Conclusion

OK, so let’s walk through this together.

So, once upon a time … So basically, this whole thing is about cultures and diversity and about cultures bumping up against other cultures, right? And forming new ones. And about the conflict that comes with that. And I guess there are really two choices, right? You can have conflict or you can have synthesis. You’ve got this culture and you’ve got that culture, and they can either become a new culture - which inevitably is sort of what happens, but it doesn’t happen easily - OR this culture can do what it can to destroy the other culture and get all the power and all of that.

But once upon a time, there WAS no culture. You know, once upon a time, it was just Matt Damon on Mars. It was just a bunch of us - ALL of us - running around what’s now kind of Tanzania trying to survive. And, I don’t know … do you remember when we talked about the difference between “civilization” and “culture”? Terry Eagleton’s definitions of civilization and culture? That civilization was the mailbox and culture was the color you painted it? Well, what we were doing here in the beginning, is we were building a civilization. Right? We were figuring out tools, and language, and … that was a huge leap.

But what we didn’t have was culture because we were all knocking around here and it was just “us.” Everybody was just us. And for a long time, that was fine. For thousands and thousands of years that was fine. But, you know, the population grew and - this is the beginning of Malthus, right here - the population grew and people needed resources and so people started to spread out. You know, for the same reasons that people spread out now. Basically for survival. You need food. You need to not get killed. You need to find somebody to have kids with. You need to perpetuate the species, all that stuff.

And, you know, once upon a time there was a lot of open land. I mean, now it’s different, because all the land is contested, but - you know, a hundred and fifty thousand years ago, when we were all just starting to move - there was nobody else anywhere. So go for it, take ownership! You want to start a culture in Australia? Go! It’s all yours! You want to start a culture in Greece? Go for it! There’s nobody there! It’s all yours! And so people started to spread around. And, again, people are still spreading around. The only difference is - and it’s a big difference - is that now the land is “owned.”

And people spread out for the reasons we went over before. Environmental reasons. Agriculture, which is a huge one, we talked about that before. Politics. You need to marry somebody - remember I talked about the Jewish community in Dublin and how they had to leave when they ran out of women to marry - and so as we go to different places we develop differently.

And this is the beginning of the Darwin thing right here. And it wasn’t that people necessarily developed different pigmentation or hair texture or bone structure BECAUSE they were in other areas, that wasn’t really the way it worked. The way it worked was that if you had the right kind of bone structure and pigmentation, you didn’t die of melanoma - for example - and you had kids with somebody else who also didn’t die. And those people survived whereas the people with the wrong pigmentation … if there’s a lot of sun, and you’ve got the wrong kind of pigmentation, you get skin cancer. Or whatever. They did a study on the shapes of noses not too long ago, and it turns out they’re connected to the need and the ability to dehumidify air. So if you’re from Northern Europe, like my wife’s family, they all have these sort of long thin noses, because that’s the best kind of nose to have in cold climates. Whereas if you’re in a warmer and more humid climate, you need flatter and wider nostrils and it’s all just about the basic ability to breathe. I mean, later this stuff would become the basis for racial discrimination and all that sort of stuff, but it was really just about adapting to the environment.

These three heads I think are really kind of cool, because these … basically what they did is they took some skulls - I think it was a university in England - they took some skulls from - old old old skulls - from different parts of the world and they worked with anthropologists and they basically recreated the faces of people that lived in different parts of the world at roughly the same time. So this person, I think she was from Scandinavia somewhere. And this guy I think was China/Mongolia. And this woman was Peruvian, although I guess it wasn’t Peru back then. And what’s interesting is that it’s kind of recognizable now. I mean, if these guys got on a bus with you, you’d definitely NOTICE, but you wouldn’t necessarily get off the bus.

So, getting back to the story. Everybody had to go to different places in the world. BUT, and I don’t know if it’s a genetic compulsion or just the way we’re wired or whatever, but everybody - whether you were in Sweden or China or Peru or Australia or Greece or whatever - everybody had to deal with the same basic questions. Right? The Kluckhohn and Strodbeck “Worldview” questions.

Human Nature Orientation, what is the innate character of a person? Are you a creature of God or are you an animal or are you an angel? What’s the difference between you and the other animals? What is … you know, CONSCIENCE, right? We have a conscience and we have a language to prove that we have a conscience.

And then Relational Orientation, what’s our relationship to each other? Right? Are we colleagues? Are we competitors? Are we collective? Are we individualistic? I don’t know if you remember the class we did on the shift from collectivism to individualism, it was when we were talking about generational cycles? Do you remember that? OK, right. So this “Relational Orientation” thing - well, it depends on the situation. You know, I mean it goes back to that Ian McEwan quote, a good society works when it makes sense to be good. And when it doesn’t, it makes sense for a society to fall apart.

