A thread to ask about cultural stuff you should know

[OneFrenchEgg]

Ok so there's loads of stuff other people know and stuff I know.
Where do I start with Noam Chomsky and why? Is he left wing? Why is he so relevant?

This is such a clever thread.

Thank you to all posters taking the time to share their knowledge. 🌷

Because the fear of the drugs turns into hatred of the users instead of looking at what's going on in a society to have led to people turning to that way of life, or being forced to (in the case of benefits, immigration etc)

I think @Zonder is confusing modernism with modernity. Modernism is an early 20th century movement, not 1700s.

Pro wrestling matches have a pre determined outcome. The wrestlers will know how long their match needs to go on, what the finish is, and there may be some particular "spots" or actions/moves that they need to include within the match. Hence, it's called sports entertainment and not sport. However, it is physically demanding and requires a high level of sklll.

I'd compare to gymnastics in that in essence a pre determined routine is completed and judged. In pro wrestling the crowd and viewing audience are the judges though, as a wrestlers relative success is based on their crowd reaction - the more loved/hated they are, the more they are "over" with the crowd. Either extreme is considered good.
Those who are popular/the good guy are "faces" and those who are boo'ed are "heels".

People tend to learn in bite size chunks, adding to them as they digest each one. That's why a child doesn't skip to A-level English Literature once she has learned to read 'cat' and why you don't learn to drive by hopping into a car on the hard shoulder of the motorway. The starting point for learning has to be meaningful to the learner in order to proceed with the potential for any depth.

This is brilliant; glad someone asked about modernism /post modernism as there's so much on my radar/that you hear in passing and don't really know about.

Loads of great recommendations for podcasts and books.

Yep.

Literally everybody learns everything in bite sized chunks and everything is taught in that way.

I presume the pp has rarely learned anything well, and has certainly never taught anything, but just thought they'd come in with what they considered a witty retort.

I found Difficult Women by Helen Lewis a really great introduction to feminism, I think often it's when you read one thing it leads you onto further reading and over time you start to have a deeper understanding. But accessible books that have the key parts of a theory are really good for opening the doors as to what to learn. Google is too overwhelming.

I'm a teacher and I really do believe that everything has to be followed along in the smallest of steps (unless a child has naturally understood the concept at an advanced rate, in which case the size/flavour of the bites will be adjusted slightly). Otherwise, if you can't be sure that a child has understood the basics securely, they will never have any depth. If learning in depth was as simple as going on Google or reading a book, then we wouldn't need teachers or lecturers to facilitate the delivery of information appropriately.

It was a typo. It should have read 1800s. Late 19th century admittedly. In my mind it's tied in with later victorian era.

My main point was that it is not just an art movement but a way of thinking and cultural shift.

In 1956, George A Miller researched short and long term memory. He found that using a mix of short and long term memory, our brains can only really learn 7ish things at once. So if you are told to memorise the next 20 things, the first 3-4 will go into long term memory after rehearsal, the rest will disappear and the last 3-4 will stay in short term memory.

It is called the 'Lucky Number 7'.

Bite size is how we do things.

I absolutely love this overview and want to frame it

There is one often overlooked philosopher that really would have come into his own if he had lived into the age of the internet, and that was Marshall McLuhan.

His two main lines were that 'The Medium is the Message' and the 'Global Village'.

His theories were about how the actual consumption changes depending on the delivery method, and how each new invention reshapes society. He knew that the internet would be invented in the 1960s. And he knew how it would bring people together across the globe. He was incredibly insightful.

And if you take 10 bites of different things, maybe one will be something you want to follow up and learn more about.

I read The Silence of the Girls on holiday about 5 years ago. Just a book, by an author I liked (Pat Barker).

It caught me and I must have read 20 odd books about Ancient Greece since!

It's 8 in the morning and I've learnt so much from this thread!

Salt and pepper, ketchup/ other condiment pots are traditionally needed to explain this 😃

Bite sized chunks are good as a first layer of info that you can build on.

Neoliberalism please

Can someone tell me in two sentences why Brexit imperils the Good Friday Agreement please? I’ve never managed to work this out.

@FangsForTheMemory Brexit has caused Northern Ireland to not be in the EU, whilst Ireland remains in it. This would require border controls between Ireland and Northern Ireland, which contravenes the GFA.

In very simple terms, half of Northern Ireland wanted to unite with Southern Ireland and half wanted to unite with Great Britain and be part of the UK. This was split between Catholic and Protestant lines. There had been decades of violence between them which the GFA ended.

Putting a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland risked the Good Friday Agreement which had managed to forge a peaceful union between the two, as it meant an even more stark separation because UK is now not in the EU whereas Ireland is still in the EU.

thanks, both.

This is a great thread!

@Zonder You’re still confusing Modernism (the movement) with modernity.

Try this https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/origin-story/id1624704966?i=1000565757073

Thank-you to those who have thanked me for the explanations of Greek gods and post-modernism.

Most of the thanks for the first should go to Natalie Haynes and her excellent Radio 4 series Standing Up for the Classics.

I was also a bit worried about explaining Post-Modernism but then realised I couldn't get it wrong as I was being post-modern and accuracy is an outdated concept