Losing Culture

We don’t probably realise it but we actually lose culture all the time. Sometimes this is inconsequential – it might be something incidental to our lives, it might easily be replaced or we change and other things become more important. Maybe there is also a youth element to it as well – when you are younger culture tends to play a more predominant role in your life whereas when you get older it becomes less of a focal point and more of a side pleasure.

Often the sense of loss that is felt is minimal but sometimes the impact is much greater. There have been two times in my life when I have really understood this feeling.

The first was a few years back when I was studying my law degree. I was fairly isolated at the time having fallen out of step in course selection with the students that I started with and living in a regional environment I had no other contact with people in my profession. I also had a young child which brings its own social limitations. I became very attached to an afternoon radio program. The program was run by two very silly comedians and it became imbedded in my life – in the end it was almost like the day revolved around getting to the start of the program. I looked forward to it and even sat in my car on occasion instead of arriving at lectures on time to be sure that I caught some of it. If you knew the comedians I was referring to you might question the emphasis I placed on them but at the time it became the thing that lifted me out of my environment and gave me a chance to see the world from a different perspective.

For reasons unknown to me, they left the radio station on what I understand to be less than great terms. I think I recall them celebrating their final show from the point of view that they were finally free. They did move on to another radio station but it was based in Sydney and did not broadcast to my area.

Their last show, as you can imagine, was viewed by me from a much different perspective. I was actually at uni that afternoon and sat in my car and cried when it finished (which at the time was very unusual for me). A few days later I was still upset about it and I visited the website for their new station and emailed them urging them to come back, saying “regional Australia needs you”. Their new radio station wrote back a brief message to the effect that their show could be streamed over the internet but I had a very old computer and dial up access at the time. And so the loss was real and in a way I went into mourning. For a while I didn’t listen to the radio at all – I didn’t like the new presenters or their choice of music.

I have been thinking about those events a lot lately because of Lawrence Lessig’s departure from the free culture movement. I understand why he has moved on and I understand what he is looking at now is important and as he says, the right thing for him. But, just with the comedians, I see this from a different perspective. For the past five years I have been doing everything I can to be part of this field. Lessig has been, for me (as for many others), something of a shining light. I live in the same environment described above and aside from reading articles on the Internet I have very little opportunity to engage with other people in my field. Lessig was always there, he was always visible and he was always relevant.

Since he announced his movement away from this area of law I have felt as I did with the loss of the radio show but to a much greater degree. I tell myself not to go to his weblog because each time I do I am confronted with the reality that he’s not there anymore – well he is, he’s just not himself, well he is, he’s just not who I want him to be. I have thought about the people that booed Bob Dylan when he went from folk music to electric guitar. They had lost their culture in sort of the same way – for Dylan and Lessig it is a natural progression – but for others it is a failure to meet expectations. My sentiments are a little like that but not so much anger as sadness. I tell myself that its out of proportion because of the environment I am in but still that doesn’t make it better. I haven’t yet removed him from my bookmarks but more and more I can see the day when that will happen. I thought about who I might replace him with but for now its too painful to consider that its possible.

I know the world will go on, that the free culture movement will continue and that if I am patient and work hard maybe one day I might find it in real space rather than just in cyberspace. But until then I have a cyberspace with a hole in it. I have lost my culture, or at least a really big part of it.

For now, there's nothing left to do but thank him for being there while he was and to take it as a lesson on how it feels to lose culture.