On Culture

There’s an age-old problem that people continually run into when trying to influence people and the world for the better: the dynamic between systems and character.ⁱ Poorly-designed political, social, educational, and economic systems will yield people of poor character, possessing questionable values, which will make it hard to accomplish good and needful things. As such, great thinkers have striven to design better systems in part to help individuals to better develop good traits. The problem is that systems are limited in what they can achieve. When people lack positive traits that these systems attempt to instill in them from the get-go, even the best-designed systems struggle to reach their goals. When bad actors get involved, for instance, ignorant people can easily be led astray to do things against their own interest, but this task becomes harder for the bad actors when the people are already knowledgeable. And problems come even with well-meaning people involved in the design or administration of these systems, if such designers or administrators happen to be lacking in important traits. In this way, being ignorant to why a system should bring a positive trait out of the public has great potential to miss its goals, or to just rely on luck to get there—which strikes me as a careless way to approach such an important task.

But existing systems serve to incentivize the development of the wrong sorts of traits, even in those with the best of intentions.ⁱⁱ And so we wind up with something of a paradox: Good systems must exist for people to be good, but they fail if people aren’t good to start. Good people are needed for good systems to be designed and for them to work, but poor systems already in place stunt the development of good people. When you struggle with the problem, it can feel intractable, but sticking with it and thinking on it far enough yields what I believe could be a way out—a difficult way out, but a way out nonetheless. The answer, I believe, lies within the second part of the problem: the people. For, the best-designed systems will still fail when administered by and for bad people, while it’s still possible for people to become good and do good things in spite of poor systems. But, if poor systems lead to poor people, we need to find another path that gets us to better people. For this, I think we need to look at culture to both understand the heart of the problem and to be able to start finding a way out of this mess.

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Despite what is commonly believed, traditional practices or the history and heritage of the group are not synonymous with culture. These pieces of a people are only a part of culture, and a small part at that, when they’re an active part of contemporary practices of the group or when they’re used to help understand the actual culture. Because, while these things aren’t culture itself, they influence and shape culture. No, culture is, rather, a reflection of a people, of a group, of its values and the makeup of its character.

The more significant cultural aspects that exist are active and consistent parts of the group’s day-to-day. Culture is identified from the regular behaviours of the members of the group. Some things that are commonly seen as cultural things absolutely are. For instance, popular art and media will offer a glimpse into a culture, as will understanding how members of the group interact with art and media. But there’s so many more dimensions to culture that aren’t commonly viewed as such, despite being integral aspects to a group’s culture. Economics factor heavily into an understanding of culture. Understanding what businesses thrive or the types of products purchased within the cultural environment will do a lot to show a culture’s character, as will understanding how the individual interacts within the economic community and how he interacts with his possessions. And looking at the economy more broadly will demonstrate aspects of the group member’s character and values. In this way, what type of work is valued; who gets financial support, how much, and why; how individuals work;ⁱⁱⁱ and relative equality or inequality within the group all become important parts of the cultural makeup. Similarly, politics factors heavily into a group’s culture. You learn much of the values and character of the individuals who compose a group when observing how the group is governed and who governs it, through the behaviour of its governors, and how its members interact with its governors and the system, both in how active members are and what this action looks like. And, of course, aspects of a group’s culture will be gleaned from how members interact with each other more generally, as well as from how they spend their leisure time.^iv

Territory is another commonly overlooked aspect of culture, despite its existential importance. For a culture to exist, there must be a safe place for its members to come together. This can sometimes entail open territory, varying from a single building or neighbourhood up to an entire city or province or nation,^v but it also could exist more in secret within the larger cultural territory. Examples of the latter would be the culture of persecuted groups: indigenous peoples within colonial states; LGBT groups in many nations and over many periods; or religious minorities. Keeping sight to the territorial aspect of culture along with the understanding of culture as a reflection of values serves to make various clashes and reactions explicable that otherwise confuse people or are given oversimplified, superficial treatment. Included here are xenophobic reactions to immigration or anti-transgender actions and sentiments. It becomes hard for people to look thoughtfully outside their cultural group and its territory when interacting with others, and so it becomes easy not to realize that core values may no longer hold when stepping outside the territory—and people similarly may not even realize when they’ve stepped outside this territory and into another cultural space. To attempt to push cultural values into another’s space is akin to territorial expansion, which invokes an expected response from those who stand to lose territory. Those within the domain “under attack” suddenly face consequences for acting in a way that previously brought none, and thus lose safety in the process. This can bring a change in atmosphere within the space, causing a sort of tension that wasn’t felt before, but it can also lead to complete loss of territory. Framed in this way, angry and backward responses to cultural “progress” become understandable, although I doubt that those who engage in such responses generally understand why they act as they do.

