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If the Cords of Culture are Cut, How Will We Access the Potential Sources of Our Renewal?
This past week, I had the pleasure of teaching the Last Supper, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1976 masterpiece, to a group of very bright and conscientious undergraduate students.
The film is set on a Cuban sugar plantation in the waning years of the eighteenth century and tells the story of how the owner the place, a Spanish Count who has developed a certain penchant for the liberal ideals then circulating in the court of Spain’s “enlightened despot”, Carlos III, decides to democratize the traditional celebration of Holy Week at his Caribbean property.
The centerpiece of the story is the count’s attempt to re-enact the Last Supper of Christ, with he himself playing the role of Jesus, and twelve randomly chosen slaves playing the roles of his disciples. In this long but absolutely brilliant sequence, Gutiérrez Alea forces us to re-consider many important questions, ranging from the supposedly liberatory nature of both the Enlightenment and its ontological predecessor, the Church, to the relative importance of race vs. class within systems of social oppression.
Just as a true appreciation of Stephen Colbert depends on having seen a real conservative blowhard in action, a real understanding the Cuban film depends on having at least a skeletal understanding of the iconic importance of the Last Supper within Christian life, and from there, the entire trajectory of Western Culture.
We can agree or disagree on the wisdom and/or the efficacy of the lessons contained in the event which, we are told, took place in an upper chamber of a building in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago. What we cannot do and be honest with ourselves is to deny its absolutely central importance to the making of our received cultural inheritance.
To take just one of virtually thousands of examples that could be adduced, there can be no real comprehension of what drove Martin Luther King’s doctrine of non-violence without an understanding of the importance in his life, and that of millions of other Americans (both black and white), of that Holy Thursday narrative of extreme self-sacrifice.
I have probably taught the Last Supper 5 or 6 times over the last eighteen years. During that time, I have, I think, become fairly aware of some of the challenges it presents to North American students. One is its Cuban provenance. Some students have trouble getting beyond the fact that it is a film imported from what they know to be a “bad” Communist country.
Another is its relatively slow narrative rhythm. Though we don’t often talk about it, the insertion into the mainstream of US cinematic practices some time in the nineties of the of frequent, quick and jarring visual cuts developed originally in the advertising and music video industries has fundamentally altered the narrative expectations of young viewers. If the film does not move along in what they consider to be a “normal” temporal cadence, they have a certain tendency to simply tune it out.
I have found, however, that if I address these issues in a straightforward manner at the beginning of our analysis, students can often burrow quite deeply into the film, eventually coming to appreciate its superb construction and challenging messages.
This last time, however, I encountered a challenge that had never before presented itself: a clear majority of the students were largely unfamiliar with the basic narrative of what is said to have gone on at that first Last Supper two millennia ago.
And that got me thinking, among other things, about the issue of cultural transmission in our day.
I would like to make clear that my intention here is not to bash my students. These are sharp young people possessing lots of curiosity and general levels of personal aplomb and directedness that I could not have dreamed of having at their age. They have spent their lives in the midst of a revolution of information availability that has few, if any, parallels in the history of the world. In such unsettled times, is to be expected that many previously “indispensable” facts get shunted aside or simply forgotten.
But my ability empathize with my student’s situation in this new information environment does not, I must admit, allay my nervousness about what it portends for those of us that seek to engender the creation a more just and humane world.
Though we--especially those of us that live here in the linearly-minded West of the West—most frequently use vocabulary associated the processes of “birth” and “invention” to describe great cultural and political changes, these metaphors are not terribly apt.
Much more accurate, in my view, would be to speak in terms of alchemy and recombinance. Most great leaps forward in social consciousness have come about not as the result of the generation of wholly new ideas, but rather through the creative redeployment and repurposing of old ones.
When the prosperous merchant class of late medieval Italy wanted to show the world its vital energy, it mined the toolbox of the Greek and Roman classics. The result was what we now call the Renaissance. When, starting a hundred and fifty years ago, the Catalan bourgeoisie wanted to demonstrate its modernity, and with it, its differentness from its counterparts in the rest of Spain, it delved--selectively as had northern Italians done with the Greeks and Romans-- into its own storied medieval past. The result, among many other things, was the stunning modernista architecture that now makes Barcelona one of the world’s great tourist destinations.
The same rules apply in politics. When seeking to convince a skeptical populace of the legitimacy of his brutal dictatorship (1939-1975), Francisco Franco borrowed liberally from the iconography of Spain’s Golden Age (1500-1650).
Closer to us in both geography and time, Ronald Reagan appropriated the imagery of the supposed good times under Coolidge and Eisenhower to legitimate his regime of social destruction. And since that time, every Republican candidate for office has, in turn, presented the recuperation of the supposed good times under Reagan the prime goal of his or her run of “public service”.