I always think it’s interesting that progressive politics tend to be more successful when the economy is OK. Right? Like the Civil Rights movement in America happened during a period of post-war economic prosperity, right? The economy in America in the 1950s and 1960s was pretty good. And the Civil Rights movement also tended to be more successful in places IN America where the economy was good. If New York, historically, is more “liberal” than Alabama … well, there’s also more money in New York. And so there was more of an appetite among the white kids of the people who had the power in the country for Civil Rights than there would have been during the Great Depression. And again, Malthus. When the resources are lower, there’s less of an interest in helping out people outside of the tribe. Which makes sense, right? I mean, equality is a luxury. When the economy’s good, and the population is relatively low in relation to the economy, we can afford to be fair. When the economy isn’t as good, and the population is higher and so the competition is higher, there isn’t really that same widespread appetite for equality and fairness. 

Does that make sense? Do you understand what I’m saying?

OK, Time Orientation. You know, I’m sure you remember the difference between monochronic and polychronic time. And again, I think part of it … you know, the idea that time is finite, or for that matter the idea that time is infinite or circular, but anyway our philosophies about time … come from the idea that we know we’re going to die. Which, I admit, is kind of a lot to carry around. It’s kind of heavy, to know that one day you are not going to exist anymore. Forever. And I think that’s a huge motivator in thinking about “Well, how long am I here? What is the definition of time? Is there something after this? Or is this it?” There’s also the shift - we talked about this before - the shift from agriculture to industry. In an agricultural culture, time is circular. Generations come and go but the land remains and it operates by its own seasonal clock, right? Every October you need to bring in the harvest. Every Spring you need to sew the seeds for the next crop. And that doesn’t end. Well, it’s very different in a city. In a city - in an industrial environment - there’s this idea that you get up in the morning and you go to work, and you go home and you eat dinner and you go to bed. Of course, that’s its own kind of cycle.

OK, and then we talked about “Activity Orientation” and if you remember this, when we talked about the foundations of American culture, which was about human nature orientation and activity orientation working together. Right? The Protestant Work Ethic? In which case Human Nature orientation was, basically, we are all born bad. These guys took the idea of Original Sin very seriously. There’s nothing you can do about it, because Adam and Eve ate the apple and discovered shame and we’re living with that forever. And so you’re born and you’re already in debt. But then, with “Activity Orientation” there IS something you can do. OK, you’re born bad, but if you want to be good the way you do that is through work. And then you become a better person. And so - if you want to carry it to its extreme - that means that a successful person is a good person because they worked for it, and and UNsuccessful person is self-evidently not a good person.

Remember, also, it ties in with the idea of individualism. Right? I mean, you work to create your own worth and your own identity. It’s not … you know, in a high-context collectivist environment or society, you are your family’s kid. In an individualistic society, at least in theory, nobody cares who your father is. Nobody cares who your mother is. People judge you on what YOU do, and how well you do it. So that’s “Activity Orientation.”

And then finally, “Man-Nature Orientation” - you know, what is our relationship to nature? And if you remember, again, when we talked about defining civilization, one of the defining moments was when we figured out that we knew how to use the world around us to feed us. You can take this stick, and you can dig a hole in the ground with it, and you can put a seed in the hole, and then you water it and you wait and if you wait long enough, the Earth is going to feed you. So nature is ours.

And then you take that same instinct and fast forward to, say, the Spanish in Mexico or the Belgians in the Congo - the Belgians had a use for rubber, and the natives didn’t use it. Which, from a Beligan perspective meant that they didn’t know HOW to use it. And because they didn’t know how to use the resources around them, that was proof that the Belgians were superior to the Congolese and that the land was rightfully Belgian. It’s our stuff to use, because we know how to use it. And BECAUSE they don’t know how to use it, they’re not as civilized - as fully human - as we are. Do you know what I mean by that? And you STILL get into that, with mineral rights, for example. Oil. Who gets to claim ownership of oil, or coal, or natural gas? Or gold or rubber or ivory, once upon a time. Diamonds.

And one of the big arguments that Greta Thurnberg has - and we talked about this before - but she has to challenge thousands and thousands of years of accepted wisdom that nature is “ours” and that we own it. The Earth is OUR Earth. But the problem is that it’s not a sustainable idea.

