A Personal Comment On Culture
By Robert Lunaburg
My long life (I'm in my seventh decade) has brought
wonder and knowledge to me constantly. I even claim the acquisition of a small
portion of wisdom along the way. One of the marvels that I find fascinating is
that of how our culture is passed down generation after generation. I am a
lifelong member of one national, and several local cultures, which are firmly
woven into the fabric of the
Transmitting
Culture
One of the many questions I have always found
interesting is, “How does culture get passed down through time and
generations?”
It’s certain to me that people have to show and tell
those, always younger than themselves, about the culture that directs the
common thoughts and actions expressed by a community, or the culture simply
does not continue.
If what I say seems to meander a bit, bear with me. I
will sum it up in the end.
If we go back far enough in time we find that culture,
way back at its start, was passed on entirely by word of mouth, with some
imagery, and some actions. Since I believe the root of understanding imagery
and actions is based largely on language, I would say word of mouth had the
most profound influence on the continued existence of all early cultures,
although mimicked actions certainly worked before that.
Having said this, I have also participated in the
party game called ‘Telephone’
where one person whispers a phrase to another, and that person in turn repeats
it to another, and so on until the last person repeats what they hear out loud.
The beginning statement rarely matches the ending statement. This game in
itself isn’t a cultural influence, but it does point out how easily the spoken
word can become corrupted over time.
Of course imagery and actions, once made permanent
(e.g. symbols and dance), present a more constant and consistent basis for the
words used to express the culture; they give concrete boundaries to the
fluidity of language. So if a culture valued memorization of words, concrete
forms would help pass culture forward less encumbered by change.
Change and
Complexities
Now, if all this had occurred in isolated places,
within a never changing environment, all cultures would have been free to be
passed down, year after year, without change. This, of course, did not, and
does not happen. So, the culture we value, live by, and strive to protect is
something that is always ever changing. But as we live our culture, we tend to
believe it has been that way for ever before, and will stay the way it is now
forever into the future.
Another factor of culture is that it is complicated—so
much so that throughout time we began to charge some among us to be keepers of
our culture. In some places these keepers are community elders. In others, they
are a specific segment of the people like medicine men, respected leaders,
holders of the faith, and so on.
This raises yet another question, “When a culture is
complicated, how many of those influenced by it are completely aware of it
all?” My guess is, not everyone.
The Effects of
Writing and Literacy
In time the written word came to be a dominant
influence on preserving culture. In the beginning this was only for the few who
were literate, those with the most influence on the lives of the many. But this
would change as literacy grew among people.
It wasn’t that long ago that literacy for the masses
became possible. I’m not thinking printing press here as much as I am just the
ability to read and write.
Writing came before reading. That’s an interesting
thought too.
In my few years, when compared to the history of the
world since its beginning, I have witnessed a myriad of changes just to the
instruments used for writing. I began with a lead pencil; moved from there to a
simple pen point and inkwell. Then I experienced the mechanical pencil and
fountain pen, next the ball point pen, and then for me it was the typewriter.
Now, I use a computer. All these things dedicated to one task, that of writing,
of preserving knowledge—one wonders if any of these color
what is written.
Here's a small example of what I mean by this. I like
to write stories. When I used a pencil, I used to imagine that all the words
and stories were somehow contained in the pencil. I merely freed them to be
expressed as I used it. I have no such thoughts like this about the computer.
Does that change what I write? I wonder.
And so what influence might this have had on culture …
books … the huge volumes of words used to influence the way we live? Under the
weight of all that makes them up, we now attempt to hold fast to our culture.
What Is This
Culture? Trying to Pin It Down
From where I stand, it is very hard for me to believe
that my view of my national culture is shared universally by all who live in my
nation. There are so few common symbols, and universally valued common rituals
around today that I’m not even sure my view, my understanding of community
culture, is shared by most who live in my community.
And so, what has happened to culture over time? It
seems to me that without jointly held values, symbols, rituals, and words to
explain them, culture is as vague as steam. It is comprised of catch phrases,
homemade symbols, and pamphlets grounded in loud voices.
Culture, today, is not based on what is best for
everyone today like when it was used to unite people within a safe and
understood way of life. Everyone's sense of culture today is easily influenced
by segments of other people who are in desperate need of the cultural understanding
of what they sense existed within their communities in the past.
Which do we strive to preserve? Our
perception of culture past, or that of today? Or is it right to say we
believe our sense of today's culture has always been that way? I don't believe many
ask these questions—just as no one contemplates a hammer. They just use it as
if it always was as it is.
There is another sense I feel about culture. Even
though we don't, and probably can't, articulate our own culture well enough to
express it for others to understand and accept it as we do, we believe it to be
sacred; something unquestionably worthy of defending, and preserving.
The Most
Important Question: How Our Many Cultures Can Best Live Together
So then, and this is perhaps the most important
question, one that brings us to the point of all this, “How do we live together
in this enormous variety of personally held ideals and values that cultures
(plural) present today?” I believe a world wide, commonly held universal
culture is never going to happen. “So, what do we do?”
The answer is simple to express, but hard to do. It
begins by all of us getting to know one another through literacy, and open
dialogue. It goes on to include a willingness to find the harmony, and the good
in each other—not the easily found bad we see in our differences. It begins
when we want to get along with each other. Once this is a single universally
held value (is that possible?), we will grow to value all of who we are—our
differences and similarities, and culture will be valued for what it is: the
binding force which unites, protects, and gives comfort to our lives in the
places where we, each of us, exist.