Well, firstly, we covered a lot of ground over the question of what culture is. I think that the students were able to brainstorm and think deeply about what culture is, while learning that there is a lot of things that are "invisible" that make up the more visible parts of the culture- things like gender roles, social relations, hierarchy, collective or independent, "doing" or "being", religious influences, economy, history, philosophy, ways of dealing with confrontations, communication styles, and on and on. We can say that these are invisible because they couldn't be learned unless someone spends time in the culture and learns the ways of that culture. The visible things are the things that are obvious and more tangible to the senses- the music, clothing, some parts of the language (while others are hidden until you begin to learn the language, like formalities, etc.) We learned this through looking at culture as an iceberg, the small top part being visible, but underneath the surface a large "hidden" world within a world.
The last thing that we learned through the reading was based on the Kluckholn and Strodbeck reading, and that was about orientations: activity, social relations, and self. The other two which we have not yet covered are World Orientation and Time Orientation, which I'll discuss now.
World Orientation poses these four questions:
- Are human beings intrinsically good? Well, if you look at the Judeo Christian book of Genesis, we can safely say that in the west the prevailing idea is that we screwed up big time, and that deep down we are bad, even though we are at heart Children of God. Judaism and the Torah give us the law, so that we can know how to once again live right and be justified before God. Christ comes along and through His death we are justified, all of our transgressions died with Christ on the Cross, and that we are redeemed through faith in Him. So, starting with these stories, I assume that most people in the West and beyond believe that we are bad, or we have the potential for a lot of evil within us, and that it is through an outside force like Grace in which we can be washed clean.
Many others would claim secular humanism as their belief system, and might say that we have the potential for both good and bad and that it's a choice. So, the prevailing idea in the west is that we do have at least some potential for evil at heart.
Along side this, Westerners tend to see themselves apart from nature, and actually believe they have the ability to manipulate, protect themselves from, and control for their our benefit. God said in the Bible that man will have dominion over all things.
Genesis 1:26
Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground."
If we look at this belief held at a deep cultural level, it may explain a lot of things that have occurred throughout our brief history on the planet>> agriculture>> leisure time>> stocking up for winter >>> shift from hunter gatherer to more sedentary dwellers >>> village>> town>> city. It seems the story of the westerner has been a long one that seeks to master the elements with good effect (technology, longer living, convenience) coupled with often and ongoing ill effect (pollution, cancer?, global warming). A good book to read and check out on this subject is the fictional book called "Ishmael" which shows our history as moving us closer and closer towards rendering the earth uninhabitable.
In other societies, particularly African and Native American among many others, there is belief in God, man, and nature, and that God is at the top of this triangle, and that we are following God when we are living in harmony with the universe (God, nature, man) (Daniel and Smitherman). One like look at the "primitive" societies of the world of the soon to be past and see that in their mode of existence there was very little destruction of the natural resources in the name of progress.
The second question asks, "Are humans different from other animals and plants? In some cultures maybe less so than in most of ours.
3. Are people in control of, subjugated by, or living in harmony with the forces of nature?
4. Do spirits of the dead inhabit and effect the human world? When I was in Brazil I saw a Candomble ceremony in which adherents were in turn "possessed" by the spirits of various gods, which compelled them to dance, drink, and take on new identities for a brief period where they would drink from large beer bottles and smoke giant cigars or cigarettes. In Haiti it is common knowledge among people that dead people walk the earth as zombies and there are few who question this; in fact it is a law that you cannot raise the dead in Haiti. In the States, most are skeptical of anyone who claims that they have seen a ghost.
The final Orientation that Kluckholn and Strodbeck cover is that of Time:
1. How should time be valued?
2. Is time a scarce resource or is it unlimited?
3. Is the desirable pace of life fast or slow?
4. is time linear or cyclical? In the Chrisitian belief, God created the universe, and that one day it will end. In Buddhism. Inca, Mayan, and Greek concepts, time is cyclical, meaning it is like a wheel and that time will repeat again in the future. The ancients could look to the seasons, the waxing and the waning of the moon, to see that all things have no true beginning or ending, but just cycles.
I was thinking about time and culture today as I was pretty bummed at myself for having wasted time getting out of the house. It was three O'clock and I hadn't managed to get much accomplished. Me being from the supposed "Doing" culture, this didn't sit well. I silently cursed and rushed out of the house to salvage what I could of the day. In my book, a day is wasted unless I get out of the house, get some reading, do some exercise, and get a little work in there for good measure. I gotta be doing something. But then it struck me, why aren't I thankful for this time that I could just waste? Why shouldn't I just bask in the fact that I got NOTHING done, but just relaxed, piddle paddled around, and enjoyed the morning as it stretched into lunch and the early afternoon? Is it because I view time as linear, with the day ending, never again to be returned to me? If I don't do it now, I'll never get that time back, and maybe that's why I feel a little guilty or stressed when I do nothing (which is more often than I care to say). My culture is replete with sayings about time: The early bird gets the worm; don't waste time; I don't have enough time; time flies. We are obsessed with the ticking of the clock and the ever forward push towards death.
In Korea, there is a constant sense of "Bally bally!" where everyone is in a rush to get to where they are going. You can see this in the driving, in the rush to catch trains, even in the steps of the old. I'm of the opinion that this comes from it being a spatially small country with lots of people and if you are ever going to get what you need then you need to hurry up and beat the others. It's like this in most big cities I guess, whereas in the country time seems to slow down and becomes less pressing. In Korea, I like to say that people are in a hurry to wait. People move so fast, yet they are always slaves to traffic lights, trains not yet arrived, and traffic and human jams that build up. You can see this in the way people spped toward a red light, slowing down at the last moment to wait for the light that never seems to change. The sale of brake pads must be a good business here.
Yet Korea has a huge connection with the past, and values the past just as the Chinese and Japanese do. During "Chuseok" the Korean equivalent of Thanksgiving, families come together to pay the respect to their dead, and they often visit the graves. Since the fifties, however, and the 5 year and 10 year plans set out by Park Chung Hee, the Korean mind has been very much geared for the future and the prosperity that it may bring.
Stuckholn and Strodbeck say that Latinos and Native Americans are more focused on the present. I think that this is something that many of us future-minded folk are beginning to aspire to. Living in the presence. Carpe Diem. If time is not real, then the future and the past are not even there, just memories and hopes. the true moment is now, and it is really the only time to get things done. We may remember and smile, we may plan and organize, but it is only now in which things can be done.
S and S put European Americans in the future oriented place, saying that we are governed by "clocks, appointments, and schedules." p.101 In order to make a schedule, appointment, or plan, then they have to be thinking of the future. I imagine that living in the present would appear more spontaneous. A visitor might show up at your house unannounced, or in today's cellphone-saturated world, you might get more calls out of the blue to meet or talk, rather than scheduling appointments courteously ahead. In Korea, work related activities are often announced with little or no time ahead, and just as easily cancelled. It can drive a westerner crazy.
The things that went well in class this week: cover of culture, deep thinking of one's own culture
things that went bad: too little explanation of being, becoming, and doing cultures; poor debriefing of the orientations test that I gave them; one that I created and the results were rather random and varied and did not at all show what I wished the to show, that different cultures might answer the questions differently and that students from the same culture would have similar answers and scores, which they really didn't.
Next week: Finishing the Strodbeck reading, answering the questions, getting into collective and individual cultures, watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and more....
No comments:
Post a Comment