Culture

I had given some thought some years back into going into anthropology, but realized that there was a considerable lack in their field of study in the fact that while they studied the culture of whomever it was they were studying— that is, they catalogued it— they didn’t understand it in any visceral way, and did not understand that to grasp a cultural group, it is absolutely necessary for one to perceive on some level the cultural view that they hold. One of the reasons why this is the case is because of the difficulty that this entails, the sheer amount of empathy one has to bring to bear to this task. Another reason is that it is not scientific by any measure. Cultural perceptions are often at odds with the reality of the situation the cultural groups exist in. Since science is supposed to be absolute (unlikely as that is) then bringing in not just one but often numerous conflicting viewpoints that are themselves odds with reality undermine everything that science holds dear. And maybe from their point of view, they are right. Regardless, it still reduces people to numbers and there is really nothing we can learn from a people who have been reduced to a census form.

The reason this is problematic is because a people’s culture is their perception, their shared perception, of everything. It exists in what Ibn’ Arabi termed the creative imagination, the field of imagination on which all our myriad perceptions are laid and are processed into a gestalten All that we perceive the world as. This makes them no less real. Everything is weighed at this point against the standards of our cultural perceptions, ordered by the rules of that perception. Wanting the largest possible overview, the culture’s shared history is here of great import because it allows precedents to be made, patterns to be made to evolve out of those precedents. This is where a cultural foundation is laid and that foundation allows the culture to integrate what occurs now and what will occur in the future without that cultural group having to go through the often painful process of “re-living” what has already happened to them for that integration to happen, or at least without it having to occur in the dark, referentless. Considering how long it was between paradigm shifts, historically, cultures could go a long time without having to modify, dramatically, their cultural perceptions. Ultimately it was only when something of great disruption would force that change, and many cultural groups died as a result of it. That is the problem with cultural perceptions: they are enormously difficult to change, even more difficult to change the longer they have been in operation.

For the native Americans, the tragic results that resulted from the encroachment of the Europeans was ultimately more than their cultures could adequately evolve around; the European culture was diametrically opposite the value system of their own. Had we basically separated them and scattered them from their cultural groups and then integrated them individually into our culture, the American Indians would have been probably in better shape. What we did instead, creating zones in which we intended them to live and in which they could practice their own cultures, really made it worse in the long run because their cultural perceptions no longer worked. To many Indians, the reason why this was so was because they weren’t practising it avidly enough. But a cultural perception is not a car; tinkering with it will not get it to work, getting “original” parts to repair it with will not get it to work more true to its original form. Once the fundamental structure of the culture is undermined, it must change or die. Which is not to say that the Indians should simply jettison their entire cultural heritage, but they should look very hard at their history for what is of use to them now in the world they live in, look at their cultural perceptions for what is useful Now, and put the rest of it either away or practice it ceremonially, that is to say, to recall their cultural past but only on occasion.

To me, one of the best success stories in the US of this very thing is the Scotch-Irish. The Scotch-Irish are themselves not even Irish, as a rule. These Scots who backed Cromwell in his uprising against the throne were, as a token of his gratitude on his success, then relocated to southern Ireland where, one suspects— certainly the Scots did— Cromwell was hoping the Scots and the Irish would wipe each other out and solve two problems at once. The problems in Northern Ireland to this day are based upon this. The Scots, practicality embodied, took in the situation and then decided that they would move to the New World, Pennsylvania in fact, and make a life there. Understand that Pennsylvania is not Scotland or Ireland either one; it was the Great Forest. Their very survival depended entirely on themselves; there was little contact with the Atlantic settlements. To this the Scots depended entirely on themselves and began to adapt to life in the Forest, which they became remarkably adept at. Introduction of the long rifles made a world of difference against the Indians, the relative dearth of food caused an enormous population explosion in their ranks and very soon the Scots were cutting out the states along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, past the Appalachian mountains, almost without any support from the coastal settlements. Their settlements were entirely democratic, more so than the Atlantic states even; the Scots perceiving themselves to be no less in stature to one another but all of them bound together by the precarious realities of their new lives: the Indian attacks and the difficulties of carving out a livable life from the woods themselves.

Ironically, it would be the Scots themselves who would turn the tide against the British during the Revolution. Years of Indian fighting had taught them the guerrilla warfare tactics that they would use with such deadly effectiveness against the British; no doubt considerable amusement could be taken from the looks on the Brits’ faces when they realized it was those sorry bastard Scots they had run off all those years before who were cutting them to pieces. (Certainly the Scots themselves have never been known to forget a grievance; one would think they raise their children on it like mother’s milk.) It would also be the encroachment of the Scots on Spanish unsettled land in the West that would force them to start their colony program in Texas, for the expressed reason of keeping the Scots out; anyone other than them was apparently better than the alternative.

Already you can see a considerable cultural evolution in the Scots in the US in a very short span of time. Fundamentally, the Scots had not changed; they were still the pig-headed, ultimately expedient bunch they had been back in Scotland, even, but virtually everything else about them had changed. They would do so again. Balked against the prairie lands of the West that were beyond their ken and the mounted Indians there that they had no effective means of fighting, the wave of population expansion would stop there and, with the republic and then state of Texas giving away property to all comers, they would turn south, into the woods of east Texas. However, it would not be too long before that would not be enough. Two things would change that. One was the settlement of vast acreage of lands in the prairies and the plains where the only means of survival was the use of range cattle. Learning from the vaqueros the means of this trade, the Scots would learn to live on horseback. For those who did, the cultural shift was an enormous one. The Scots had always dug roots before. Maybe when the time came and they decided to leave, they would leave those roots by the wayside, but they would just as quickly dig in elsewhere, wherever they were. This new culture was a rootless one, ranging far afield on horseback; their entire culture would change once again. With the introduction of Colt’s patent revolver, this culture would carve its roots out over a widespread area as they brought the war to the Indians instead of merely reacting to them. Once again, the Scots themselves, fundamentally, did not change, but everything else about them did. And we are only talking about a couple of hundred years for these two enormous changes in their culture to take place (considerably less for the second change.)

Placing this as a template against other cultures here and abroad, it is easy to weigh how effective they ultimately are. The Scots dragged their culture along with them like an old trunk. What they could use they used, expediently. What did not cost them anything, they continued. Everything else was dropped along by the wayside as they made their way across the US.

As an aside, I think if you look at how so many very distinct cultures that came to the US find themselves cultureless now is found in immigration. When the Irish came along, they were reviled by the people already here. They would ultimately have to integrate to become viewed as “Americans” (the old “You got to go along to get along” philosophy so prevalent in the US) and that meant either giving up their cultural practices or at least do them when no one was looking. In these days when we celebrate the culture of Ireland, it is easy to forget that it hasn’t been all that long since the Irish began to practice it themselves here in the US.

When these immigrating cultures would drop their heritage in the face of the New World (how actually useful they would have been here in questionable anyway) they followed the idea of an American culture that was, itself, a fairly new phenomenon. With the cascade of changes in this country in the 20th Century, one coming on the heels of the next, any culture begins to look ineffective to keep up with the changing times. There has been little time to drop any roots when, over and over again, the technological and political realties wash them aside. Expediency expects a mobile and rootless culture because the gravitation around the changes in fortunes (from farm work at the beginning of the century to factory work in the middle of the century to the fluctuation from city to city as they become centers of industry based on technologies whose centers, themselves, wax and wane from one city to the next) and the only culture that is left to us is what we see on the TV, in the movies, because one can collectively engage in them anywhere in the US. They become the lingua franca of the American culture. So much the worse for us.