Osmosis

from everything

Cultural Osmosis

This is the phenomenon where you find yourself knowing things about stuff. Stuff that you haven't experienced yourself, but you encounter from so many outlets that you can't help absorbing it yourself. This will happen to you from the moment you are born, but you probably won't notice it. Everyone will have their own examples of this but for me the one thing I've always been aware of without knowing where from, is songs by the Beatles. Yellow Submarine, Help!, A Day in the Life, Yesterday. I've known these songs all my life and I can never remember not knowing them. They must have been played so often on the tv, radio, and been such general background noise that I assimilated them and made Lennon and McCartney a part of me forever.

It also makes me remember tales of Freddy Krueger circulating around the playground depsite their being no one in my class who had seen Nightmare on Elm Street But this osmosis doesn't just stop at childhood. It is reinforced all the time by the people you meeet, overheard conversations on the bus, adverts for televison programmes you don't want to watch. This form of cultural osmosis will make you aware of things you don't want to know about, the tabloid culture of celebrities famous for famous. You will become familiar with celebrity chefs whether you like it or not and wannabe pop stars striving to extend their fifteen minutes of fame will imprint themselves on your consciousness.

 There is nothing you can do about it without immersing yourself away from modern society. No doubt this is happening accross the world, but the specifics will be different if you are in Japan or the USA.