And everybody, again, it didn’t matter if you were in Sweden or China or Peru or whatever … A.) Everybody had these same questions to figure out and B.) Everybody had the same tools of the process of perception to answer them with. And the differences in the answers they came up with became the differences in the cultures themselves.

And you guys remember the three stages of perception, right? The selection, the organization and the interpretation? The selection is seeing the thing. Well, everybody sees things. I mean, my cat sees things. But as far as I know, my cat doesn’t NAME the thing, although I sometimes suspect that he … Anyway, the idea that we are apart from the other animals because we KNOW that we have this process. AND that it’s culturally determined. The way that one group or society organizes or names something and the way that another group organizes or names something is not the same. It depends on the culture that they’re in. And then, the interpretation - the acting on the naming, the action that follows the context - is also determined by the culture they’re in. Right? So, red light means stop. Dog means pet or dog mean dinner. And then you get into abstractions, THIS is beautiful but THAT is not.

And this is really kind of the … You know, this is the whole - I mean, I never really thought about it like this before but this kind of overlaps nicely with Hall’s “Iceberg Theory” as well. The selection is the stuff on the top. The stuff you can see. This is he way they dress. This is what they eat. Etc, etc, etc. The organization is the naming of the thing, right? You see somebody and you go “Man, that person is BEAUTIFUL” and you do whatever you do with that information at the bottom of the iceberg. You act on that attribution. You Interpret. It’s not an exact fit, but it’s close. And it depends on the culture. And again, what’s interesting about the iceberg model, is that if you were to go down to the VERY bottom of the iceberg, like way way way way way down down down down down, you’d eventually - at least in theory - get to a universally agreed point. That we came up with when we were all figure out tools and language back in Tanzania. You’d eventually get to the point where we’re all in agreement on a couple of things.

“You don’t eat children” for example. Or, at least, “you don’t eat your OWN children.” Yeah, you might eat dog. Yeah, you might eat frog. Yeah, you might marry your cousin. But you don’t eat your children. And I guess that goes back to the Matt Damon on Mars stage in human cultural development.

OK, and then Phenomenology. I hope you guys remember this. You should. I mean, we’ve talked about it a lot. Uh, you know … the idea that reality is the agreed organization and interpretation of experience. And that that agreement is what constitutes a culture. Do you understand what I mean by that? OK, cool. The world “exists” because you perceive it and you name it and you say “Ah, tree!” and I see it and I say “Ah, tree!” and - using language - we both respond in the same way, which both determines culture and is determined BY culture, and now the “tree” exists.

It’s kind of wild, in a way, because what this means - sort of - is that you only exist because somebody else perceives you. Right? I mean, forget the tree, we’re talking about you. And that that person only exists if you perceive THEM. So in a way, culture - you can’t exist without a culture. I mean, you have the self, of course. But when you die, it dies with you. But as far as phenomenology goes, the self’s not enough. You can’t really totally perceive yourself. At least not objectively.

Which brings up a whole other thing about the existence of objectivity at all, but forget it. We’ve got to finish class at some point.

And, you know, we’ve talked about this before, so … but money exists because YOU perceive it as money, I perceive it as money, we agree to the VALUE of that money, and then you give me the dollar and I give you a Coke. And that is the fundamental brick of culture, right there. And it could be money, it could be time. It could be a calendar. It could be whatever, but that’s basically it. And it’s when we CAN’T agree on the value of something that we need to go back and adjust our culture - either peacefully or not - until we come up with a new consensus.

The three functions of semiotics, we talked about it last class I think. OK, so the first one is the concrete form of the thing, right? This thing - clock, whatever - that’s the concrete form. There it is, that’s a clock. But the next stage is, it refers to something other than itself. Right? In this case, it’s referring to a “time” - very good, guys - and the third thing is that we all recognize it for the thing that it refers to. Right? I mean, if you remember the Oliver Sacks thing, where the guy … and he would see the concrete form, but he woul’dt be able to organize it or interpret it or … so. The question is, if you take the three functions of semiotics - can you find a parallel to the three stages of perception?

You know, the concrete form equals the red light. In it referring to something other than itself, the organization. And then the interpretation would be the eventual recognition of what that initial thing refers to. You understand what I mean by that?

So, this is busy! This perception thing is busy! Because not only is it “Perception” but it’s also the iceberg and it’s ALSO semiotics! It's a lot of work!

I had some students - a long time ago now - a bunch of medical students and they all … and the first thing that they were asked to do, if you go to medical school. At least here in Ireland. The first thing is you go to the cadaver - you go to the dead guy lying on the table - and, uh … you reach in and you take out the heart. That’s the very first thing that they do, all these young kids and they’re all standing around this dead body which is all opened up and they reach in. And they take out a heart. Or a liver. Or a … And the whole point is just to see if you can do it at all. That’s it. And some people really can’t. They go “Arrrghhhh…” And it’s like, no, what did you expect this to be?

