Culture and Multiculturism
The English word “culture” is a dynamic and polymorphous word that is hard to define uniquely. Over the years, experts came up with some 150 plus definitions associated with the word culture. Since it is a dynamically changing world, its use seems to drift with time to mean different things.
The Cambridge dictionary defines it as:
“The way of life, especially the general customs, unwritten rules of behavior and beliefs of a particular group of people at a particular time.”
The Oxford dictionary, on the other hand, defines culture as:
“Manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively for a group. Attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group.”
Others (such as Nicki Lisa Cole) feel that “it is a diverse and mostly intangible aspect of social life. What we do and how we behave.”
In his article in the New Yorker (12/26/2014), Joshua Rothman tries to put his arms around culture’s most common definitions. Most striking is “culture used to be personal human enrichment; however, nowadays it is unconscious groupthink, group defining norms (i.e., privilege culture).”
Emile Durkheim claims that “Culture can be material and nonmaterial aspects which hold society together.”
In essence, culture is the shared mental software developed over the lifetime of an individual that identifies the individual as a member of one group from another. Since “mental software” is our evolving, builtin model of reality (see https://medium.com/@giorabendor/dynamic-modeling-of-reality-in-our-brain-9fcb039cdf68) within which we function as part of a group, culture seems to have dominant power over our thoughts and values.
Defining the boundaries and specific content of culture is a mind-boggling task since it is multi-faceted and changes as a function of time. It thus becomes a circular argument when trying to come up with cause and effect.
With all of the above definitions and thoughts about culture, one can look at it (for the sake of this discussion) in more general terms.
Culture falls into three subgroups:
- Main society culture
- Secondary subculture (i.e., Pop Culture)
- Private culture (reserved for one’s home or personal life)
The primary culture consists of the values, ideas, and social structure transmitted from one generation to the next. It shapes the group’s behavior, social interaction, including the subset of high culture, such as art, music, and literature.
Popular culture is the trendy experimental aspects of art, including music, painting, filmmaking, couture, and literature, which collectively push the current norm’s envelope. At times the “fringe” taste does not get any traction, yet some aspects of this “push” tend to leak, in due time, into the primary culture. The media is directly responsible for pushing various elements of this culture. With copycats among the masses, this takes hold of people even though the mass media’s main aim is to make money independently of moral values to stop society’s harmful trends.
Private culture is that aspect of a culture that is personal and private. Specific habits and acceptable performance in one’s home are not necessarily familiar to all people outside of the house. Typical food or holidays may be unique to many families yet may not be acceptable by most group members’ primary culture practices.
The first two subclasses of culture, as defines above, are the visible reality within a society. Acknowledging the third subgroup may not be widely accepted; however, its impact on the rest of the community is negligible, thus unobjectionable. Since a person’s home is his castle, no one objects to this behavior other than when it crosses the decency line and infringes on others (such as excess noise or rowdy behavior late at night, or beating up one’s partner).
Different societies have different cultures, some with overlapping agreement areas, while others with entirely disjointed regions of acceptance. There is no absolute way to judge one culture from another. However, there are preferences by those who wish to live in an environment conducive to intellectual growth and reasonable progress. Sticking with a regressive culture is counter to progressive values.
With the dawn of the digital age and the wide use of the internet, people worldwide have access to ideas, thoughts, behavior, and style of living that bring about cultural leak or profusion of ideas and thoughts from one culture to another. Good views (for the well-being of society) and negative opinions spread quickly via social media. Freedom without limits leads to erroneous and dangerous results. Self-imposed or constrained freedom (by proper upbringing) possesses good social values.
Having gone through the somewhat confusing definition and use of the word culture, one needs to analyze its current use. Police culture, Business culture, Cancel culture, Black culture, etc. are in everyday use. In that sense, it implies the behavior of s specific subgroup.
Within the law, police culture may demonstrate excessive aggressiveness of enforcing the law and overusing unauthorized power, which logically needs upgrading to interface with regular law-abiding innocent people. Policing is a dangerous occupation, and unfortunately, we have much antisocial behavior within our society.
Business culture consists of acceptable behavior among business people, which may place money above proper ethics. Such action requires the placement of constraints (regulations) on business practices that are detrimental to society’s function.
Cancel culture is, on the other hand, a groupthink that has no rational origin other than unhappiness with one’s behavior. It is not practiced uniformly but seems to be vindictive with no logical thinking. It is more power-driven than a traditional approach to a perceived problem. This type of action is a real threat to our free speech and an open society. Open dialogue between opposing camps is a better way to try to understand each other. In some cases, a legal resolution of unacceptable incidents may be the right solution; after all, one is innocent before proving its action as guilty. Opinions are part of free speech as long as they are civilized and not insulting or hate-provoking.
Black culture is a subculture unique to the USA. It is not a culture with real roots in Africa but some variant southern culture (see Thomas Sowell, “Black Rednecks and while Liberals”). Over time the local culture molded the African ancestors’ minds (those who were unlucky enough to be captured and sold as chattel and eventually arrive in this country against their will). One would expect that the current generation of African Americans, many of whom moved up north, would change and slowly merge with the nation’s primary culture. Culture change is a slow transition, which thus far has not taken place. Some parts of the so-called Black culture resist this transition into the mainstream and prefer to remain separate. Separateness only exasperates the situation when cultures collide. The Afro-American history, as unpleasant as it may have been, is American history. There is no denying that if Americans of African roots had a chance to migrate to Africa, they would not be as happy as potentially in the USA.
Therefore, as illustrated above, culture is the glue that holds us together in terms of values and behavior, where the English language is one common denominator. We need to understand that multiple cultures that try to remain separate within the larger group are the leading cause of conflicts among the subgroups. Immigrants that come into the country of their own free will must understand that they are joining the majority’s culture. Denying this fact is only a cause for being handled as the “other” who is an outsider, one that can not be trusted. It is only natural that first-generation immigrants keep some “old country” customs, at home, with no adverse impact on society. However, forcing their culture onto the majority culture is a recipe for conflict, potentially resulting in hate. Within a few generations, the old customs’ tight grip tends to either vanish or blend into the mainstream. Those subcultures that insist on being separate yet equal are going against the grain and may generate resistance from the majority that would like to act as one nation with similar values and goals.
Societies such as the Japanese have a homogenized culture with little interracial strife. Likewise, before the recent migration from the middle east, the Scandinavian countries have also been pretty well homogenized and virtually free of societal conflicts.
Society’s culture, and especially its unified language, is the adhesive that binds different people together. As the world slowly becomes one large village, unique cultures will blend, routing out the harmful customs preventing progress, and accepting the better traditions that will propel society to greater heights. Multi-ethnic societies will be the future as people migrate for a better life. However, the primary culture of a nation should remain one even if it drifts slowly into another direction based on its mixed cultural backgrounds. We do not wish for a Tower of Bable but prefer harmonious cooperation from all people who call themselves a nation — driving through life under a mixture of rules of the road (cultures) make it impossible to navigate life.
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e Pluribus Unum (e plu·ri·bus u·num)
Out of many, one (the motto of the US).
GAB