Active Cultures

Consider culture from the viewpoint of an American icon, the great Martin Luther King, Jr., who said that “cowardice asks the question- is it safe? Expediency asks the question- is it politic? Vanity asks the question- is it popular?” (thekingcenter.org, 2013). While the remainder of the quote is tangibly missing here, it will be addressed in due course. In today’s world, people of many cultures find themselves asking these same questions, and all too often avoiding the question Dr. King followed the former queries with. In a world where culture is more visible than ever before, the first questions asked by the masses have nothing to do with what’s right, but with what’s politic.

It is necessary, before discussing culture as a modern force that shapes the world, to define it. According to Penn State, “Culture consists in patterned ways of thinking, feeling and reacting, acquired and transmitted mainly by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievements of human groups, including their embodiments of artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional (i.e., historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values” (PSU, n.d.). Some good examples of culture that are easily recognized, to name a few, are the individualism found in many western countries (work hard, and you’ll go far), pride of lineage in the indigenous peoples of latin America, the swastika, the hammer and sickle, the stars and bars. Culture can take as many forms as there are groups to shape it. In the early years of human population of the North American Continent, archaeologists have found numerous distinctions between groups less than 500 strong, located within 35 miles of one another (Snow, 2010). There is essentially no limit to the cultural divergence that can be seen, if enough time and the right shaping elements are present.

That being the case, it becomes necessary to consider why, in such a diverse climate of cultural differences, do members of one culture often appropriate that of another group, or at least a part of another group, in order to get along. The best example, and one that will be only briefly discussed, is politics. In modern America, our political culture is broken down, essentially, into two parties, who espouse the values held by different groups. It is nearly ubiquitous that, when someone subscribes to a particular party between the two, they will espouse the same values held by that party to the letter, essentially taking numerous cultures, and dividing them down into two simple blocks. For the voter who identifies with many but not all of the party values, such as an individual who supports gay marriage and abortion, but also believes in strong gun rights, this becomes a question of some difficulty. That person might ask themselves if they can actually identify with that party at all; they may go and consider the other subscription to which they have access. People who they know might try to persuade them to abandon certain beliefs in favor of what might be called the party “super culture.” Anyone who has spent time around gun enthusiasts knows that there are cultural quirks that other groups do not have. So, if a member of the gun culture decides to change their views in order to better suit the party metric, what has become of that person’s connection to their culture. Most likely, they have made a question of expediency; “is it politic?” The answer is no, and therefore their culture becomes appropriated. Consider on the other hand, an candidate for office who may believe strongly in smaller government and religious principles playing a hand in governance, but doesn’t believe that large corporations should benefit from certain tax breaks. The same principle applies. If that person were pressured to make a choice regarding the matter, likely in a public setting, and chose to side with the party (which seems to happen more often than not these days), would it not seem that they had asked the question of vanity, choosing to go with the popular route, rather than what they actually believed?

It seems that culture, for all of its diverse expanse and permeability, is also a very malleable subject, capable of taking on whatever shape is truly expedient to the person experiencing the cultural dilemma or difficulty. While I was a soldier, deployed to Afghanistan, I had the opportunity to work with an interpreter who was born and raised in the mountains surrounding the province of Gardez. He was, by all counts, a devout Muslim. he  worked hard to provide for his family, but at some point, his cultural path diverged from that of the typical young Pashtun man of the era. Years before I met him, he had been a stereotype in motion; years later, as we walked the rocky slopes of the mountains of Paktika province together, he had become a different person entirely. He would regularly use his left hand to eat, eliciting from himself a slight boyish chuckle every time he did so. He was well known for being a covert purveyor of liquor on the American base where we were stationed, and he was a particularly big fan of the TV series, “The Big Bang Theory.” Despite that, we would regularly stop our convoys and missions for him to say his daily prayers. In fact, several of us joined him, when it was safe to do so, at his invitation, an act that would be grounds for execution among the culture from whence he came. The divergence of this man’s cultural choices was astounding; he openly defied many aspects of it, while diligently subscribing to others. It wasn’t until near the end of our work together, shortly before I was shipped home, that he explained to me why. He quoted the missing sentence of the passage quoted above by Dr. Martin Luther King: “But, conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right” (thekingcenter.org, 2013). I believe he understood his own culture more deeply than any Ph.D candidate could.

In the mix of things, culture is both a defining and malleable feature of the peoples of the world. It is regimented in some cases, loosely enforced in others. It comes back to the quote by Dr. King, who, now a half century gone, still speaks wisdom to the world. Culture, in most cases, defines for the people who subscribe to it what is right. It is an indicator of the consumer culture in America that culture can be so easily shifted in order to support a political cause for which one party or another has declared allegiance. It is equally an indicator of the burgeoning enlightenment taking place in a backwater corner of Afghanistan that a man can choose to keep the parts of his heritage he deems valid, and excise the others from his life if they are decided to be without value. As humanity continues to march forward into its own future, the role that cultures past, present, and future will yet play, will be pivotal in how the world looks in the decades to come.

King, Jr, M.L. (n.d.). Conscience asks the Question. The King Center. Retrieved from http://www.thekingcenter.org/blog/mlk-quote-week-conscience-asks-question

Penn State University. (n.d.). Leadership in a Global Context, Lesson 2: Defining Culture. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1802572/modules/items/21179051

Snow, D. (2010). Archaeology of Native North America. Prentice Hall, New York.