Meanwhile, the US left (or what passes for it) has resolutely refused to dig into the treasure trove of its rich past in their efforts to mobilize the populace. Indeed, the man who sits in the White House has, to my knowledge, has only spoken openly of having one hero from this country’s contemporary past.
Who was it? Ronald Reagan - the patron saint of all those that hurl hate and misinformation against him in today’s political environment.
An entire archive of the left’s role in generating the great American middle class is dying before our eyes, not because, as is so often repeated, it has no natural constituency, but because its nominal custodians refuse to mount even the most feeble defense of the values contained therein.
In politics, if a body of values and ideas lies untouched for more than two generations, it generally dies. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say, that for most of my generation and all that of my students the idea that insuring dignity, and freedom from unnecessary privation, can and should be the organizing principle of society, has virtually no palpable presence in their lives.
To build anew is noble and necessary. But as studies of trans-generational poverty demonstrate, doing so is infinitely more difficult when privation has been one’s only norm.
The same is true in culture and politics. Recent studies in cognitive science increasingly suggest that we can only truly conceptualize the things for which we have an available vocabulary.
I think we all are hoping desperately for some form of social and political renewal. But can we really expect it when, to paraphrase Milton Friedman, the only “ideas lying around” in considerable quantities within our public space belong to the other side?
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51 Comments so far
Show AllIf any cultural aspect of the US's past is to be invoked, it ought to be the Spirit of '76 and the revolt against authoritarian aristocracy it was once represented as. But as with the last supper, even that is mythic, disconnected to reality. Even so, how many people are even aquainted with Thomas Paine and the very radical series of essays he wrote that might be used in the manner suggested? IMO, the US citizenry is mostly illiterate when it comes to knowing anything important about its history, which is why it's so easilly manipulated. And while I agree with the author's lament, there ought to be a better way to write about it.
Is it possible that Harrington missed the part about $ buying elections, and thus those running in either party ending up beholden to big money interests? And since when does big money (with a few notable historical exceptions in the way of philanthropists funding the arts, etc.) do other than preserve its claim to as much by thereby compelling paid-for-politicians to do likewise.
Harrington also fails to mention the role of media consolidation and how the dominant memes relayed reinforce the messages preferred by the "ownership caste." They don't WANT populist messages touching the millions of politically disaffected voters. So they hire PR firms to use the industrial version of Plausible Deniability to make the abundant pain felt in our land the result of anything but those truly responsible. The cloud of disinformation is so thick that only the most incisive, clear minds can see through it.
Maybe the length of an essay like this makes it difficult to speak of these causative factors. Otherwise, like so many intellectuals of our times, the author mistakes cause for effect. Also, alleging that the Jesus story is the centerpiece of our culture is a sly way of pushing religion back into the secular sphere.
Sioux Rose:
Regarding the notable exceptions you mention - philantropists funding the arts: their actions are not as altruistic as they would have us believe. I recall hearing about a guy who went to a "free" concert in the San Francisco area once. A notice on the program stated that the concert was made possible by a donation from some large corporation. He said to his companion that if the concert were really free, the notice would not have been necessary.
It is nice when a philantropist donates money for a building, but when their name appears over the entrance, they are telling us that we owe them.
They're also getting a sizeable tax deduction, which at their level of income and with the current tax-code and their army of smart accountants and lawyers, can be a profitable deal for them.
I would also add their guilt on how they made their money and their obsession about being respected and acknowledged
I would also add their guilt on how they made their money and their obsession about being respected and acknowledged
Analyzing the failure of the left by equating it with the Obama administration is misguided. The left is alive and well, and may be seen in the Occupy movement, which is just getting started, and which has clear roots reaching deep into progressive history, from the labor movement to the New Deal to Martin Luther King's vision. and while it may appear more nebulous than monolithic, that in the long run may prove to be among its strengths, and elevate the political, ethical, and moral discourse to something truly remarkable. Persevere.
I think that the aspect of history that should be emphasized pertains to the consequences of John Locke's writings. When He said that government exists by the consent of the governed (something Thomas Jefferson agreed with), he implied that government has an obligation to the governed (all of them) to ensure that they are able to lead a decent life. They are not entitled to great wealth, nor to public acclaim. But they are entitled to being able to survive the vicissitudes of life - what today we call a social safety net.
Ayn Rand be damned!
Shphrdr----I met her once, 60's. She was damned then. Too bad some intellectuals thought she was so wise. She is the poster child for Tea.
How does the super rich get the rights the rest of us don't? BOUGHT POLITICIANS. Campaign finance reform could fix that.
