Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in what is fast becoming known as global culture.
I found a greater identity with my own emotions in the Armenian culture as I grew older, as well as from the beginning, although I didn't know anything about it.
Culture is the one thing that we cannot deliberately aim at. It is the product of a variety of more or less harmonious activities, each pursued for its own sake.
There have been household gods and household saints and household fairies. I am not sure that there have yet been any factory gods or factory saints or factory fairies. I may be wrong, as I am no commericial expert, but I have not heard of them as yet.
Managers should understand there are some simple things they can do tomorrow that will make a big difference in their culture, but so few managers do them.
There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.
Now I've come to such a mixed culture: America, Europe, South America, Africa. And the politics are changing everywhere all the time and becoming even more unpredictable. There's no such thing as "fixed" culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems. Nothing is clear-cut. Perhaps I'll find my way - or get totally lost.
The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.