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No. 24893
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>>24888
Culture is defined more by the people living within a set of borders than by the borders themselves. Like >>24890 said, the US has at least 10, I would say a lot more, distinct cultures living within its borders. For instance, the culture of white, middle-class people living in a suburban area of a city is vastly different from the culture of black people living in a poorer urban area. Hispanics have their own culture, we also have immigrants from all sorts of places living here who have their own little subcultures as well. There are also cultures within cultures, for instance I am basically part of the white middle class culture, but I don't have a whole lot in common with most other people within that culture. Most people living in my neighborhood don't have apartments packed wall to wall with anime stuff, and I don't watch football or American Idol. There's crazy redneck southern culture, but in a lot of the major cities down there the culture is not that different from the city culture of cities in the Midwest. Overall culture varies from city to city, like New York has a culture different from Seattle, and Salt Lake City and Los Angeles are pretty different from each other. A lot of states tend to see themselves as separate cultures, and a lot of times regions within individual states have distinct cultural differences as well, like in Oregon where I live there's a pretty big distinction between Portland and the rest of western Oregon, which is more like California culturally and politically, versus eastern Oregon, which is more conservative and midwestern. It's all a huge mishmash; there's no single "American" culture.
If for whatever reason the American government collapsed and the United States stopped existing as a country, the myriad cultures living within it would still exist. Things would change and I'm sure eventually order would be restored, and there would be new imaginary lines drawn all over the map.
With the internet, cultures around the world are constantly communicating with and influencing each other. Different individuals can adopt aspects of other cultures that fit them, and discard aspects of their own that don't. Boards like this prove that well enough. If I found myself in the same room with a Japanese otaku and an American redneck, and just to make things easier let's say there were no language barriers, I'd probably have more to talk about with the otaku than the redneck. However, by the same logic, if I found myself in the same room with a middle-aged Japanese high-power businessman and a heavy metal fan from Sweden, I'd end up talking to the Swedish guy because the Jap and I would have no common ground.
People in different countries might have a different way of looking at it, but I think that the further we move into the current century, the less significance the concept of nation states as culturally distinct entities is going to have.
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