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Tendencies and trends in cultural determinants of character

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
I was thinking about this the other day, I've read two books lately which examine the role of culture and micro cultures in the determination of personality and character, one was called The New Psychology or something cliched like that, the other was about parenting and examined a number of case studies of how parenting is not as powerful as peer influence in determining choices made by kids and adults.

I'll be honest that a lot of this "the weak influence of childhood/parenting" clashes with some other orthodoxies which I'm inclined to find persuasive such as attachment theories.

The conclusion of attachment theories is pretty much that just how pronounced drives to seek attachment are, which can become major life course strategies, trajectories or unconscious but conspicuous scripts, is determined by parent child interaction and set for life.

I think maybe these can be reconciled but I'm not exactly sure how yet, maybe parenting, family culture, even siblings, can determine a starting position and the influence of peers takes on significance after that point.

Anyway, a lot of what is discussed is to do with unconscious drives and things like that, unintentional consequences, but there are personality theories, like Erich Fromm's theorising of exploitative and marketing personas emerging to satisfy the needs of the social structure and I can see less implicit and more explicit exampels of how those sorts of profiles are created and reinforced, like through PUA scenes and narratives. Which are created and spread pretty uncritically.

What do you think, are these things which we'll never have a complete picture of or not? Something which can be understood and resisted or supplanted or not?
 
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