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Firstly, thanks - you've again made me grab a dictionary because there was a word unknown to me: 'gauster'. So at least I learned something new ...

Regarding your premise that 'culture' is determined by environment .... well, up to a point. What is lacking though is what I'd call the temporal dimension, in other words: history. It's the history experienced by people which is transmitted to the next generation(s) and which thus form the vital part of 'culture', i.e. Tradition.

It's for that reason that those powers, wanting to create their global 'melting pot', are and have been destroying traditions especially in western countries, even unto the re-writing of history, a subject no longer taught properly in schools or at universities. This is so pernicious because we cannot plan for a future when we don't know where we came from because the 'where we came from' is either denigrated or replaced by 'modern', 'progressive' shibboleths coming from Hollywood in the widest sense. It is so pernicious because we are deprived of the context in which traditions arose: without historical context asking 'why' becomes futile.

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That's true. Though it's interesting how to some extent at least, history is also intrinsically entwined with the environment, in the sense that much of the historical meaningfulness is written into the environment itself; the locales, like famous buildings (the Alamo), statues, places where something of importance occurred, etc. Which to some extent furthers my point that a people and their culture cannot really be separated from the environment or the culture begins to lose its meaning. You can transplant it to some degree but I guess people would argue if that would be considered 'successful' or not, as it will lack some of those essential ingredients.

But your invoking of the 'temporal dimension' is interesting and did make me think, that history can almost be thought of as the temporal Z axis on the graph of the environment, i.e. history as environment in motion is an interesting thought to ponder. But yes, as you mentioned--for instance currently happening in Ukraine and other Russophobic states like Latvia, etc.,--the first thing elites typically do when they want to erase a culture is destroy the historical objects in that environment, take down the statues of remembrance for Soviet triumph in WW2, for instance, etc. History is written into the environment in that way, in my eyes.

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