On Cultural Heritage

 I debated if I would comment on this essay: “The Collectivist War Against Cultural Heritage” by Brandon Smith, here.   After the idea wouldn’t go away, I obviously had to.  As a person who studies American culture and a professional in Heritage conservation I probably need to comment.

Basically, Smith rants about how big government is supposedly taking over our lives and is a threat to our individualism.  “Collectivism” is used as a dirty word.  His first paragraph sums up the essay

Two things make man what he is; his soul, and his memory.  Lose one, or both, and he ceases to exist.  He might as well buzz over his own garbage like an insect.  When a society is drawn into the repugnant shadow of totalitarianism and collectivism, it is usually because the masses have abandoned (or been enticed to abandon) a piece of their inner and outer heritage, something which kept the darkness at bay, a lesson from the past, or a principle long honored.  In the wretched and psychotic quest for the “perfect” establishment system, we are even often encouraged by the elitist ilk to slough off the warm remnants of our cultural inheritance like so much skin and “look forward” to a bright and more promising tomorrow, where everything will be different, and certainly, better than today.

Normally, I wouldn’t comment on such a rant. Smith is a young blogger, b 1981 based on his profile, and he markets a Safe Haven place in Montana, in Kalispell, were people can get off the grid.  What is silly about this idea is that it is consistent with our American heritage for people to rant and rave like this, and to set up commune-like places to get off the grid.  This is not new to anyone who has read American cultural history.  A minority of every generation has felt compelled to do similar things as Smith is advocating.  So, I am uncertain what Cultural Heritage he thinks is being lost.

It certainly is not “individualism” as I understand that concept. Those that know me would easily say that I am okay with being a loner. It is hard for me to ask help from anyone. I take care of myself and my own. I am happy to help others in need as long as it doesn’t turn into some long term commitment.  I don’t like social connections that reduce my options (although I will engage in one that seems to expand my options).

Also, take a look at the safe haven concept he presents at his home page.  It is a collectivist’s wet dream: social networking, help each other, living socially, etc.  His definition of collectivism is bizarre.  To him, it is big government forcing people into railroad cars. He spits out the other curse words (socialism, fascism, totalitarianism) with glee.  I see him as a faux individualist.

Let’s be clear here.  Individualism and collectivism are not opposites—they are two sides of the same coin.  In American culture people like Smith often contrast them but do so out of ignorance. 

An individualist is a person who chooses to keep much of the pressures and challenges of society to a minimum because they are afraid of being overwhelmed by them.  They also try to control those social activities that do exist in their life.  Individualists are more comfortable in low context cultures and situations.

A collectivist is a person who embraces the pressures and challenges of society and likes being embedded in social activity.  They give themselves over to it (and being in control is optional). A collectivist is more comfortable in high context cultures and situations.

This paradox of how to live in society is likely the defining cultural trait of American culture.  It is there for all cultures, but for Americans, it is a crucial problem.  And, it has been well studied.  The best reports are:

Bender, Thomas

1978   Community and Social Change in America.  Rutgers, University Press, Piscataway, New Jersey.

Dumont, Louis

1986  Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Madsen, Richard, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton

1985   Habits of the Heart:  Individualism and Commitment in American Life.  New York, Harper and Row.

They are dated but well worth the time to read.

We are not losing our cultural heritage. We are living through the normal cycle of cultural high, then awakening, then unraveling, then secular crisis, and then repeating.  We are in the crisis era which will end with people being pushed or forced into more social conformity.

I don’t like that anymore than Smith seems to.  But this process is not the loss of any heritage; it is our American heritage cycling once again, just as the seasons change. 

I have always liked autumn.

The White House Needs a Pioneer

When Obama was elected I was generally pleased that someone from the South was not going to be president.  Unfortunately, he is such a mutt and vagabond that he doesn’t attach to any region.  I suspect that this is not good because he has no anchor, is listless and directionless.

I like the South in many ways, and much of my family history comes from there.  Great food and lovely ladies with nice accents can be found there.  But I am tired of the belligerent attitude that most southern politicians bring to DC; Eric Cantor being the most recent belligerent.  Since the early 1960s we have had the following southern presidents:  Johnson, Carter, Clinton, & Bush Jr.  Those 16 years with Clinton-Bush Jr. was too much.  It seems the South has risen again and is dictating national policy, just as they did in the antebellum years.  Well, yawl know where that led.

My preference is someone with alkali in their veins, who knows what Hantavirus is, and understands that immigrants are not aliens.   

