Other Aspects
The United States is one of a few countries that does not primarily use the metric system; though many products are dual-labeled, the United States customary units system is dominant.
Unlike many other countries, the United States does not have a cabinet-level national government agency dedicated to cultural issues. In the federal government of the United States, responsibilities that are usually in a cultural minister's portfolio elsewhere are divided among the Federal Communications Commission, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of State, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the National Gallery of Art. However, many state and city governments have a department dedicated to cultural affairs.
Being a major superpower, the United States has influenced the cultures of many other countries, but as countries around the world become more inter-connected and inter-dependent, the general cultural trends (of the US and other countries) head towards multiculturalism and sociocultural globalization.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word aspects:
“The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)