Are brie and baguettes a vital part of world heritage? Yesterday, the United Nations' cultural organization (UNESCO) added the French gastronomic experience to the world's list of intangible cultural treasures. Here are 10 of the more bizarre entries on the list.
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Max Strasser and Mohammad Sagha are editorial researchers at FP.
A lot of time spend dissing tourism...
I've always seen UNESCO heritage status as a tourism promotion deal. I'm sure several of these traditions are kept up for the tourists. It's hard for me to care about these things because when they die out it is regional culture let them die out. It its something which has suffered willful outside harm, like lets say like Tibetan throat singing or Native American dance forms, then maybe I care.
Personally, I don't find it amusing at all..
There are some things that belongs to the tradition of a country, which *must* be preserved. The baguette, too.
Thanks,
Fab from Stufe a pellet.
Preserving local traditions, customs and food is very important. I'm sure the author would be perfectly happy homogenizing the world with starbucks lattes, Mc nuggets, walmarts and "why can't they speak English, just like us?" Thankfully there are people and institutions that enjoy diversity and actively try to save it.
This article is an embarrassment to the website
The authors, in seeking to embarrass UNESCO, have succeeded in embarrassing themselves. Such things matter to real people. UNESCO, despite its status as a monster bureaucracy, seems to be able to see that.
I think the authors have spent so long in their foreign-policy bubble that they no longer know chalk from cheese.
This is the kind of jingoistic, poorly researched article that made me cancel my subscription to the magazine. Its only focus is the most pictoresque aspectes of the mentioned traditions, without never really attempting to understand how they are meaningful to the cultures they belong to. Ugly, to say the least.
Some things need protection and some are not. When US breaks 300 years of history then UNESCO might consider adding its burgers and KKK to the list.
I am compiling a list of articles that are excellent examples of how so-called "edgy" journalism degraded into what one would call lame snark.
My assumption is that in the quest for page views, writers feel a need to be entertaining and that many are still in an early-decade mindset, whereas irony is somehow funny.
Anyway, this piece certainly makes the list, and I'll be glad to cite it in a decade or so when I am asked about the "lame snark" phenomenon of circa 2008-2011.
A friend actually sent me a video the other day.
http://vimeo.com/16392519
to me, it's important to keep old traditions alive nowadays, in this time of technological miracles and horrors, than ever before.
the rates of technological and social change are occurring at an ever-dizzying rate. this often worries and confuses, even frightens people. traditional rituals, festivals, and such as listed enable a culture to remain itself as a distinct entity without being swept into a one-size-fits-all world society. it gives them stability, a handle on things that threaten to go out of control.
some such ceremonies are just fun, and they remain fun.
my own hometown didn't have much of an identity, until it decided to adopt one a couple decades back: the bois d'arc tree.
now, i can't much think of anything less interesting; after all, rocks can contain fossils. but for a few days every year, now my hometown rallies 'round the bois d'arc and its fruit, also called the 'horse apple', and has a bit o'fun.
harmless, and it does good for them, and brings in people from other towns and communities. so be it.
i wouldn't laugh at any of these listed above, or deride them. i believe some such traditions may have sprung up from survival situations, such as the whistling language of the Canary Islanders. hunters and the military would approve of this, as it would enable communication in the most delicate of situations: for the hunter, to prevent scaring off game; for the military, passing information or commands, even in the midst of an enemy.
for all i know, this whistling language may have originated in response to repeated invasions of people from Europe or West Africa in past centuries.
others derive from a legendary past, such as the dragons. . .Joe Campbell woulda loved analyzing the mythological side to these things.
technology such as that which resulted in the Chinese junks should also be preserved, as such knowledge may be needed again one day. one cannot always assume that things will remain as they are, or that they will always necessarily 'progress'.
if i remember my history, China sent out a fleet of about 300 ships to explore the Indian Ocean a few decades before Columbus made his trips to the Caribbean and South America. the Chinese ships were believed to be uniformly more sound and advanced than the small ships Columbus was given. i believe there might arise situations where the knowledge of building such ships might be an advantage.
and, also, there is at times a unique beauty in these traditions, unbelievable as it may sound. one can think here of the Japanese Noh plays, traditional swordsmithing, etc.
to lose them would be a loss not only to the individual culture, but to the world.
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