My image of such a person is more the Pioneer rather than the Mountain Man or the Marlboro Man.  Someone who Walt Whitman or Willa Cather could write about, someone with a vision and a destination, and the will to carry it out.

“All the past we leave behind,
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!”

July Fourth as Cultural Preservation

As we get ready to celebrate July 4^th a comment about historic preservation is appropriate.

Those of us who work in this field protect from development, damage, or desecration, significant tangible evidences of our past.  “Our past” is understood from many levels (local, regional, national, world, or ethnic).  My own work pushes me to focus on the national because the National Historic Preservation Act is the primary driver of my work.

I am often asked why I do this type of work.  I rarely have a good answer.  Most of the stuff I get to protect doesn’t seem like much to others.  Sometimes I agree.

So, let me pose a hypothetical situation.  If China were to successfully invade North America through Puget Sound what do you suppose they would destroy?  After all, conquerors have to destroy something because the act is symbolic of the success. When our military took Baghdad, we toppled the statues of Saddam Hussein and occupied his palaces.  Oh, the desecration we did there.  It was all televised to prove that success was achieved.

I think China would target the Space Needle and trash Microsoft.  Those are easy targets that represent our technological prowess.  Given more time, they would also destroy all evidence of World War II and, more deeply, our cowboy culture.  World War II made America a super power; destroying its remnants proclaims that that heritage is dead.  Smashing the cowboy culture is a deeper expression of this too because the Cowboy is the global symbol of America.  The Marlboro Man still rides in the imagination of the world, which is why conservatives continue the image.  Kill the cowboy to symbolize that America has ridden into its sunset.  Burn the ranches, the hats, the boots, & kill the cows and horses.

Take away the symbols of a culture and it is dead.

Historic preservationists work to protect those symbols, even the small humble ones that don’t obviously suggest national greatness but likely do contribute in some small way.

What about the intangibles, those ideas that sustain America?  What are they?

William G. McLoughlin [1] provided the following as the basics of American ideology:

a)  We are a chosen people;

b)  We have a manifest (or latent) destiny to lead the world to the millennium;

c)  Our democratic-republican institutions, our bountiful natural resources, our concept of free and morally responsible individuals, all operate under a body of higher moral laws (and to transgress from them threatens our destiny);

d)  And, our personal and social ethic (aka the American dream, the protestant work ethic, the success myth) causes the general welfare to thrive by allowing the greatest possible free play and equal opportunity to each individual to fulfill his/her potential.

These are the simple recurring ideas that have sustained “America” from its earliest puritan days.

Where are they now?  They seem to be lost to most Americans; and in some cases, they reek of a conservatism that is not appealing anymore.  They need to be reborn.

They have not been destroyed; they are now latent as we go though our great secular crisis (here & here).  We will begin to recover and reinvent ourselves when these ideas are reworked to guide our future.

America’s recurring transformation is well underway.  It will have turned a corner and we will be able to see the light at the end of its dark tunnel when these ideas are transformed to meet the needs of the 21^st century.

July 4 (1776), Gettysburg, and D Day are all great turning points in American crises.  We will have another one soon. 

If China was successful as described they would also ban Fourth of July celebrations because they are acts of historic and cultural preservation.

Enjoy your BBQs and parades.

Note

1.  William G McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, Chicago, 1978, pg. xiv.

American Cultural Eras: A Summary

      Previously, I made the comment that “American culture in 2010 is more like the 1860s than the 1960s”. Here I follow up on the idea.  In the 1860s America was in two stages of cultural change.  It was a romantic era and an era of secular crisis.  Today, we are in both again.

     The Romantic era of the nineteenth century has many similarities with our current one.  This blog is about Romanticism in general with an emphasis on its current 21^st century form.  The concept of secular crisis that I am using comes from the work of William Strauss and Neil Howe, particularly their book The Fourth Turning [1].

     Strauss and Howe defined four cultural phases that constitute a cultural cycle [See Table 1].  The cycle is similar to an annual round with four seasons.  History does not repeat itself but the cycles, like seasons, do.  We all know that the winter of 2009 was different from but similar to the winter of 2005. They occurred in different years, had different events, and the strength of each winter may have been different (mild or severe).  But they were winter none the less due to other defining characteristics (the weather is generally colder; the days are shorter, vegetation is dormant, etc).