Any maybe medical school ain’t for you, my friend.

Um, anyway. OK. OK, so the tree thing, right? So you see the tree, and then you have a picture of the tree, and then you invent the word for the tree. And then you climb the tree, I guess. The vision is replaced by the picture which is replaced by the word which is replaced by the idea. Right? And that’s basically the way language works and that’s basically the way perception works as well. You see the thing, you name the thing, and I guess in this case you sit under it when it rains. But, you know, we are a language-based species.

And once you have that, you know, you can access the ideas. And so again, and just like before, just as people developed differently along the requirements of where they ended up - Sweden or China or Peru - the language that they contextualized their experience in whatever part of the world they found themselves sin depends on whatever kind of situation the … depending on the world that they need to contextualize.

So your experience - as your culture develops in Finland - your culture is different than … where is that .. I don’t even know here Finland is on this map. Maybe Finland’s a bad example.

BUT, your culture as it develops in France is somewhat different from the culture that develops in Italy, and it’s VERY different from the culture that develops in … I don’t know, in Peria. Which I believe is not called Persia anymore. But I hope you know what I mean, where cultures develop separately but in tandem. Right? The language changes the culture and the culture changes the language. That makes sense, right? You guys are following this, right? Man, I hope so…

Alright, which leads us to this guy. You remember Edward Saphir? I hope you remember Edward Saphir. You’re going to want to remember Edward Saphir. The Saphir-Worf hypothesis, and he would - I think - say there was a universal shared reality but that your language only lets you experience that reality through the lens of that language. Right? So, if you see something and I see something and we’re seeing the same thing, and that thing exists whether we’re seeing it or not, but your experience depends on you seeing it in French and my experience depends on my seeing it in English, are we having the same experience?

And from reading your essays, a lot of you guys are … I mean, obviously you’re French and you speak French and you speak English and you speak … and so I’m wondering if that’s true for you? I mean, does your experience of the world change depending on what language you happen to be experiencing the world in? Do you think differently in different languages? I don’t know. I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know.

I mean, I’m still struggling with English. I mean, that one’s difficult enough for me.

But, yeah, no. Exactly. You have different perceptions. Because language is a way of … of, of contextualizing perception. I DO know that they used to study medicine in German and they used to study diplomacy in French, which makes a certain amount of sense, right? Because French is a very diplomatic language. You can try THIS way and if that doesn’t work, you can try the other way, and if THAT doesn’t work … Whereas German, uh … it’s very exact. As history has shown us, German would not be the ideal language for diplomacy. Maybe not the most diplomatic people. But they ARE very exact. And so there you go.

And so that’s Safir-Whorf, and then you get into the idea of Social Constructivism. Or Social Constructionism. Which is SORT OF the opposite argument of Safir-Worf, it’s the argument that there is no such thing as an objective reality, it’s all like - it’s all like the money, it’s all like the value of the dollar. The existence only exists in your head, on the agreement of experience, and so, you know …
 
Oh, and so did you see the story about … well, I guess he was Ellen Page and is now Elliot Page, the actor who - it’s embarrassing for me but the gender terms get all confusing - the actor-slash-ex-actess who was in “Inception” and who has announced himself to be a guy. Have you been - did you see this at all? I don’t know if you remember - did you ever see “Inception”? Do you remember the woman who was on the Bir Hakeim Bridge and was trying to impress … she brought the mirrors around and … you know, the young side-kick. Well, she was a woman, she was Ellen Page, and she has transitioned. And she is now he, and he is named Elliot Page.

So, as far as Social Constructionism goes, certainly for Elliot Page, gender is a social construct. And of course, inevitably, this brings us back to Rachel Dolezal. Who I still think is a really interesting case, whatever about - and I know she makes some people really angry, but she’s an interesting case. And really cuts to the bone with “What is cultural identity?” And I’m going to keep using her in class. Although there’s a new woman who did the same thing in New York last year. And she was also an academic, be careful around academics. And she was … You know, she was just this Jewish woman from New York, who became a Puerto Rican woman from New York, and it’s like “I don’t know if you can do that.” I guess you can KIND of do it with ethnicity, I’m not sure you can do it with an actual place. Well, I IDENTIFY as Chinese. I’ve never been there, but …

Unless she were adopted? Well, maybe. Maybe that’s true. But, well … even if you WERE adopted, I’m not sure that your … I mean, if you want to argue that that ethnicity ISN’T just a social construct, then I’m not sure that even being adopted into a black family would change anything. You know? I mean, if you’re arguing that ethnicity is an objective fact, which ties into regional and geographic origin, then I can understand why Rachel Dolezal would upset people. But if you want to argue that ethnicity is a social construct with NO basis in objective fact, just like gender, then I think you have to give her a pass.

