Culture is just a shambling zombie that repeats what it did in life; bits of it drop off, and it doesn't appear to notice.
As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings.
And the west, encumbered by crippling alliances, and hardened with a morality too rigid to accommodate itself to the swing of events, must ..... eventually ..... fall.
There are certain things which the average Irish mind will never allow as debatable.
This view generalized to almost all cultures almost defines the essence of conservatism.
When I first began working in Japan, I had to confront the Japanese people's excessive worship for foreign goods and the fixed idea of what clothes ought to be. I wanted to change the rigid formula of clothing that the Japanese followed.
The Chinese move very slowly. Our customs are so fixed that it takes much time to change them.
America is a very fundamentalist society. It's like Iran in the degree of fanatic religious commitment.
I grew up in Switzerland, in this kind of rigidity. It was Protestant, and I was rather shy. That influenced me a lot.
I have always had severe problems with Austrians. ... Musical, churchy, uptight... nice legs... hypocritical... authoritarian... always insist their dustbins are very clean.
Human society has dense borders - economic, religious and cultural - inculcated from an early age. We hate change.
Any alternative culture that inspires a lot of passion and inspiration is also in danger of being set in its ways, almost from the moment it's born.
It is not coincidental that for so-called religious fundamentalists - whether they are Western or Eastern, Muslim or Christian - rigid male dominance and "holy wars" are priorities. Or that competing sects of the same religion, such as Sunni and Shia, are at each other's throats. In these cultures, women are rigidly controlled by men.
My general take on American music since 1969 is that it's just getting stiffer and people are getting more uptight - audience, performance, and palace guard.
Japan's biggest problems are conservatism and cowardice.
The frozen ocean... of Boston life.
But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.
Cultures are not very easy to change. They're sometimes almost impossible to change.
Learning is not easy, but hard; culture is severe. The steps to Parnassus are steep and terribly arduous.