Cultures – How to understand (and misunderstand!) them

I confess to being somewhat of a culture freak. I love history, cultures, mythologies, cuisines, languages and travelling in order to experience these first hand. In my opinion, cultures are best experienced where they were born and where they developed. The boundaries of culture, religion, ethnicity and society/nation (jurisdiction) often overlap to varying degrees and drawing the line where one ends and another begins is in many cases impossible. For the purposes of this short text I won’t even try to do that. Suffice to say, it is wonderful to learn new things from exposure to different ideas and environments and to bring some of the good ideas (especially those pertaining to language or cuisine!) back with you to your everyday life, perhaps eventually into your own culture as well. I adore the diversity of different cultures and traditions around the globe and would love to see the best parts of each of them preserved in their natural habitats. I also welcome some of the positive influences in my local culture. However, I’m strongly opposed to the multiculturalist idea of building isolated enclaves of separate conflicting cultures within each society. Allow me to present you a few short thoughts on why that is.

Culture is a big part of what make us human. Everyone is born into one, whether they want it or not. Our planet has, has had, and will continue to have countless different and constantly developing cultures. Few cultures are static, most of them evolve over time. Not all cultures are fit to survive or serve to uphold the basic human needs and rights of their members who will either seek to change them or adopt new ones. Although the process is organic and impossible to control, most successful cultures – much like individuals – seek to recognise their own shortcomings and evolve into something better. This brings us to an obvious observation: not every culture is the same.

Every culture has both positive and negative aspects and in some of them these are far away from any kind of equilibrium – and even if they were in some kind of a “balance” the negative aspects of a culture are by no means neutralised by the fact that the same culture also contains positive sides! Cultural relativism, which claims that no culture is intrinsically more (or less) valuable than any other, is hogwash. Must we accept the practising of, say, cannibalism, human sacrifice, paedophilia or slavery by a person who claims they happen to be part of their culture? A difficult ethical question, to be sure. Should we judge this person for these acts based on our own cultural morals (“doing this is wrong”) or by his own (“this is perfectly acceptable behaviour”)? Would it matter if he practised these in his own society on in ours? Are there some human absolutes in cultural terms, some lines not to be crossed? I am inclined to believe there are. Defining them in universally acceptable terms, however, is not an easy tasks.

Philosophers that have studied multiculturism (Taylor and Kymlicka, among others) disagree whether a culture has value in itself or whether its value should be judged primarily on the value it provides its members. Personally, I'm inclined to side with the latter school of thought, i.e. that fairly objective assessments of a value of a culture could be based e.g. on how well a given culture supports the fulfilment of fundamental human needs at idividual level, which can be made for example based on Human Scale Development (Max-Neef,1991). Another good indicator is the subject of Universal Human Rights , although this is much more controversial, since the "universality" of the 1948 UN declaration is disputed by several nations, including  the 45 Islamic nations that have withdrawn from it since 1990 after giving their own Cairo declaration (which places the Islamic Sharia law above all human rights, effectively rendering them moot). Also, countries like China see fit to limit the rights it permits its citizens.

One important thing to understand is that cultures are also natural competitors; they always seek to conquer, destroy, assimilate or integrate each other. The meme theory views cultures as evolving products of an agglomeration of memes, much the same way as living organisms are a product of their genes, according to the Theory of Evolution. And like populations of living organisms in an ecosystem, competing for the same ecological niche, cultures compete for the same memetic niche. Like they said in Highlander: “there can be only one!” – in this case, only one dominant culture, in a given geographical area. 

Now, theories can be all fun and games, but what does this mean in terms of the real world we live in today? A less theoretical and more practical thesis on cultural conflict was presented in 1993 by Samuel P. Huntington in his Clash of Civilizations. History may tell us that tolerant cultures that share similar core values may be compatible to peacefully co-exist for a time. Eventually this usually means that over time the weaker one is assimilated or they will merge together to form a synthesis, a new culture. However, it also tells us that some cultures are belligerent, resistant to change and/or have core values so deeply opposed that they simply cannot be reconciled together. They are natural enemies and either fight or if forced into a same area, mix like oil and water. This type of cultures which build parallel societies within a society will eventually tear it apart. Every. Single. Time. 

Societies that allow different cultures to build their own parallel societies within themselves are called multicultural. While it might be possible for individuals from any background to mix in or conform to the dominant culture, having under the same jurisdiction entire groups of people adhering to incompatible cultures, forming their isolated communities and following different laws and morals is a recipe for war and conflict and this is why multiculturalism is indeed becoming a nightmare for Western societies. The failure of this ideology has already been widely recognised around the western world.

An in-depth analysis of the different policies employed by three major European countries to counter the problems sparked by their multicultural societies, and how each of them has failed, can be found in this recent Foreign Affairs article. Riots and no-go-zones in France, UK, Sweden and all across Western Europe are a chilling testament to this development. Anyone who claims that we are not already in the midst of a war or a "clash of civilizations", as Huntington put it, is fooling themselves and ignoring reality. 

A conclusion that would follow, is that each society is more stable, peaceful and functional when it has a more or less just one single cultural umbrella. It does not necessarily mean monoculturalism (although these are generally stable and successful societies), but this common culture may be very wide and diverse in itself, it may be malleable and accepting of influences, but the only way it works is if any new influences are integrated into it in such a way that each member of the society may accept them as a part of the culture. It may contain wildly different subgroups with varying habits, but all must subscribe to the same shared understanding of laws, morals and acceptable behaviour. Think about the vast range of different subcultures that have (until recently, and with a few notable exceptions, of course!) fit relatively harmoniously within the umbrella of, say, American culture, or the so-called Western culture as a whole! This type of approach to a unifying culture is often called a melting pot.  It is also what people usually have in mind, when they take an emotional stand for the idea they think is “multiculturalism”.

In addition to the melting pot approach, a healthy form of interaction between nations and cultures could be called internationalism. It is important to understand that being a well-travelled, international person with a horde of foreign friends and liberal ideas does not necessarily have to make a person a multiculturalist. It makes them a person who appreciates diversity. Opposing the failed idea of multicultural society does not mean closing the borders, revering the past and hating all foreign people and influences. It also does not mean someone who opposes the multiculturalist ideology would actually appreciate diversity any less. It is a serious mistake to believe that having a unifying culture would make all people from such a culture the same! People are, thankfully, individuals with their own extraordinary talents as well as limitations and a plethora of varying interests. In reality, a successful nation needs both cosmopolitan individuals that promote exchange of ideas as well as conservatives who seek to preserve the things which are valuable in the current culture. The interplay of different ideas within a society will eventually drive the evolution of the local culture. 

I sincerely hope there’s still some hope left for Western culture, as well as the diversity of cultures out there, including this marginally small and fragile, but wonderfully idiosyncratic culture we have here on our remote corner of the planet.