Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Intangible Cultural Heritage

The U.N. maintains a List of Intangible Cultural Heritage which essentially itemizes the contributions to global culture of various nations. I don't know how they research this list but this tongue-in-cheek article observed that Canada is not on the list. After a moment of indignation, I felt a little better after I found that the U.S and Australia are not on the list either.

A generous interpretation of their absence is that their cultures are very young and haven't developed anything worth mentioning yet. A negative interpretation is that modern Western culture is just banal and not worth preserving. Or perhaps the three countries are just developing boring cultures and will never be on the list. I kind of lean towards that last possibility. ^_^

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