I once was French and loved my wine
I padded my waist to please the Prince
I scored the wall and walked the plank
I've lost my world to braggarts since.
The scoundrels now rule
The braggarts took all
I've lost my edge
I've lost the ball.
I'll wring their necks
If I get a chance
I'll tie that rope
Where they will dance.
There's no point crying
No loss is real
The world will stay here
The Devil will deal.
They will leverage the rope with which they will hang themselves
"Though we don’t often talk about it, the insertion into the mainstream of US cinematic practices some time in the nineties of the of frequent, quick and jarring visual cuts developed originally in the advertising and music video industries has fundamentally altered the narrative expectations of young viewers."
Our expectations about most everything can be, and is, shaped by our cultural authors, and in many cases their influence is very strong. And they KNOW it. They are acutely aware of their power. And their liberal philosophy prevents them from being honest about it. It's a devolved philosophy, once good, now corrupt. It's a philosophy embraced by the more intellectual members of the society, who despite their intellect, fail to embrace and uphold the better interests of the people, and the responsibility that comes with their influence. They support empire, and class hierarchy. They support special class tiers for "professionals" and "intellectuals". They are the Demoks. Their dishonesty is the key excuse used by many Merkans in the rural sectors to avoid solidarity with their urban peers. This is the great Merkan political chasm, created by and for elites, preserving the class hierarchy, the enslavement of the people. The storytellers, in all the media, are instigators as much as those on the pulpit.
The relevant news today is that the people are learning about cause/effect in their predicament, and they are learning to elevate their newfound associations of good with good and bad with bad to the top of their priority stacks, to take their destinies into their own hands, to learn to handle the controls of their society, to steer their own ship. To Occupy Their Own Minds. We are re-writing the school curriculum, to place "knowing thyself" as the top lesson. Out of our way, Follywood!
"If the Cords of Culture are Cut, How Will We Access the Potential Sources of Our Renewal?"
The source of our renewal is our own personal souls, guiding us without external influence. Before, we were influenced by our parents, teachers, the school curriculum, community leaders, media authors, and the narratives of historic figures, and philosophers. And now, each of us is learning to put these influences into the context of our own spirits, that we know, because we made knowing ourselves our top priority, so we can determine our own fates. Tough cookies for those who pursue influence, power, and control over us, ehh? Lost legacies for them. Exciting times for the people.
The web you are weaving is a little murky (pardon if I am mixing metaphors). I am reminded of Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum. The posting would make more sense if you named some names or named some organizations. "They" is too nebulous.
I'll keep that Foucault's Pendulum in mind. It is nebulous, but over time we discern such a variety of oppressions that the abstract blob becomes a convenient symbol. When we're working toward collective justice, details become a deterrent. Ayn Rand would protest, which indicates we're on the right path.
Does anyone else feel there is a big disconnect here? Tom is equating culture with religion. Religion is a part of the culture of some, but not the culture itself. He never mentioned the other people's beliefs. I think he is one sided because of his own obvious belief systems.
What about the indigenous culture?
Cuban culture is about way way way more than what he is teaching here. What about the obliteration of their culture by the Spaniards arriving...or whoever? Once again, narrow narrow thinking and talking.
Someone once proposed to me that 'culture' is actually 'the way people live' - western 'modernity' has it packaged, stamp licked and in the mail - never touching ground unless in costume.
I've also been reminded that indigenous culture does not exist as a monolithic totality, but has a constantly adapting diversity sharing deep love and centering in unbroken ancestral threads of sacred creation - and this description only scratching the surface, much as you note of the breadth of Cuban culture
Here is a talk by Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Vivieros de Castro - anything you can get in English by this man is worth the mind bend... hope you enjoy!
http://nansi.abaetenet.net/abaetextos/anthropology-and-science-e-viveiros-de-castro
I reread this article and came to the conclusion Tom was trying to say something, not sure what, and failed. Lots of mixed up goobildegook. Even the title is as ambiguous as the article. I think he had one of those late night blahblah moments and spewed like the rest of us.
One, cords of culture don't get cut, people just fail to educate themselves. Two, accessing potential sources, like college courses???, don't teach shit. Renewal? Wow, I can't even wrap my head around that as being held hostage by our failure to read Dante or Plato.
"This last time, however, I encountered a challenge that had never before presented itself: a clear majority of the students were largely unfamiliar with the basic narrative of what is said to have gone on at that first Last Supper two millennia ago.
And that got me thinking, among other things, about the issue of cultural transmission in our day."
