April 2005

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<eventtime>2005-04-18 12:11:00</eventtime>

<logtime>2005-04-18 17:13:31</logtime>

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Traditionalism vs Innovation - (Old vs New) or - What Is Culture and Why Is It Important?

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Dictionary.com defines Culture as the following: <lj-cut> <i>cul·ture ( P ) Pronunciation Key (klchr) n. The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. These patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population: Edwardian culture; Japanese culture; the culture of poverty. These patterns, traits, and products considered with respect to a particular category, such as a field, subject, or mode of expression: religious culture in the Middle Ages; musical culture; oral culture. The predominating attitudes and behavior that characterize the functioning of a group or organization. Intellectual and artistic activity and the works produced by it. Development of the intellect through training or education. Enlightenment resulting from such training or education. A high degree of taste and refinement formed by aesthetic and intellectual training. Special training and development: voice culture for singers and actors. The cultivation of soil; tillage. The breeding of animals or growing of plants, especially to produce improved stock. Biology. The growing of microorganisms, tissue cells, or other living matter in a specially prepared nutrient medium. Such a growth or colony, as of bacteria.</i> Also <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture">Wikipedia</a> has a rather fascinating article on culture; of which many of the ideas are remarkably similar to my own. Congratulations. I invented the Toothbrush. Specifically, I am reminded of that Sesame Street Character who was awed and amazed that he had invented the toothbrush, only to be told that someone had already done it. Then again, I never made the pretense of Genius, I simply decided that it was important to comment upon. I believe that's largely the point of Blogs, though I need to study this further since it would be helpful to most if I used terminology they recognized rather than inventing my own; for example I find the concept of "Cultural Jamming" to be a fascinating one. Regardless, I find the name of the concept very telling. What you call a word defines it. Yet when you define your definition, everything looses meaning until you are lost in a morass of Noiric doom. I've seen many artistic peices on this sort of thing, and while mental entropy is a fascinating concept, its not something I want to live in. On the other hand, I think one of the central questions of my initial postulate; an attempt at codifying the moral underpinnings of an ethical code for America that is applicable independant of spiritual/religious thought is not necessarily possible; but still worth attempting. You see, it comes back to defining what "America" is, or what a culture is. This is the type of thing that academics spend years writing papers on, but such has never stopped me from delving into the question before. The thing that recently convinced me of the importance of culture was in the last election. The Republicans routinely spin things in a 1984 fashion, "Personal Accounts" instead of "Private Accounts". Of course, this has been going on for quite some time. There is a reason that "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" is so popular. Hitler understood it very well; and while many leaders before or after him have attempted to use the technique, his stands out the most in my mind of a deliberate attempt by the state to reengineer a culture using modern methods of propaganda and scientific testing. The culture that truly frightens me in this regard is China. China is applying principles on a level that the rest of us don't even begin to touch. There are many dictatorships around the world and the concept of a 'ministry of information' or vice police or whatever secret police unit that you want to use to oppress or control ideas is as old as humankind itself; however China has recently begun to perform this on an entirely new level. They do not ban sites; they simply selectively prune and nip what is accessible to their population, much as one might prune a Bansai tree (yes I realize the irony of that analogy). They understand what makes corporations tick; money. So they control what hollywood does or does not produce based on the simple incentive that if that studio produces a film that they don't like, they will be banned from doing business in China. During the 1980's, every staple villain that I saw growing up was a Russian Communist Spy. Occasionally you had others thrown in, and yes, it is true that these villains were often stereotypical and poorly done, but before your artistic sensibilities gets up in anger against sterotypes; perhaps you should consider the more important principle of artistic freedom. Yes, sterotypes are bad, but if a director, writer or producer WANTED to produce a film about the evils of the government of China they should be free to do so. Which of course they are, on the independant movie circuit. Of course, quite frankly you don't see much of that either, becuase there is so many problems going on in the world that who has time to worry about China? Sure they're not <i>NICE</i> but that's nothing compared to the evil going on at XYZ place. And in the short term you would be right. But understand that the tools and techniques being refined in the People's Democratic Republic of China cannot be put back in the bottle; once they are refined (and they are becoming VERY refined), what is to stop other regimes from picking up the same ideas? Democracy may be enjoying a resurgeance in many areas; but as near as my analysis can tell it isn't anywhere close on the surface of china. That is because the Chinese understand what makes a culture very well; they control anything, ANY form of association that would create a culture outside of the areas that they control. Sure, you can BUY anything you want, but economic freedom is only half of the pie; because it is very EASY for a state to control a culture that is controlled by money. It is much harder to control a religion, philosophical movement or artistic expression that might criticize the government because such thinking is often variant or directly outside of the scope of what the tyrants who run the party understand. People simply don't see these things as I do; case in point...two masterfully crafted movies that recently came out of China that made it to the screen here that I call "Blatant Chinese Propaganda". You don't see it or realize it unless you're looking for it, but its there nevertheless. <b>For those of you who have not seen <i>Hero</i> or <i>House of Flying Daggers</i> and don't want spoilers, stop here.