The Culture of Bad Habit

“The Noble One sees through this and rejects culture as a weapon of destruction toward human unity. The Noble One sees the validity of civilization and tradition, and rejects the relative for the certainty of knowledge. Critical reason is applied to destroy the cultural myth.” Daniel Rea

Daniel your arguments regarding Japan and China are very interesting and all of the responses show that once again you are dealing with relevant issues. I too have views on Japan, China and Tibet – none of which I will discuss here. But, I do want to look at your conclusion.

J C again shows us a challenge that perhaps cannot be met. The American hedonistic “Me” culture is so hooked on the opiate of Chinese cheap goods and middle-east oil that it cannot control its own functions any longer. Like the addict it says to China “you shouldn’t do that; but give me more I need it".

Of course China could say to America, "we are disgusted with your rants about our human rights, and we are going to take care of the needs of our own people, so go away". They could do this and cut America off from the flow of cheap consumer goods (drugs); but they won’t because a big dumb ox in a drug stupor complaining is much better than that same ox in withdrawals and then fully recovered. And as for sarcasm’s comment that the Chinese army is a paper tiger. Such naivety can be self-destructive. Japan thought that of America in 1941 and perhaps Chiang Kai-shek thought that of Mao’s rag tag group. And a paper tiger with nuclear missiles …. ? Again, I digress.

Daniel I’m sorry but I am confused by your statement: “… sees the validity of civilization and tradition, and rejects the relative for the certainty of knowledge. Critical reason is applied to destroy the cultural myth … ”. On the one hand you see the validity of Civilization and tradition – you can have neither without culture; and on the other, “the myth of culture” gives us our foundation for science and critical reasoning. That is why these sciences developed to their highest form in Europe and not elsewhere.

Culture is like “habit”. You can have good habits, a culture that lifts the truth, integrity of the human, and the value of all creation; or bad habits like “us against them” and the “idle pleasure” that epitomizes the “me” generation and makes my insult of your belief “art.” You cannot dispose of culture. It is our self expression, but you CAN lift that culture out of the gutter where it seems to have fallen.

Civilizations have many sub-cultures: farmer, business, university, power. These are all "self-expressions" of the respective group; but you have "universal" culture tying it all together: mutual respect, culture of law, free expression, etc. These are the "universal ideals" of culture that need to be developed and liberated from confining nationalistic jargon. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

“Culture is not tied in any way to civilization and tradition. These were in human realtions millenia before the word culture was created. The reason why "culture" is so important is because again, we are programmed to think that way.

Human rights is important, and the reason there is abuse and responsibility is because the UN is powerless to do anything. When one of the Security Council permanent memebers is the largest abuser, then what can be done. Again, "culture" comes to play, remeber not too long ago the lecture the Chinese PM gave, "Do not tell us about human rights abuses, we have quite a different definition in Asia." You and all know this was not the case in the 20s - 40s when the Japanese were abusing the Chinese human rights, so what changed now? Well now its China abusing the human rights. So now China doesn't want to hear it.

Since culture cannot even be defined culture is not universal, what is the importance of developing it? Why not instead just return to the civilizational approach, and dump the cultural construct. As I think one can tell by just Googling "culture" and reading the backlash against culutre on the web it shouldn't be that difficult.

What is important about culture? The definition that governments and academics give? The control of education systems? At the bottom that IS what culture IS REALLY all about.” Daniel Rea

Here is where I respectfully disagree. I think it is the “rose by any other name” argument.

We read yesterday about the snake cult of 70,000 years ago. That was a culture that extended over hundreds of miles as the story goes.

To me, the “civilization” approach is the in-culturalization” approach. The bad part. As in “civilizing” the barbarian American Indians or the pre-European African nations or indeed the Chinese empire. Civilization = a large group of interdependent cultures in my understanding (again, a cohesion of many little cultures bound together by a “common” culture). We did not value their “culture/civilization” so we tried to trash it. But it comes back in different forms – usually the negative part, rather than the good, since it is imbued full of resentment at having been crushed. The Chinese are now experiencing this in Tibet. They have a culture (“primitive, but viable civilization”) many may not like, but it is who they are.

The "European/Americans" may define culture as in the dictionary; but I think that definition is causing division between us and the rest of the world because we don’t value their culture(s) and we don’t recognize that our view of civilization is intrinsically tied in with our concept of culture.

Again, I define culture as the form of self-expression we take to relate to myself and others; a tribe takes to relate to myself and others; a guild takes to relate to itself and others and a nation take to relate to itself and others. Even a group of nations: The EU, OAU etc) take to relate to itself and others.

Thus I say the Civilization model takes these ethnic cultures and blends then to form a cohesive unit with common elements becoming a common culture. Like becoming an “American” is to accept and become a part of the American “culture.” (ie: McDonald’s fast food “culture”)

The larger the unit, the larger number of smaller cultures within it united for a common purpose.

I would suggest that the problem comes when a civilization or group (or individual movie star/politician) starts to believe its own press (propaganda). Like the English, French, Japanese, and Americans etc. come to believe that each of their cultures was self-generated and came from “God;” forgetting the origins of their culture.

All culture is a conglomeration of parts and pieces gathered together. As the civilization grows, a new culture is created, combining common elements of the other older cultures and the rest just withers away naturally, remaining in small pockets. Like the Quakers or the Ainu. Just as if a person from one business culture (IBM) joined a different business culture (Apple).

You might notice that I did not include China in the list of civilizations above.

China is an interesting case. They could have been and may yet be a totally unique culture, wholly self developed. I could be argued that Buddhism is a Chinese variant of Hinduism as Buddha was born on China’s periphery in Nepal. And the Mongols, though outside to the north, were still basically a Chinese sub-culture.

The big problem comes in the modern age with the importation of Marxism (a western thought system) and Democracy (also a western philosophy of government). If these thought systems were purged and the Confucius’ model of government and social structure resurrected then the Chinese civilization could be a wholly self-initiated cultural system.

Whether or not this is a good thing, esp. for the nations that border China is yet to be seen.