I had the same kind of epiphany. Every year, teaching a Freshman-level course on the environment, I gave a few classes on industriall pollution. Because there is a superfund site in the city, I made sure to mention how the company disposed of various kinds of petroleum products (in what today we call inappropriate ways). And every year, I referred to Love Canal in the discussion. One year, I realized that no one in the class had ever heard of Love Canal.
So I wondered how many other examples I used were also unknown to the class, and decided it was time to retire. Clearly it does not take as many as two generations (as the author says) for really well-known events to fade away.
Your observation is very important. To make history, and other related subjects, relevant to students, I sought to link contemporary events students ought to be aware of with historical antecedants, which worked very well but at times was difficult as far more work was involved than a didactic or socratic approach. I admit, at first I was lost regarding how/what to comment given the dysfunctional nature of our national and human cultures as well as the future's demand for a new cultural ethos. Thus the question: Is there anything within contemporary culture--human and national--worth saving for inclusion within the new culture--real tenets, not mouthed platitudes? Perhaps a more fitting essay for this author to attempt would be to detail the new culture we require and why the old culture must be rejected.
What is worth saving? That is an interesting question. If reference to an antecedent event will help students associate it with a contemporary event, the previous one is valuable, because the association will make the current one easier to extract from memory later. I use the analogy of a relational data base. The more links to other things, the more often an item comes up in a search.
I would not relate a battle in Afghanistan to Cannae because few students today will have heard of Cannae or Hannibal. In fact, even Tet might be too far removed from contemporary knowledge to be useful. So choosing good examples is not easy.
But I don't think it is our obligation to decide what should be kept and what can be discarded. That is done by default, not be design.
"But I don't think it is our obligation to decide what should be kept and what can be discarded. That is done by default, not be design."
Functional cultures get constructed over many generations and are rendered functional because the people living within them are capable of discarding dysfunctional trends that arise swiftly, whereas the people living within a dysfunctional culture seem to be incapable of purging those aspects that rendered it dysfunctional. Indeed, the vast majority have no idea their culture is dysfunctional and leading them to destruction. Fortunately, there are a few efforts afoot trying to establish a new culture in a mixed top->down/bottom->up manner as exemplified by the Transition Town and Life Boat movements.
Very interesting post. I look forward to seeing "The Last Supper", I want delve more into Cuban cinema.
The United States is an incredibly provincial, myopic culture. Other countries or cultures aren't mentioned often in the corporate media unless something bad happens there.Cultural literacy among high school and university students is very low. Students know about the latest celebrity sex scandel than history or the arts. I remember a few years ago I was in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I latched on to a tour group from the University of South Florida. The tour guide had to explain to university students who St Francis of Assissi was(I'm not saying I'm an expert myself) or Bunuel. We need more teachers
The level of film appreciation is low.Everyone has seen the latest junk from Adam Sandler but few know of Goddard, Fellini, Tarkovsky or Bunuel. We need more teachers like Thomas Harrington or the people posting in this thread to keep culture alive in the sea of capitalist anesethization.
Some comments to the comments:
To both Karlof and sheep herder, points well-taken regarding choices of lessons to evoke as examples. I believe, for example that Paine would be an excellent place to start if we wish to fire things up on the left.
To souixrose, I don't recall ever saying or suggesting that money in politics and media consolidation were not brutal realities of our circumstance. They are all too real. Given that they are used to wall off large parts of our past from emerging generations it only makes more urgent the task of finding new ways to remember and circulate social tropes from our past that dignify rather than demean the expansive, generous capacities of people
As for my trying to put religion into the center of our life, two comments. One, I never said that or expressed a desire to do so. To conflate my registering of the centrality of the Jesus story to western life with a desire on my part that this always be so is very sloppy reasoning. Whether you or I like it, the Jesus story is absolutely central to western life. Whether you wish it to remain that way is another thing to talk about. Indeed, one of the things Gutierrez Alea does beautifully in the film, as I mention, is show the hollowness of so much that has passed for Christianity over time. That the moral underpinnings of Christianity practiced in the world are often hypocritical, does not, however, negate the fact that the story itself has been absolutely central for generating schemes of meaning ( yes, many of them highly bastardized) in our culture. To deny this because you'd prefer it not to be so, is to engage in wishful thinking.
To Steve Woodward.
If you read carefully, I never said Obama is the left or has anything to do with the left. I said, and it is true, that in the confused minds of most people he passes for the chief spokesman of the left and that he is someone who actively disavows even the slightest element of its many proud traditions.
To stonepig: see my comments on religion to souixrose above. I never said culture is religion. I am saying that for much of the last two millennia religion has has been a huge factor in generating cultural narratives. To say otherwise is to demonstrate a great ignorance of history. To try and wish this fact away because you or I are fervent secularists (something i in fact am) is confuse desire with reality.