I mean, I guess that’s the point, right? I mean, here’s what’s interesting, right? I mean, once upon a time if you go back to Tanzania, this was all of us. Right? We were all basically the same, figuring out tools and language and all that. Right? And then, because of geography, we all started developing differently. But the reason that our woman in ancient Sweden doesn’t look like our guy in ancient Mongolia was because this person was up in Northern Europe and this person was out in Central Asia. And that doesn’t mean that one is better than the other or any of that, but these changes are real and they were determined by the weather and the topography, as much as anything. It’s all determined by who survived the elements. And the genetics, and not the character or the moral value and the intellect, but the genetics - bone structure and skin color and all that stuff - those are the genetics that were best adapted to the area that you live in. So going back to the thing of “Well, I identify as somebody from a different region of the world” … THEN you have an issue. Can you do that? You can have an affinity, but I think that’s slightly different. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe you can. She DID.

So even if you were adopted by … If I were adopted by a Chinese family, and I’m still somebody whose family originally came from Scotland and Germany, which is where my family came from, CULTURALLY I might grow up Chinese. But I wouldn’t be. I guess. If you think of an ethnicity as both a biological AND cultural phenomenon, then you can kind of be Chinese and kind of be Scottish at the same time. And then you’re something new, and that’s how cultures are formed anyway.

I don’t know. It’s confusing. That’s the whole reason that I keep coming back to the case, because it’s interesting and it’s confusing. Beats me. If any of you guys can come up with an answer to that, let me know.

Alright, can I keep going? 

OK, do you remember this thing? Culture and civilization, right here? Terry Eagleton, arguing that post boxes are civilization because they are among the tools that people need to … OK, right. Civilization being the stuff that you need, culture being the stuff that makes it yours. So let me ask you a question, the rock that is in the hand of the Tanzanian woman. Is that civilization or is that culture? Right, I think we’d have to say it’s civilization. OK, the bird-claw necklace around the neck of our ancient Swedish woman. Civilization or culture? Culture, there you go. The earrings in the Peruvian woman’s ears, civilization or culture? Culture, OK. Now here’s an interesting one, I don’t know the answer to this. Jewelry in general, civilization or culture? Not the specific earrings, and not the bird’s-foot necklace. I think you’re right, I think it’s civilization. It’s like, every culture has … jewelry itself is civilization, the kind of jewelry your tribe prefers would be culture. And that’s interesting too, right? That we all develop the need for jewelry.

And here’s what I think is interesting. No matter where you ended up, right? This was the process. This was the whole idea of … all of these people ended up in different parts of the world, and for most of them nobody else existed. They didn’t communicate with each other for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Up until a couple of hundred years ago people lived their whole lives within twenty miles of where they were born. If you were in Sweden, you didn’t know anybody outside of Sweden. You might as well have been Matt Damon on Mars. But you weren’t, because this woman was having the same basic experience in Peru. And this guy was having the same experience in China. They didn’t know each other, but they were all developing cultures at the same time. Through the same processes, right? Perception, language, all that sort of stuff. Naming things.

Where it gets interesting to me is when you come across the parallels between a bunch of groups that didn’t know each other, didn’t know OF each other, at all. I mean, if you look at this fertility painting from aboriginal Australia and this fertility carving from Celtic Ireland … I mean, I guess childbirth is a very obvious place to begin creation myth. But still. You have the same basic creation myths in Australia and Ireland and across Africa and Asia and everywhere. But everybody is coming up with some sort of metaphysical narrative. And again, I think a lot of that is because we know we’re going to die. So there’s a real emphasis on “There must be more to life that this. There must be a religious underpinning or some sort of spiritual if invisible underpinning to human experience. It can’t just be this. You’re born, you live, you die.” Right? And so you start to have these sort of parallel religious myths. 

So in the West, in the Middle East and then in Europe, you have this sort of Judeo-Christian answer to that mystery. Who are we, what are we, where are we. And, you know, for a long long long long time, the idea was that we are NOT animals. We’re not angels, but we’re the next thing down. Adam and Eve were as real as you and me. We have dominion over animals, we have dominion over nature, we were made in God’s image, and God has dominion over us. And we’re in the middle of the universe.

