Jemimah-Nikky Jates' Blog

CULTURE’S PLACE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Thinking about what to write as regards this topic, I thought about a song we sang back then in the Sunday school. The lines went like this “Gimme that old time religion, gimme that old time religion, gimme that old time religions, its good enough for me”. This, to me is our culture.

Culture as a way of life of a group of people is how we have easily characterized its use over the years. In today’s world, culture transcends just the way of life a particular people, but spreads across the entire globe most times. This is made possible through the digitization of the world. The digital era has proved mightily useful in bringing the world under the umbrella of one global village, making communication much easier and engendering exposure.

This new globalized world has seemed to prove as a threat to our cultures through the meshing of several world cultures with ours. In so doing, ours has about gone into extinction as we now strive to adapt and perfect foreign cultures rather than harness ours.

What we don’t understand is that the importance of our culture in today’s digital age cannot be swept under the carpet. Our old time culture strives consistently to cut the excesses of the digital age.

 Now, do not think for one moment I am against the digital age. In fact, I am one of those people who totally embraced the internet and social networks. Coming from a strict Christian family where anything relating to the “world” was assessed with a raised eyebrow, I quickly tried to convince them of the good in widening our scope to see the world in a wider approach and adapt what we can from it so we do not remain in the dark. I don’t go a day without going on Google, or my online social media, or reading up comments on Blogs and Online Magazines. This has proved quite important to my life and whatever I read I enjoy passing it on to others whom I think it may benefit.

Now despite how much I cling to this new “worldly exposure” as I am sure my mom would want to refer to it, I never lose sight of our good ol’ cultures of piety and sobriety. And I do believe there are many more youths like myself who believe so too. In fact, sometimes we take advantage of this digital age to inform and educate each other on our cultures through the use of the internet.

I understand the fear the older generation have about the waning popularity of our culture and the thought that it may soon go into extinction. However, pardon me to say, but this fear may be a little irrational. Believe and trust the young generation whom you have trained to be able to use our sound doctrines in judging between good and evil.