Re: Cuban culture being about so much more than what is being said her. Well, no kidding. In fact, the film says a lot about your other concern: about how the
Spaniards came and brutalized the island. The Count in the film is no hero. One of the director's major points is, as I point out, to show that the despite his mask of being a man of enlightened values, he is nothing of the sort. He is, when you strip it all away nothing more than a brutal colonialist.
Tom harrington
Hello, Tom: Point well-taken. What I find myself reacting to is the idea that patriarchal premises are taken for mainstream reality without question. And currently witnessing the increasing influence of Christian fundamentalist thought over what should have remained a clearly defined line separating church from state policies, I'm feeling anxious these days. Women's reproductive rights are back on the auction block. And Chris Hedges has chronicled the intentions on the part of millions, to establish a Christian theocracy to rule our "homeland." This premise may have been laughed off decades ago, but it's happening in slow stages under the radar now. So your tone, in making the Jesus story central, strokes this movement, even if that's not your intention. The Christian world-view held dominion thanks to its effective use of the blade... it demanded conformity at symbolic gun-point.
I've talked about the seamless transition from the European church-state into that of modern Western states, and how secular law has largely derived from the roots of Biblical Scripture. I've made this argument (many times in this forum) to show posters who are oblivious to the roots of sexism, how deeply embedded women's second class status goes back. So I understand your remark about the centrality of the Jesus story/Last Supper, but you offer it in a manner that doesn't examine how these beliefs assumed dominance, nor what they mean to any group that stands outside of the narrow, Christian world-view.
Perhaps if I view the film I'd consider your remarks in a different light. Right now I feel that you've reinforced the patriarchal world-view as premised on Christianity, as the core foundation of our culture... without simultaneously relating the limitations built into these traditional constructs. Might doesn't make right. And the right has certainly made use of might to push its agenda down the centuries, as it's doing now in a virtual 21st century M.E. Crusades. While I see Jesus as an Enlightened Master, the religion institutionalized in his name has been a source of enormous bloodshed, and much of its present witness continues to invert the very teachings The Christ stood for and about.
Here's Wikipedia's synopsis:
"In a misguided attempt to enlighten his African-originating slaves, a Count invites twelve of them to a dinner on Maundy Thursday in a re-enactment of the Last Supper with himself as Christ. Whilst they eat and drink, he also feeds them religious rhetoric and attempts to instruct them in the workings of Christianity. He promises them a day off for the following Good Friday and commits to freeing one of the slaves. However, when these promises are not held up the next day, the slaves rebel. The slaves are then all hunted down and killed by their master, except one who escapes." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(1976_film)
Sounds a lot like those enlightened "Fathers of the Country" that wrote the US Constitution.
The most important issue in these discussions of the current political reality in the US and any chance of meaningful change is cognition. At birth we start to develop our world view with observation driven by intense curiosity. Learning what to fear, or trust. What gives us comfort, or discomfort, and learning the language of our culture spoken or otherwise. Does our culture encourage this natural process of learning through observation and examination, of trial and error driven by a desire to seek truth? Do we allow the young minds to develop their own questions, and then give them answers that encourage them to develop more questions, thus exercising their intellect? Do we encourage them to develop their own ideals and concepts, to think freely and openly, to let their minds consider an endless range of possibilities? Or do we instead attempt to install a world view, to write on the blank slate stories of gods and devils, of boogie men and monsters under the bed, of Santa and the tooth fairy, of the right way and the wrong way to think.
The world view, the historical cultural narrative that has been force feed to American children for generations, is not only completely useless in terms of understanding the real world around us, it also severely interferes with the young minds ability to develop as an instrument capable of independent rational logical thought processes. As we install this cultural narrative in the young minds we install cognitive basis that later as the contradictions become to obvious to ignore, develop into cognitive dissonance. A peoples or democratic government cannot exists in a population that cannot think independently or rationally. The damage done to the young minds and the cognitive dissonance it creates in the US by Church, School, and State is such that you have a population incapable of self governance. The 1%er's pull the strings, and we dance like idiots in the rain.
Excellent demonstration of many aspects contributing to our dysfunctional culture.
Your comments about education are important, but they can be taken too far. For example, I have seen articles which claim that with modern software, especially statistical software, students don't need nearly as much from a teacher as in the past. They can examine data sets and draw conclusions on their own.
That would be true if the students understood statistics and "data mining," and if they knew what they were looking for in the data sets. Nothing is more futile than randomly searching through data, hoping to find something interesting. You need to know what you are looking for. Data searches are fine when the students have enough of a background to construct their own questions. Then they can profit from modern technology. But when does that happen?