All this also gives us insight into the establishment, growth, and maintenance or protection of a culture. Culture ultimately comes down to people and values. When shared values are discovered between people or groups, choosing to associate allows for the establishment or growth of a combined culture on the basis of these values. Should values not be shared across cultural lines, growth across these boundaries suddenly becomes difficult. It will lead either to clashes—which could lead to either side gaining, or even to a return to a cultural and territorial status quo—or to a conversion. This last point is important in the context of a culture’s maintenance. Should enough members invade a culture bringing different values, these values can become established, either warping or supplanting existing values in the process. This becomes apparent when groups attempt to grow by attracting members from other cultural spaces. Groups are often tempted to alter themselves in order to try and appeal to others. Such an attempt may yield more members but, if it causes the existing values to change, to resemble those of the other, it leads to the destruction of the culture instead of its growth. And the same can be said of the influence of powerful groups, including governments or private corporations. Their involvement in a culture serves to inject outside values or to direct values to ends that favour the powerful group at the expense of the smaller one. As such, cultural members must be mindful to do what they can to protect against these outside influences, lest their culture effectively becomes an extension of the greater group.

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I, personally, value many things that seem at odds with the cultures that immediately surround me. I want to be thoughtful, honest, brave, strong, knowledgeable, stable, adaptable, capable, reliable, and active within my community. This is all at the service of sweetness and light, of passion, of spirit. It’s toward a sense of duty, both at home and at work. I want to be there for the people in my life; I want to understand what I should do and how I should do it; I want to be part of something cohesive. I want to act and speak in a way that isn’t shameful; I want to do right, and I want to rightly feel no guilt when I act. And this all influences and supports my hostility toward privilege, greed, celebrity, mendacity, panderers, sycophancy, and cruelty.

I’ve spent a great deal of my adult life in an attempt to shape myself in this general direction, and it has involved gruelling work. In part, this is because of the time and effort it takes to develop myself physically, mentally, and emotionally. The struggle is also due to the difficulties of attempting this within a cultural space lacking these values, with individuals perhaps wanting some of these things in relative isolation and without understanding the actual work that goes into achieving them. I’ve been forced to cut so much out of my life that I previously enjoyed—movies, television, video games, a great deal of social events—instead spending as much of my precious time and energy reading, writing, and exercising, challenging myself to do better. And there’s a constant pull back into the world of the old values, where what I’m trying to avoid flourishes and that which I crave shrivels. And I know that I only possess and embody a small portion of the values I seek. I’m in good enough physical shape to serve my purposes,^vi but I can be so much fitter and stronger. I still fall into mindless scrolling online when I’m mentally exhausted after a long day at work, and I can escape from it with varying degrees of success. And I’m hardly active in my community or surrounding society.^vii But I’m trying.

While I don’t think everyone needs to be just like me to be good, I do think possessing some of these drives and values are integral to becoming the types of people we need to do good in society. We would all do well to look around us and directly at ourselves, to truly understand what values we possess and to determine if our behaviours actually uphold the good we want to achieve. And all this will entail the establishment of safe cultural spaces where people can associate and exchange ideas to the benefit of such good and noble values. As it stands, however, this cultural space doesn’t exist or, at least, I’ve been unable to find it.

Notes

i. I first encountered this idea overtly in George Orwell’s essay on Charles Dickens.¹ In Orwell’s estimation, Dickens approached this problem within his writing from the same side that I’ll be approaching it within this discussion.

ii. Capitalistic systems, for example, breed liars and manipulators by allowing individuals to accumulate wealth when taking advantage of others. Contemporary party-politics breeds apathetic, ignorant, and selfish voters through the propaganda, policies, and rhetoric that yield the best electoral results for the parties.

iii. How do individuals view their work? How much pride do they take in their work? How do they behave when they work? Do they work hard and well? Why do they work as they do? How do they interact with coworkers? How about others, such as customers?

iv. If they even have leisure time.

v. Cultures may extend beyond national borders. (Mainstream religions may be examples of this.) However, I have a suspicion that it’s more accurate to look at such examples as distinct, but related, cultures that likely don’t extend beyond the nation rather than single, large mono-cultures.

vi. I can still play with my daughter at length without tiring, for example.

vii. I previously have launched myself head-first into different groups and movements, but I took a step back once I felt poor doing so. I’ve taken up foundational reading for quite some time now to help build a sound base for my political and social consciousness, largely in the hopes that it can help me develop a better compass for what I should be doing if I want to actually do good. While I think I’ve hugely benefited from the exercise, it, unfortunately, has not translated into immediate, actionable answers within the contemporary social and political climate.

References

1. Orwell G. “Charles Dickens, Part I.” Essays. Penguin Books, 2014, pp. 35-48.