And this was reality in Europe for a long long time. And in Asia, you have a parallel idea, right? You have the same idea of a divine origin, and you have the same idea of the map of the universe. Because again, everybody, wherever they were, they were asking themselves the same questions. And they were answering them differently, but not THAT differently.

And then, you know, Darwin shows up. Recently. Yesterday, by comparison. A hundred and whatever years ago, not that long ago. Darwin comes along and he says “Well, actually, we’re not creations of God exactly. We’re more a result of an evolutionary process. We’re animals, just like all the other animals, and the reason we exist is because we got lucky, essentially. The species that survived only survived because they were lucky enough to have the right biology for their environment at the time.” And so everybody said “Oh. So you mean God made that happen?” And he said “No, you’re not listening. It’s luck. You happen to have the right hand structure, you happen to have the right sized jaw, you happen to be able to climb trees when all of those things are useful. You could have the same size jaw or the same hand structure and if those things WEREN’T useful in the environment, you would not survive.” It was just chance. And nobody liked that, everybody wanted a narrative. Everybody wanted a story that was written by God with us as the heroes. But if there ISN’T a story … to say that there’s a story is to say that there’s an author.

And this is a break from thousands and thousands of years of theology, and it happened yesterday.

However, Darwin’s theories were used to justify slavery and colonialism and all of that. Justified by this quote, actually. “From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed into groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars into constellations.” Now again, Darwin wasn’t talking specifically about human beings. You know, he was talking about butterflies and insects and plants and wasps. Things like that. But if we class ourselves as animals … Once that theory was applied to human beings, you get into “descending degrees” of humans, and the people that DIDN’T have a mailbox didn’t have a civilization. And we did. 

You guys remember this, the difference between cultural studies and ethnography? And again, with cultural studies, just always be very aware of the source of information. Of who it is trying to teach you something and why they’re trying to teach you that. You know, and it could be deliberate, but it could just be … I was amazed, when I got older in America I was amazed at how much of American history I WASN’T taught as a kid.

What’s the difference between cultural relativism and ethnocentrism? Uh, they’re the opposite, basically. Cultural relativism means that you can’t apply the standards and judgements of one culture to other cultures because every culture develops differently. So if in some cultures they eat dog, you can’t judge them on that because their culture developed differently because of the circumstances behind that. Whereas if your culture eats frog, other cultures can’t judge your culture on the basis of eating frog because your culture developed differently as well. So it’s relative. Ethnocentrism is the belief that your ethnicity is in the center. It’s in the word. That the primary and correct culture - and it might not even be conscious. You might just sort of instinctively do it. That your culture’s the right one, and that other cultures aren’t “different” exactly, they’re just wrong. Just flat out wrong.

And I always think it’s interesting when you look at France and Italy, for example. Because Italians are convinced that Italian food is the best food. The French are convinced that French food is the best food. And Italians are convinced that Italian wine is the best wine, and the French think that French wine is the best wine. You’re both wrong, by the way. Because Mexican food is the best food. But that’s not your fault.

And then reference culture, the idea that the Mona Lisa IS art. That the closer it is to … You know this stuff.

Ethnography is the direct observation and study … This picture, by the way, is Margaret Mead, and she was the woman who - I don’t remember if I told you about her - but she’s the woman who went to Samoa in 1928 and basically studied how young women grew up in Samoa, and then she went back to New York and she wrote a book about it. Which is a famous book, called “Coming of Age in Samoa.” But years later, somebody produced a documentary and - I’m not sure if this is true or not - but they said that basically Margaret Mead would ask these women about sex and marriage and all this sort of stuff and they would tell her stuff. And in the documentary, they say that these girls just lied. They just made things up. Teenage girls, they were having fun. They just told the white girl stories, and she believed them all and then she wrote them down. Again, I don’t know if that’s true or not. I hope it isn’t, but it’s kind of funny.

OK, this thing. We talked about this thing, right? You remember Malthus? You’d better remember Malthus. Of course you remember Malthus. How could you possibly forget Malthus? And Malthus was all about competition, really. That’s his whole thing. And Darwin took those theories, because Malthus was around first, and he said “Yeah, species all want to survive and species compete with each other for the resources they need to survive.” Again, Darwin was mostly writing about caterpillars, but Huxley’s the guy who then applied that theory to humans in the same way.