So it is true that we do not let young minds develop their own questions, but there is a good reason for that. I went through a vesry structured public school program, and in college, the Jesuits were very clear about what we were to do and when. But when I got to grad school, things opened up. And the years doing research and teaching students opened things up further.
Every so often I mention on this site the importance of reading Henry Adams's memoir The Education of Henry Adams. In addition to being sort of an autobiography, its meta-message is that your education is (or should be) life-long. No component of it is sufficient. As you mature, your outlook on things changes because of your experiences, all of them educational, whether or not they were intended to be. It is a valuable book.
"For example, I have seen articles which claim that with modern software, especially statistical software, students don't need nearly as much from a teacher as in the past. They can examine data sets and draw conclusions on their own. "
This is not a claim, and does not apply to just students. Anyone with a decent statistical package, say SPSS, or even Excel, can easily do a lot of statistical analysis, and make their own interpretations. The tedious calculation is removed.
"That would be true if the students understood statistics and "data mining," and if they knew what they were looking for in the data sets."
To be able to use stats packages you need at least a basic understanding of stats concepts. That is true of any tool.
"Data searches are fine when the students have enough of a background to construct their own questions. Then they can profit from modern technology. But when does that happen?"
True. That is why home schooling is a stupid idea.
@ sheepherder
~The Education of Henry Adams. In addition to being sort of an autobiography, its meta-message is that your education is (or should be) life-long.~
i like that philosophy! i think all too often iwonder's "curiosity factor" which is KEY to learning gets stiffled by well meaning parents and teachers. a sudent who brings up one of those "obvious contradictions" can be viewed by an overstressed parent or teacher as a trouble maker. why not have a philopsophical discussion with youngsters? "that's a good question, what do you think?" try it and prepare to be amazed. "kids say the darndest things" and even us grups can learn a thing or two.
@ iwonder
great comments! i wanted to respond to so many of your points and rhetorical questions, but too many thoughts run through my head, yet my fingers stay poised, innert above the keyboard. i did begin....
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
~At birth we start to develop our world view with observation driven by intense curiosity~
intense curiosity! i like what you've posted. i believe curiosity may be Nature’s driving force for evolution. once i saw a news bit about an amazing baby, maybe seven months old, who would crawl across the linoleum, remove that little door under the dishwasher and stare fixedly into the guts, the wires, the nuts and bolts. “don’t you worry that he might grab the wires and zap himself?!?” the journalists asked. his parents, both having doctorates, didn’t panic (i would). they felt assured that he just wanted to see how the thing works. i wonder how much pure genius “intense curiosity” suffers from our desire to protect our offspring?
~ The world view, the historical cultural narrative that has been force feed to American children for generations, is not only completely useless in terms of understanding the real world around us, it also severely interferes with the young minds ability to develop as an instrument capable of independent rational logical thought processes.~
civilization, as we know it, has been a failed experiment from the git-go. it’s based on a false premise, a mythical belief that we can live outside of Nature's laws.....
(i know what i'd like to say. thanks for the insight!)
"What we cannot do and be honest with ourselves is to deny [the 'Last Supper's] absolutely central importance to the making of our received cultural inheritance."
Please don't tell me what 'we' can or cannot do "and be honest with ourselves". Traditional Xtian teachings and myths made no sense to me as a child, and I'm absolutely delighted as an adult to find they are largely baseless. I know dozens if not hundreds of people to whom 'the Last Supper' means nothing.
Having stated (from - what exactly is the author's background and belief system??) that Jesus stories are inextricably interwoven in American culture, he goes on to complain that young people don't know relevant references thereunto. What? If the younger generation(s) are increasingly unaware of Xtian mythology, then it's NOT a vital part of "the trajectory of Western Culture", is it.
I appreciate SiousRose's comments (at 4:27pm and earlier) including, "What I find myself reacting to is the idea that patriarchal premises are taken for mainstream reality without question."
Excellent point that modern linguists make all the time. Language purists try to keep "grammar" and "spelling" pure, but linguists know that language will change no matter what you try to do, because it is a dynamic system or group of systems, not a thing. Some people hang on to their Christianity and pass it on to their children, but millions more don't. Some don't believe and others who believe find other teachings more to their liking.
"Meanwhile, the US left (or what passes for it) has resolutely refused to dig into the treasure trove of its rich past in their efforts to mobilize the populace. Indeed, the man who sits in the White House has, to my knowledge, has only spoken openly of having one hero from this country’s contemporary past.
Who was it? Ronald Reagan - the patron saint of all those that hurl hate and misinformation against him in today’s political environment."
