 22 January 2010 .
Frontline: The Merchants of Cool. PBS Online, 2001. Web. 7 Feb.
2005 Fanning, John. “Personal/Political – Tattoo Talk”. Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.
Huang, Jia Min. “Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.
Interviewees. “What is Cool?” Street Survey. 02 December 2009.
Jermanski, Rachel. “Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.
Snyder, Andy. "Personal/Political." Social Studies Class. School of the Future. Room 605.
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