Cultural
A nation’s culture surrounds, supports, and permeates its people. Shared knowledge, arts, beliefs, and practices are part of a nation’s environment. A common worldview (including attitudes, values, morals, goals, and customs) stabilizes a society. Ever-present, it can be invisible, forgotten, and ignored.
Understanding people requires understanding their culture. Words matter. So do images and narratives. Ian Frazier, for instance, says Native comedy “inside and outside mainstream entertainment” is “Part of Why We Survived.” He writes, “Humans are resilient, and the risky exhilaration of making one another laugh helps them to be.”
In “The One Thing TV Characters Don’t Talk About,” Jordan Calhoun reports, “It’s taboo in America to talk about money, and though art tends to challenge taboos, our popular culture largely falls in line when it comes to finances.”
Timothy Snyder questions
the idea that some kind of outside force is going to guarantee that the things that we desire and wish for are actually going to come about… After the end of communism in 1989, [elites spread] the notion that there are no alternatives left in the world…. It’s inevitable that…capitalism is going to bring about…democracy and freedom…. That idea shaped everything else. And I think that idea has a lot to do with the crisis of democracy and freedom that we’re in right now.
David Brooks writes, “The central conservative truth is that culture matters most; the central liberal truth is that politics can change culture.”
In his July 15, 1979, (still relevant) “Crisis of Confidence” speech (which boosted his approval ratings prior to the Iran hostage crisis), President Jimmy Carter told the nation:
It's clear that the true problems of our Nation are much deeper — deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession…. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.... We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.
All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values.
Wesley Morris believes “American Culture Is Trash Culture.” He writes:
It’s not just that trash is what Americans want from movies; it’s who we are. So where did it go?
...Our culture has always been at its most pure when it’s in the gutter, when it’s conflating divine and ugly, beauty and base… Ragtime, jazz: Somebody was always on hand to cry debasement…. But the crude truth of trash is that we like it — to cry over, to cringe and laugh at — even when we say we don’t. The gutter is where our popular culture began, and the gaminess lurking there is our truest guise.… It vanished from movies. But trash is a persistent, consumptive force that’ll set up shop in any eager host. And its shamelessness went and found a new home, in American politics.
Many people embrace “cultural evolution,” the belief that humans have made progress because cultures develop gradually from simple to more complex forms as do biological forms inevitably. Many observers, however, question that cultural processes inherently improve over time. Hannah Arendt, in On Violence, insists the notion of “Progress” is a myth and applying biology to culture is mistaken.
Massimo Pigliucci argues
Ultimately, it is still very much an open question whether we can develop a coherent Darwinian theory of cultural evolution, or whether it may be better to abandon the analogy with biological evolution and recognize that culture is a significantly different enough beast to deserve its own theory and explanatory framework.
Clearly, humanity has made material and social progress, but whether it has made moral progress is another question. Regardless, the issue is abstract. No God or external force is pushing us forward. There’s no cultural wave to ride. Humanity is responsible for making whatever improvements it can.
Moreov er, the assumption that the West must spread its culture and dominate the world is dangerous. Russ Douthat posits the world may become
divided into some version of what Bruno Maçães has called “civilization-states,” culturally-cohesive great powers that aspire, not to world domination, but to become universes unto themselves — each, perhaps, under its own nuclear umbrella,… from the Hindutva ideology of India’s Narendra Modi to the turn against cultural exchange and Western influence in Xi Jinping’s China.
Accepting diversity globally seems as wise as doing so nationally.
The highest purpose of culture is to inspire wonder, curiosity, and compassionate action, often by awakening subconscious awareness. Movies, music, novels, and other arts introduce us to stories of people from different places and times, helping us see the world more clearly, respectfully, and deeply. They enable us to better understand others and ourselves.
Abstract ideologies divorced from reality reinforce friend-enemy divisions. Mobilizing people by pointing to concrete problems and solutions rather than arguing about broad theories works best.
Empathy and compassion help develop compassionate cultures, at work and elsewhere. In “The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them,” in 2021 Emma Goldberg reported
“Twenty-somethings rolling their eyes at the habits of their elders is a longstanding trend, but many employers said there’s a new boldness in the way Gen Z dictates taste…. Managers…understand the instinct Gen Zers have to protect their health, to seek some divide between work and life — but some are baffled by the candid way in which those desires are expressed. They’re unaccustomed, in other words, to the defiance of workplace hierarchy....”
“Cancel culture” has become a focus of great controversy. It involves ostracizing, boycotting, shunning, firing, or assaulting individuals deemed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner. These punishments have often been presumptuous and harsh. Many critics of offensive behaior have gone overboard.
However, in “‘Cancel Culture’ Isn’t the Problem. ‘OK Culture’ Is,” Lindsay Crouse argues it’s time “to start thinking more deeply about why the behavior they punish seemed OK in the first place…. OK Culture is what allows…noxious discourse.”
These and other resources posted here point the way toward cultivating a more democratic, compassionate culture that nurtures holistic, systemic reform to transform our society into a compassionate humanity dedicated to the common good — by replacing the Top-Down System with a Bottom-up System.
The above linked resources support the arguments presented in this chapter.
These above linked tools, some tested and others untested, present methods that compassion-mind people can advance the holistic democracy movement, whether or not they identify with this movement or the compassionate humanity community or explicitly commit to mutual support for self-improvement.
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