1. Epic fail: Obama is not by any rhetorical stretch "left".
2. I'm sure you've heard of, and even read, Howard Zinn's People's History of the US
Howard Zinn's, "People's History of the US"
Zinn's book was the first thing I thought of after reading Harrington's article. I quickly logged on to make a comment recognizing Zinn's great contribution to the dialogue and rhetoric of the left and your comment was the very first I encountered!
Zinn's book is a treasure trove of " ' ideas lying around,” in considerable quantities, within our public space," and they are emphatically NOT belonging to the other side?
As dreary as it can sometimes be, writing letters to your local papers, using respectful language that everyone can understand, is a good way to propagate valuable ideas. You may get lambasted by the usual suspects but that's not what matters most. What matters is that you have expressed a viewpoint that is in short supply and is getting little or no coverage at all.
The term “Left” does seem to have lost coherence. Last Friday I received an email from LeftAction, an organization founded by John Hinko, a PR specialist. They have an “I’m In” campaign for those wanting to express support for Obama in 2012.
I questioned the legitimacy of the campaign at LeftAction’s website, exchanged several emails with john@leftaction.com, and kept asking the same question: What has Obama done for the Left? After several evasive responses I finally got this unsatisfactory, uniformed answer:
1. Saving the auto industry
2. Preventing the great recession from becoming a depression
3. Getting us out of Iraq
4. Rescinding Bush’s limits on embryonic stem cell research
5. Rejecting Keystone XL
6. Ending DADT
7. Big move forward on health care
8. Etc., etc., etc.
Wow. I concluded that LeftAction must be a front for a reelect Obama organization.
I have often wondered why are the first stories we teach our children untruths. Santa, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, trolls, witches, demons, and Jesus loves the little children except for the one's who never heard of him, they go to Hell. Babies come from a cabbage patch, or the stork. Make a wish upon a star. Why do we do this? Have you ever seen a four year old's reaction when they find out Santa is not real? Yea get out the kiddie prozac, they are going to need it. Mission Accomplished.
Someone once posted that Santa is a starter religion. I thought that was pretty astute.
iwonder; glen dolman has shown that it is possible to begin helping children to learn at six months of age! it requires a very delicate relation with the parent(s), but when successful a child can have a university level of basic knowledge, speak two or more languages, and have a deep knowledge of math by the age of four!
"I have often wondered why are the first stories we teach our children untruths." I certainly did not teach any of those bits of nonsense you mention to my child and no one has to unless they so choose. Perhaps you meant to refer to some portions of the society at large with the awareness that it is inapplicable to many specific individuals but by expanding your category to an all encompassing 'we' you may actually limit the effectiveness of your point. I have this thing about clear thinking and I apply it to those who are on the same side as I am as well as to those on the other side. Sorry.
4thefuture, I appreciate your concern about my ability to effectively make my point. Now would you care to apply your ability to "think clearly" and comment on the subject at hand? Thanks.
Thank you, Tom, for a wonderful article. Some comments:
>What we cannot do and be honest with ourselves is to deny its absolutely central importance to the making of our received cultural inheritance.<
You are, of course, addressing a largely US audience where the many strains of Christianity run deep in most belief systems, whether they are aware of the fact or not. When Robert Bellah talks about "civil religion" he was referring precisely to secular practices that have their roots in religion. Marx himself recognized religion's ubiquity when he wrote about it being the "sigh" of an oppressed society and "the heart of a heartless world." Religion, he thought, is an opiate drug that makes us forget the miseries of the real world, and we should reject any idea that it could solve human problems. But the very idea that we need to reject it being the panacea for worldly ills testifies to its persistent presence in society.
The Right is smart enough to note this presence in American society. Thus they appropriate the Christian religion and its evolved patriarchal system for their own ends. And as feminists have discovered, underlying this patriarchal system is the glorification of wide spectrum dominance of masculine values within the family, the nation, and the world. It is a system that makes for gross inequalities between individuals and segments of society, and of wars between nations.
What can the Left do? We can blithely ignore the existence of religion - and hence its power - in society and leave the field wide open for the Right to interpret religious tenets as they see fit. Or we can contest that field and point out the egalitarian nature of Jesus, the selfless love that He promoted among men and nations. Naturally, one need not be a Christian to share the selflessness of Christ: such selflessness actually preceded the Christian religion (Mo Tzu, for example, had talked about universal love centuries before the birth of Christ).