Which again led to sort of a scientific hijacking of Darwin’s theories - and look, I’m not saying Darwin was a great guy and completely innocent, but he was a Victorian Englishman, and so I’m sure he was as racist as your average Victorian Englishman. That said, he wasn’t really concerned about ethnicity and he wasn’t really motivated by the idea of human subjugation. He was really interested in the origins of life. He wasn’t the one talking about humans as a range of species, if you know what I mean. So the shift that happened later, which was justified by the use of Darwin’s theories, I don’t want you to think that Darwin was the guy who was saying that stuff. His theories were used, but he wasn’t the one who was arguing it. Do you understand what I mean by that?

Anyway, this is where science turns into “science.” Bad science. I don’t know if you remember Samuel Morton, he’s the guy in Philadelphia who took the skulls to see how much bird-seed he could fit. And he had the Caucasian European skull, and then he had the Sub-Saharan African skull - and it could also be Asian, it could also be South American - and then for reference you have the skull of a chimpanzee. And the argument was basically that if the theory of evolution was correct, the White European skull was at the most advanced stage. The African guy was sort of the halfway point of evolution, and the chimp … OK, you want to say we come from monkeys? Alright, here’s your monkey.

And so this science justified slavery, colonialization, all that. And one of the remarkable things about - I mean, I showed you these pictures before, how the Belgians used to chop the hands off of - one of the interesting things about this is you would not do this to somebody you recognized as equally human. You know what I mean? The Germans and the French might go to war with each other, and they might shoot each other, but what they wouldn’t do is cut each other’s hands off and live. Do you understand what I mean by that? But the other thing is that, at the same time, if you didn’t regard these people as at least somewhat human, then there would be no real point in mutilating them. Or in punishing them. So it’s a weird thing. You only do this to somebody who you regard as human enough for it to have an impact, but not human enough so that it’s OK to do it. It’s a weird in-between stage.

And Malthus, we talked about Malthus. And Malthus’s point of crisis, which isn’t some far off future possibility but more of a continuous condition that we’re always living in. We’re always in a state of crisis, a perpetual state of crisis. Somewhere. Maybe not in the United States when the were founding the United States and it just seemed like the land of plenty, but inevitably there will be more people than there are resources. So inevitably there will be more competition.
I don’t know if you have this … I mean, you guys are young, and when I was young, when I was twenty or so, I used to think that society was on a steady progressive march and that sooner or later we were going to hit this point of … not perfection, but that everybody would be equal and everybody would be treated well and all that sort of stuff. And I think we do need that sense of optimism to get out of bed in the morning. But at the same time, I’m not entirely sure it’s true. You know? I used to think that we were on this steady march, but I don’t think it works like that. I think it see-saws. You go this way for a little while, and then you go that way for a little while. And then you turn around and you go back again. And that culture and history and society and progress, instead of being one narrative to the ideal end, it’s more like a constant back and forth. And it’ll always be a constant back and forth. And I always think with this class that it’s like a problem that you can never solve, but that you can’t walk away from either.

And so if you accept this theory, that the point of crisis happens when the population outstrips the resources, and then you look at the current population figures, nine billion people in the next fifty years or so, 7.7 billion people now, you start to break down into tribes, into subcultural tribes of affinity, because it’s all about access to the resources. Which is what you see happening in America, but I think it’s also going on in France. I think people are reluctant to talk about it in France, but I think it is going on there. I mean, in America … I think one of the differences between America and France is that in America people are saying “Well, the country needs to be controlled by white Christian men” and the people who are saying that are the white Christian men and they want to keep control of it because they want to keep control of the resources and the power. They don’t want to give up power. Nobody who has power wants to give it up. And up until now they’ve always had the power.

But to their credit, they’re pretty straightforward about it. They pretty much just say “Yeah, this is a country for white Christian men. This is who the country belongs to.” Now, I don’t agree with them. I do respect the fact that they own up to it, though. I admire their relative candor. Whereas in France, there’s a lot of “No, no. This is a secular country and we don’t see our society as multicultural because we are all the same.” But of course the people that are saying that - in France - are also white Christian men for the most part. It’s the same dynamic, but you’re wrapping it up in the sanctimony of equality. This idea of virtue that isn’t true. It works for you, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of the culture. Do you understand what I mean by that? I mean, you don’t have to agree with me, but that’s certainly how it looks from the outside. Like, in America, you see some guy in a Trump hat, you know where he stands. He’s pretty straightforward about it.

