Dr. Forbush Thinks

I am of Scots decent. My family has been in this country since 1654; maybe longer because I don’t every ancestor 12 generations or more back 350 years. Over these past 350 years my family has lost the taste for haggis and the urge to toss the caber. In a strange twist of history my ancient ancestor was born after the time when the old style philabeg (predecessor of the kilt) had been banned by the government and before the new style kilt was invented in 1725. My ancestor from Scotland who was captured and brought to the “New World” against his will and sold as an indentured servant had only ever worn pants. It is quite strange to think of the idea of a Scottish Highland games that glorifies the kilt, but had never been part of my Scottish family’s heritage.

Actually there are quite a few ironies and distortions in our relationship between our ethnic heritage and our ethnic culture.

Did that last sentence sound strange to anyone? I am saying that ethnic heritage and ethnic culture are two different things. This is because people no longer live in the same small village for their entire life. More people travel than they used to. And, more people especially in America move around and live in different places. This mobile culture “overwrites” our “hometown” culture. And, when we leave a particular place our memory of that place becomes frozen in our minds as the way that place “IS.” But, the reality is that the place continues to evolve after we leave that place. And, the new place that we find ourselves a part of begins to change because of the ideas that we bring to it.

When we go to another country we take our “American” ideas with us. But those “American” ideas might be a mixture of 1970s Chicago, 1980s rural Texas and 1990s rural California experience plus everything we “know” from TV about America. And when the German who meets you learns about “America” he will form an idea about America that isn’t the same as if she had met a person who has a 1970s New York, 1980s LA and 1990s Seattle experience of America. In fact, it might make sense to talk about a “personal” culture at some point.

But, underlying these experiences of American life that give us an American culture we also have an ethnic culture that is passed down through our family by means of ethnic tradition. But when you live close to people from many different backgrounds it is likely that you will pick up bits and pieces of the cultures that surround you. We see this all the time in regard to food and drink. We eat Mexican, Chinese and Japanese food all the time. We serve bagels, falafel, pita pockets, hummus, coffee and tea that all came from other places and other cultures. We absorb new words and descriptions when we hear our neighbors use them. We wear clothes and shoes that we see our neighbors wear. Culture flows, it isn’t stagnant. But our mind freezes what we see today and we call that American culture. Maybe that is why many of us don’t like change. We have learned to like the culture that we have, because it gives us comfort, but as the culture changes as it always will we find ourselves looking for that old culture that we once knew so well.

My grandmother came to the United States in the early 1900s. She was following her father who was looking for a better life. He first travel to Leadville, Colorado where he went to work in the lead mines. After a short while he learned that the lead mines in Colorado were dangerous. They were dangerous because the owners of the mines owned the town and they knew that the workers didn’t have enough money to just pick up everyone in the family and move to a better place very easily. But my great grandfather was all alone and he didn’t have to pick up the family and move. He just needed to move himself, and so he did. He went to the coalmines in Pennsylvania and worked there, where he found that competition had forced the mines to be safer, although not completely safe.

When my grandmother and her family finally reached Pennsylvania they brought the culture of the “old” country with them. They made friends with others from their country and they attempted to save the traditions that they could. Some of their holidays fell on workdays in Pennsylvania, so they found that they couldn’t celebrate them in the same way. They found that those who wore the latest fashion quickly ridiculed them for wearing their native dress.

With all of this talk about culture, maybe we should define it to make sure that we understand what we mean by culture. And, what it comes down to is that culture is the same as values. What we value is a function of our experience and tradition. When the religious right talks about values they are talking about culture. And, the issue is that some people desire a common culture where everyone understands the standard values of the whole. The problem is that there is no such thing as a common uniform culture in a world where everyone is mobile. People bring their values with them as they move around the world and they leave their values with the people that they have contact with.

There are three broad categories of values: utilitarian, moral and existential. Utilitarian values are the foods and material things that we value. We might say that Americans value hamburgers as utilitarian value. We rank our favorite foods as a country and we determine what we value as the best foods as a culture. If we had a more uniform culture we might be able to have an “American” Restaurant where everyone would agree that “American” food was served there. Maybe it would be called Applebee’s or Marie Calendar’s. It is quite obvious that American food really isn’t a very strong utilitarian value. With so many different ethnic foods brought to the American dinner table our culture is extremely diverse.

Moral values are what we view as a culture to be right and wrong. The Christian right is correct when they say that our moral values are largely based on a Judeo-Christian ethic. This is because people with a Judeo-Christian heritage founded the Untied States and they brought those values with them. But, just because they passed those values down to us does not mean that those are the best moral values that exist. Many cultures have explored moral questions and those cultures have discovered different answers to those questions. Philosophers and theologians have explored the questions of ethics and morals and public discussion on these issues would be a good way to approach the problems we have with moral values. The main problem with our current understanding of morals is that they are based in many different religions, and many people find it difficult to question their personal religion. Therefore many issues such as gay marriage or abortion have little room for debate. There are too many people out there with an absolute view on the issues. If too many people have an absolute view on a religious issue they will not be persuaded by argument, and they will not accept the decision by the majority. If a minority feels strongly about a moral issue that they regard as an absolute, they may resort to violence and believe that they are justified by a higher power.

Even more important than moral values are existential values. These are the values that we have about our purpose as a species, society, culture, family or person. These questions are so important that we are afraid to think about them. We often teach our children to find their purpose through their religion, prayer, meditation or spiritual ritual. Since most of us have little confidence in what our purpose truly is we often defer the question to someone older and wiser, which also have no idea. And, sometimes we just “know” what we are meant to do. Currently, however our country is not united behind any specific purpose. We have determined earlier that we are “not the world’s policeman.” We have also determined that we should “spread democracy throughout the Middle East, starting in Iraq.” But what should our purpose as a country be? With the country being run by a group that believe that we are in the “End Times” predicted by the Bible purpose is not weighing on their minds. And, if we do not have a purpose articulated to the people, then the next crisis will make us ripe for the extremists to take another shot at grabbing for power, like the Bush administration did after 9/11/2001. Next time it might not turn out as well.

The point that I am trying to make with this post is that America is a land of diversity. The diversity is “good” in that it gives us plenty of choices when it comes to culture. Naturally as we experience different cultures we take what we value from them when we can. We take foods and art and ideas. We also take moral and ethical ideas as well when we see that they make more sense or solve social problems. But, with so much diversity we lose a sense of communal culture where we know what everyone else likes and believes. This makes things more difficult, because we need to communicate more to find out what our neighbor thinks. And, when we don’t have a defined purpose as a country, which is most often communicated through the culture, we could find ourselves vulnerable to extremists who could tell us what we should do in time of the next crisis. People will respond more easily if they do not have a clear picture of our purpose. This is a dangerous place for our country to be.

The solution is to discuss these things before we have our next crisis, so that we will be on the same page as a country and not be vulnerable to some crazy lunatic in the next crisis.






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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."


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