</b> The movie Hero was when I started to realize exactly what they were doing. The basic point of the movie is a massively shifting and well done story about a 'whodunnit/why' martial arts movie trying to figure out the motive's of Jet Li's every man. Well, at the end of the story, it is revealed that he is an assasin trying to destroy the emperor. One of the major themes of the movie, talked about by the creators is a 'circles of love' concept in which there are greater circles of love and which the highest circle of love gives the greatest amount of power. By the end of the movie, Jet Li has determined that he must sacrifice himself for the first Emperor, because "Our Land" is more important than any one person. Now, you may ask yourself that there are many western movies that tell the same thing; but in a subtly different way. Individuals die trying to defend a greater cause "Obi-Won Kinobi" or any number of a different things where the hero 'valiantly dies' to defend his cause...even in the Seven Samuri (to those who would use an East vs West cultural argument), the fact is that it is the choice of those who die for the greater cause; and ultimately the cause is something that empowers not only the state and not just the individual. Which in plain english means that I find it highly distrubing that you have a cinegraphically stunning, well acted and brilliantly coreographed work telling you, "It is OK to die for someone who is for the greater good killing people and taking away the greater freedoms of the individual for the greater good of peace and tranquility for all." Most people don't come out of that movie seeing that. I do. Maybe that's not what the creators meant at all; that's certainly not what they're SAYING they meant, but the fact of the matter is, how do we know since they're not allowed to have a choice in the matter in the first place? Now lets go back to that 'east vs west' thing. There is a thought in many circles that we should respect other cultures because 'that's just the way they are'. They developed 'naturally'. I paralel this thinking (in my mind) to Environmentalism. What?! you might ask....bear with me a minute here. I'm going somewhere with this. There are two ends of the spectrum (as I see it) on Environmentalism. Ultra Naturalists, who generally feel that nature should be allowed to take its course, that-for example the Green Specked Black Spotted Duck is an entirely separate species from the Green Specked White Spotted Duck even though they are only separated by one gene. How do you define what a species is? From their definition all species, as they define it, are equally sacred and worthy of protection. Indeed, the extreme far end of this point on the spectrum is that humans have no place being here at all and that they are a natural aberation; we would be doing ourselves and 'nature' a favor by simply killing ourselves and letting 'nature' take its course. Of course, the fact that these people are often the ones that let the monkeys out of the cages with the Zombie plague in movies doesn't really speak much to their credibility. The scary thing is that there really are people like this in the world. They are not mere sterotypes, but actually exist. Even if they are in the minority. The other end of this spectrum, we'll call them the Frankensteins, are of the firm believe that mankind can do absolutely everything better. As such, it is perfectly ok to rob, loot and plunder the environment and destroy it utterly, and then what life is left you can bioengineer to your hearts content. To them 'nature' does not exist save as man defines it and that which your physical senses produces is all that there is. That which can be exploited for the dollar should be. Of course the question is far more complicated than that, because you also have the "TMNJ" (Take Me Now Jesus) school of Enviromentalism which is much like the Frankensteins, but can actually acknowledge that there is a spiritual reality to nature, but it doesn't matter because the Pearly Elevator is coming any day now (thus allowing for a convenient alliance between the TMNJ's and the Frankensteins, so it still serves the purpose of my axiomiatic metaphor just as well). And so now we come back to culture: A lot of this is ABOUT the Culture wars, and truth be told Memetic turf wars are going on between the culturalists who often coop environmental issues as part of their greater agenda. However, taking a step back I see two different underlying, sometimes conflicting and sometimes agreeing 'concepts' in the way that all of the conflicting cultures and ideas take. I'll be more clear: I see an anology between the Environmental Axiom I just presented and the Metacultural one; at least the important one in terms of defining what a 'good' method of defining what a culture is. On one of the spectrum you have the Cultural Darwinists. That is to say, that if a culture finds it ok to sacrifice babies to hyenas with soy sauce, then we have to respect their culture. Let 'nature' take its course as far as a culture is concerned and each people is entitled to their own sets of beliefs. On the other end of the spectrum, you have the Cultural Definers. These are often religious people, but lately that has become the Republican party and to a highly disturbing degree the Democratic party. I have seen quite a bit of traffic of late saying how the Democrats need to speak in one voice and create a unified media network to counter "The Republican Noise Machine." This is what, I am fairly certain is termed "Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater". What