Chet W.

I believe your theory is correct. We are a social animal, it's in our dna. The downside of this impulse, in the modern world, is the ugly manifestations of racial & ethnic hatred, but the upside is this wonderful variety of culture. I don't want to sound too hard on the boys in the band I mentioned, I appreciate the desire to establish identity with a group or tribe one admires, and the music was pretty good, for rock & roll, but we're all going to be stuck with sacharine culture if people don't start pushing their noggins a little harder. Short attention spans (smell a t.v. set) and mental inertia more than downright stupidity turn dream catchers into ornaments to hang on the rearview window.

Maybe if kids in school were taught folksong and folklore in history class, along with political/military events, they would make more connections between past and present and would have a deeper appreciation for not just ethnic diversity, but the underlying unity of culture. In an ironic way, when you realize how much of the cultural motifs are just window dressing, you develop a better appreciation for good window dressing.

Frank I.T.S.