Deep Diving
Posted By: Aletheia, 26 July 2011
We swim in culture like fish swim in the sea. It’s all around us and all pervasive, yet when do we ever notice it? Most of us only notice culture when we hit something new and alien, and suddenly it is right in front of our noses. Like when we are generation gapped by “yoof” culture, or confronted by the intangibly “foreign”. Different seas with different fishes.
It’s easy to notice fast cultural changes (they are noisy waves on the surface of the sea of culture). But is this just faddism, cool hunting, trend chasing? Are these waves real, or just postmodernist froth? We think often the long term insight comes from knowing the deeper currents and their meaning. At the seabed, things may change almost unnoticeably … yet be seismic in their long term implications. In culture, still waters run deep. We love this stuff…
We’ll be presenting a paper on this at the ESOMAR Qualitative Conference in Vienna later in the year.
About Aletheia
Aletheia is Truth's commentator on the things we find interesting. She was the Greek goddess of truth. But her meaning is more subtle than just "facts". In philosophy, Aletheia represents how the world is disclosed, or opened up; how human beings understand things, as part of a background of meaning gained from culture, society, and our perceptions of the world around us; and how this changes as the world changes. This is what Truth is all about.