In short, what Tom is doing, I think, is to ask us to recognize the Christian roots of American society, to see possibilities in restoring the other aspect - the humanitarian side - of the religion and not allow the Right to appropriate wholesale the Christian religion without contest. His is therefore a very practical suggestion - I've no doubt that if we are living in a Buddhist society, Tom would've suggested that we search for precepts and meaning in Buddhism that would refute the Right's monopoly in interpreting that religion. It was not that long ago when Cardinal Spellman told young Americans that they were soldiers for Christ and that to fight the Vietnamese was to fight for Jesus. And recently, we've some nuts saying that Martin Luther King Jr would've supported the genocidal war in Afghanistan. Isn't it time to give the right a taste of their own medicine by publicizing the humanitarian intent of religion and indeed of most civilizations, especially when such intent could be gleaned from a close reading of history?
I've been thinking lately that those "cords" are not in human hands in the first place. Those REAL "Keepers" of culture, of the "fruit" that is produced from THE Cult, seem to have gone into "active" mode, after millennia of metronomic "time-marking". One tangible indication that occurs to me, is the phenomena of "crop circles". For centuries they have been simple circles (metronomic time-marking). The last 30 years they have grown progressively, now fantastically, complex. They've gotten so noticable that they've attracted hoaxers (perhaps paid by the current global regime to discredit & detract). The point I'm making is that maybe a great "erasure" is now going on, to make ready for "downloading" new paradigms & information. I've noticed how the younger ones don't "just know" so many little things that I take for granted. Their "discs" are being wiped for "the new" to be down-loaded?
inb, agreed...this was foreshadowed already by the natural development of jazz from bop to ornette coleman and john coltrane, and in the plastic statements of picasso's late period, jackson pollack and franz kline... part of the result of the counter-revolution of which co-intel pro was a part was to destroy that movement in jazz and it's audience..as well as a real-not investor-audience for plastic art..one effect of the breakdown-transformation of old forms in art was a new powerful experience of true freedom and energy, not exactly the reagan re-instituted high school prom...but as the crop circles show, there are other forces at work....
Obummer IS NOT LEFT. He's not a socialist. He's not a progressive. He's not even close. He wouldn't stand in an Occupy if his life depended on it...even though it might.
How did we get to that from culture. ?? I remember culture shock leaving jail one spring. Homeless is a culture thing. Generational poverty is a cultural thing. So are beans and rice, blues, and ganga. Culture is 'your thing'.
We might like Harrington to be more radical here, but let's not lose the importance of his central point.
As I read him, this point has no more to do with Christianity than with any other particular ideology, and little to do with whether a given ideology may be particularly valid. It appears to have to do with the ways new ideas and social forms are conceived.
For all the discussion of originality these past few centuries, people invent little, and advances in thinking and in social structures generally come from syntheses of previously existing ideas and practices. To accomplish a new synthesis, one needs familiarity to old ideas - right, wrong, and indifferent.
Consequently, enabling good ideas to inform social change does not predominately involve eliminating bad ideas, though it may mean removing their acolytes from power. It means providing institutional structures and cultural practices that allow the young, the curious, and the inspired to access the traces of old and remote ideas.
"structures and cultural practices that allow the young, the curious, and the inspired to access the traces of old and remote ideas"....indigenous dance and song, and interestingly enough, the music of j.s. bach, ..
...Other theories include bringing groups together, teaching cooperation, and passing along cultural truths from generation to generation.
Steven J.Mithen in The Singing Neanderthals, writes of studies by John Blacking:
"He undertook one of the most informative studies of communal music making when he studied the Venda people of South Africa during the 1950s. He described how they performed communal music not simply to kill time, nor for any magical reasons, such as to create better harvests, nor when they were facing periods of hunger or stress. ln fact, they did the reverse: they made communal music when food was plentiful. Blacking believed they did so, at times when individuals were able to pursue their own self-interest, precisely in order to ensure that the necessity of working together for the benefit of society as a whole was maintained as their key value through the exceptional level of cooperation that was required in their music-making."
Mithen notes other roles such as aiding "the performance of a collective task by rhythmically facilitating physical coordination. But in the majority of case it appears to be cognitive coordination that is induced by the music, the arousal of a shared emotional state and trust in one's fellow music makers."
Blacking cited another group function of music:
"Some years before I arrived in Venda, famous Chief, Ratshimphi, was fed up with the actions of the white Native Commissioner, and so he gathered force of over 350 tshikona players and went to Sibasa 'to honour the Native Commissioner' before making 'a small request'. The sound of the musicians dancing round the District Offices brought all court and clerical work to a halt, but the Chief pointed out that to stop the music would be seen by his supporters as a loss of face for the Commissioner. As a result, the Chief's request was granted and the Native Commissioner was reminded noisily of the sort of support that Ratshimphi could command."
Blacking concluded that "all human beings have a right to music and to opportunity of artistic expression,, and therefor the goal of musical progress must be not so much to create 'free music' as to enable free people to be free to make music."...sam smith