But you get to this guy, you get to Renaud Camus, and it’s like “no, no …” Now, what I think is interesting about this is, again, as far as I can understand it, his argument is against “laicite” as well, because once you don’t just come out and SAY “This is a country for white Christians” he would argue that that opens the door for people to say “I am equally French.” Which for him is a problem. For me I think that’s a necessary step in French … if France is going to remain a culture it has to be open to more than just white Christians. But what’s interesting is that he is making the same argument, from the opposite end, for recognizing or reflecting multicultural differences within France. So he and what he would see as his enemies are arguing for the same thing, that recognition. And I don’t think there’s any problem in calling for recognizing multicultural differences, but I have serious problems with what this guy would DO once you recognize them. And really what you need to do is to say “OK, you can be both multicultural AND French. That one doesn’t exclude the other.” You know.

I mean, the argument … ah, this is interesting. The argument that people have in America, mostly among conservative people in America, against the Black Lives Matter protests is they say “Well, ALL lives matter.” Saying that you can’t just say that one group matters more. Which is a smart, although disingenuous, tactic. It’s intentionally misreading the situation, but in a weird way IT’S sort of an argument for “laicite” as well. “Oh, just you? Not everybody? Aren’t we all equal?” Well, no we’re not, because the reason behind the Black Lives Matter movement is because black people are getting killed by cops disproportionately. And again, the conservative argument would be “There’s more crime in black neighborhoods” and the argument against THAT is because of socio-economic inequalities. But to obscure that with “But we’re all in this together and to say we’re not is racist” is to reverse the situation so it still suits the people who don’t want to give up power, if you know what I mean.

But that anxiety of being replaced.

And then you have this.

I think we’re almost finished. You guys are going to go home early, unless you have any questions. And you’re already home. But the idea that … you know, you have the culture, and then you have the culture splitting, and then you have two different cultures at war with each other. And there’s an expression, the “culture wars.” I don’t know if … do they talk about “culture wars” in France?  Or is that just an American thing? I don’t even know how you would say “Culture War” in France.

Well, they talk about culture wars. And basically what they’re saying is … and a culture war looks like this. Right? On one level, you look at this picture of Cauvin and George Floyd, and you look at this and you go “Well, this is a horrible murder of a black man in Minneapolis.” And it’s very hard to dispute that. And that is true. That is what that is. But this is also what culture war looks like, right? I mean that’s … that’s the whole point. And the same over here. I don’t know if you remember this, this is in England last summer. Maybe this summer. It must be this summer. But, uh … I think this was in Bristol. And this year’s been such a weird year, you know? But, uh … he was this rich English guy and he put a lot of money into the city and so he was a hero to the city and all, but he was also a slave trader. And that’s how he made his money. Um … and so we talked about heroes and their place in culture before. And so enough people in the city decided that they didn’t want the hero of this city to be this slave trader, so they tore down the statue and they dumped it in the river.

Well, this is also … you know, a lot of people - just as a lot of people were upset about this, because, you know, A.) it’s a murder of somebody who’s … it’s a murder of somebody based on class and race. And so a lot of people - including me - are very angry about this. However, a lot of people on the OTHER side of this culture war were very angry about the pulling down of the statue because you cannot erase our history either. And look, my sympathy is with the Black Lives Matter guys and would NOT be with the people who would be upset that statues are coming down. But, it doesn’t really matter about my sympathies, the point is that the people who believe that the George Floyd killing was wrong are as sincere as the people who believe that tearing down the statues is wrong. Do you understand what I mean by that?

OK, and the problem is - at least in America, and it’s the same in Frace, it’s the same thing. It’s the same everywhere. But in America, the problem is that it’s about fifty-fifty.

So where do you go with a culture when it’s fifty-fifty?

Anyway, I don’t know if you remember this, this is from the very first class, when I was trying to explain what I was trying to argue. Um, the central hypothesis. And basically the argument was that because of globalization, rising population and rising power distance, shifting demographics and diminishing resources, environmental changes and political instability, we’re all caught up in this moment of huge socio-political shifts.  You know, look. Culture is an agreement, which is constantly being negotiated depending on who has the power. “America” is an agreement, not a place. “France” is an agreement, not a place. This class was originally designed with the assumption that the students would go out into the wider world. But the wider world has come to you.

And then just a few more facts. Uh, higher population and lower resources. I keep banging that drum. Creates more competition. Increased power distance leads to populist movements away from globalism and towards tribalism. Because more people are scrambling for the resources. More people are scrambling for fewer resources.

And finally, power distance as the accepted ratio from the most powerful to the least powerful in a society.

And that, my friends, is it. That’s basically what I’ve got. Uh … I hope it makes sense, and again you don’t have to agree with any of it, but at least listen to my argument. This is all just my interpretation of it. Do you guys have any questions about any of it?

Anyway, you get the idea.