good does it do to take up the 'effective' tactics of the 'enemy' if you only become them by doing so? You'd never see a highly charged anti gun advocate creating their own Gun organization. Yet the very same people that are decrying the 'ditto head' (a mark that such people take with PRIDE, which I find highly disturbing unto itself) mentality of certain people in the Republican party are advocating the need to create exactly the same machinery so that they can become exactly the same thing only BETTER. You see this Democratic Noise Machine will be advocating the ideas of GOOD so its ok to do this. Tactics define largely who and what you are; for example, given the wide range of topics I've talked about in this entry I am clearly a raving lunatic. But I digress. As with most things, based on my observation, a proper culture is going to take a path somewhere between the two, respecting existing traditions while understanding the fact that cultures are inherantly 'unnatural' things and that they are affected by the world around them. If you're going to do something, do it right. Define the culture that you are creating with clear and concise details while respecting the natural ebb and flow of ideas. Creating a "Democratic Noise Machine" is the WORST thing you can do to fix the situation. Again, going back to the environment....the fires that have recently afflicted many national forests are a result (based on my observation and many articles that I have read) of an absolute refusal to cut the trees in said forests. Of course, I can easily picture someone telling me at this point that this is all 'part of the consipiracy by the Republican Noise Machine to allow logging in the environment'. Except that it makes sense. Fire is going to burn a forest with lots of closely packed trees than a forest with lots of big trees spread out. I'm not an expert on fire, but my simple mental image analysis of the situation seems to me akin to a gravity test. I don't need a scientist to tell me whether it is or isn't good for a forest to burn from time to time, simply because of the fact that there are species who DEPEND on forest fires to propogate. Which thus brings about some of the inherant contradictions in this thinking...it is absolutely necessary to alter the environment to preserve it. Bringing the subject back to Culturalism. There are people who say it is not ok to demand that women be treated well in certain cultures because that is simple 'part of their culture'. I have seen very few environmentalists who are so committed to the idea that humans are bad that they will refuse a penicilin shot if they are sick. Conversely, I would find it extrodinarily difficult to believe that there are many Cultural Darwinists who would be happy in a culture that oppressed them and their free ability to think/feel/vote etc. Which brings the point of it all back to China. China understands the way culture works. They've studied it, refined it and tried it for almost 40 years. Technically longer than that since their culture 'swallowed' the invading Mongols whole in a few generations. Symbolism matters. Which means defining what you want to be a 'good' culture to be in a manner that allows religious freedom to still be prevalant and important is a Very Important Thing(tm). Nature abhors a vacuum. And right now there is a great deal of vacuum in our culture. For the first time in my lifetime, our culture is in decline. How do I know this? I know it because Harry Potter is more popular than most anemic american books. I know this because most saturday morning cartoons now have a heavy Japanese influence. Why? Because the Cult of Innocence has made our literature and media for children "Safe" by removing all concepts of evil or anything bad or harmful happening to children from it. Children, especially young adults have an inherant ability to detect Bull**** (so sue me, I'm Mormon) when they see it. They know the world isn't really like that. What they *WANT* is literature that addresses the world as it really is, and so they embrace works from other cultures where it hasn't all been washed away in a giant metaphoric amusement park like...well, the image that comes to mind is Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch. My point is; culturalism is an important science, and the efforts I see thus far to direct our culture in a positive direction are sorely lacking. There is no vision behind it, and very little substance. Furthermore, I think that the reason the vast majority of the polls seems to ignore the polarizing effect the loonies on either side of most spectrums tend to sense the lack of something vital in the substance of the argument of the other. In otherwords, call it spiritual senses, call it instinct, but when we grow up, our inherant sense of 'bullcrap' does not go away. Case in point, people NEED something to have deeper meaning in their lives, and they're not getting it from the Democratic Noise Machine. Otherwise all these 'religious sheep' who keep voting for the Republicans wouldn't be ignoring the Democrats. Someone needs to craft a message; something that incorporates living in this world but also advocates going to something greater; they need to define what it means to be an American and they need to do it in a way that addresses both the need for Religious Freedom and the Freedom from Religion. They're both important, but we've very much used the concept of Cultural Darwinism in this country, kind of finding our way by trial and error. This is the purpose of my pointing out China and to a lesser degree the Republican Noise Machine. John Henry was a good man and a great worker; but in the end he died. And the machine he fought against just got repaired and put to work. Cultural Darwinism has some good points to it; but it will LOSE to the Cultral Definers if someone doesn't find a middle path and find something that allows both to exist. Becoming a Cultural Definer to do it isn't going to solve the problem. None of that made sense to anyone reading this I imagine; or at least parts of it didn't. Even I only barely understand it, but the points are valid nevertheless and very very important.</lj-cut>

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