     

     Similarly, the four seasons of American culture are:  Awakening, Culture Wars, Secular Crisis, and Cultural High.  The Awakening is a period of spiritual and intellectual growth that comes from deep confidence within the culture.  New ideas are floated, the status quo is challenged, and sometimes governments are overthrown.  In Western Civilization, the Awakening has the second purpose of being the threshold in-between Apollonian and Dionysian periods. It is a high entropy hybrid era with both ethoses’s equally matched. It is the only season that has a dual role.

     Culture Wars are eras of moral and ethical strife, and when powerful cultures may clash on international stages but with little final result.  Collective confidence erodes. The balance in ethos’s tips to the newer side and this strengthened New Light begins transforming the culture, dismantling the legacy of the Old Light.  This era is sometimes referred to as an Unravelling that leads to crisis.

     A Secular Crisis is a season of deep cultural loss of confidence that typically leads to the overthrow of a well established status quo (although, the new status quo may eventually resemble and act like the previous one). The crisis is an identity crisis but it is often played out as a struggle for economic resources or political ends. Episodes of total war are likely to occur. The last vestiges of the Old Light are purged leaving the culture fully dominated by the new ethos.  

     The Cultural High is when the survivors of the crisis rebuild their society using the guiding principles of the new dominant ethos. Cultural categories are firmed up, empires are expanded and solidified, and confidence is restored.

     Next, another Awakening emerges that starts the process over again.  However, the pattern is not set in stone and it can be broken in any era due to internal or external issues. But the pattern has been consistent for several cycles.  

     Table 1 shows this pattern, taking American history back to its English colonial days. The pattern continues deeper into British history but here I am merely pointing out that it is a pattern found in Western Civilization as other European nations have versions of it too. The pattern breaks from being nation/empire focused into city-state or regional variations the further back in time you go.

     I have shown the Apollonian-Rational eras as blue and the Dionysian-Romantic ones as red. Awakenings are purple due to their hybrid character.   The 17^th century may have been more of a pre-Romantic era but I am thinking of the intellectual figures of those years that assisted with creating the rational-romantic opposition during the 18^th century, such as Descartes (1596-1650), Spinosa (1632-1677), and Locke (1632-1704). Remember, the Puritans emphasized the rational-intuition dichotomy that would become rationalism vs. romanticism.  

Table 1:  Cultural Eras in American History [2]

Summer	Autumn	Winter	Spring
Awakening	Culture Wars	Secular Crisis	Cultural High
1960-1990 4th; Consciousness Revolution	1984-2007 Post Scientism	2001- Crisis of Confidence	Our Future
1890-1920 3rd Awakening	1911-1936 WWI & Prohibition	1929-1946 Depression & WWII	1946-1968 American High
1800-1830 2nd Great Awakening	1820-1854 Slavery Compromise	1854-1876 No slavery Compromise	1866-1889 Gilded Age
1730-1760 The Great Awakening	1754-1776 Colonial Conflicts	1763-1783 American Revolution	1783-1803 Young Republic
Puritan Awakening	Restoration	Glorious Revolution	Age of Empire

    

     When was Modernism?  Roughly, from the 3rd Awakening through the 4th Awakening. After that there is an overhang as it gradually fades to its sunset in our current crisis.  Yes, Keynesian crap will end.  Nineteenth century Romanticism ran from the 2nd Awakening through the 3rd; its overhang then faded into the 1930s.

     So, there it is. Year 2010 is like 1860 because we are once again in a secular crisis guided by romantic principles.  Year 1960 was at the end of a Cultural High guided by rationalism.  In 1960 our leaders walked the earth with great confidence.  Today, they may have superficial hubris but their deeper anxiety shows through.  Confidence is lacking and maybe competence too.

     Today, don’t expect rational responses to our current crisis; seek the intuitive solution. Study the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution as they are our best guides to action.  Romantic secular crises do not have obvious linear related events such as B follows A.  But, there are dozens of events that are related in nonlinear ways such that A and B may appear to be isolated events when they are actually in a reciprocal or reflexive relationship.  These are dangerous times in which competence is sorely needed.

Notes

1. William Strauss and Neal Howe, The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy, Broadway Books, New York, 1997.  See also their Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069, William Morrow, New York, 1991.  I’ll use their Generations theory later.

2. I use ideas and dates from The Fourth Turning and William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Social Change in America, 1607-1977, 1978 for Table 1.  The big difference is that I allow the eras to overlap because cultural processes needn’t be viewed as links in a chain. Within each season there is a 17 to 23 year period that is the core of the season.  Table 1 has no grid lines.  Time and cultural patterns are nonlinear as well. Sometimes it snows in autumn.