Culture

The current infatuation with multiple cultures in America seems enlightened on the surface. However, it is important to bear in mind that cultures often stand in the way of greater human progress. Idolizing a culture without a critical and analytical eye is childishly naive.

I was aghast yesterday as I listened to an NPR quiz show. The guest celebrity was a rap singer who was overtly and unabashedly bragging about his American subculture of violence, robbery and drug abuse. The audience seemed to find this quite humorous. I found it disturbing and symptomatic of a sick society.

Similarly, the recent fascination in America with Islamic cultures seems a natural reaction to being aggressively attacked on September 11th, 2001 by a wealthy Saudi madman and his minions. However, the equivocation of cultures which behead women for adultery and hang young men for being gay to American culture is just plain stupid. Many Americans seem unable to take the critical step to investigate a culture's full spectrum of positive and negative traits. I speculate that this is based in intellectual laziness or a delusion that smiling at everything about a culture will keep people from that culture from creating mayhem.

Human cultural development follows patterns which can be readily discerned by studying history critically and analytically. This implies the use of science, a foreign culture indeed for many contemporary Americans, it seems. Science isn't about being blissfully ignorant. It isn't about denying the unpleasant in hopes that it will go away.

Multiculturalism in America can serve a wonderful purpose to enrich the greater American culture. However, the present approach media and politicians are taking toward multiculturalism is shallow and inane, generally. Blanket acceptance of any culture as "great" or "cool" is counterproductive. Fostering the elements of any culture which advance universal human rights and world peace is common sense. Learning the difference takes time, study and openness to truth.

Culture

Multiculturalism has become the refuge for scoundrels of all cultures.

Rudeness, public indecency, littering, obnoxious children, uncontrolled pets, vandalism, improper maintenance of private property. These blights on the general culture are routinely defended and excused by so-called multiculturalists, or The Politically Correct. Political correctness is used as a shield by the irresponsible and irresponsive. Looking the other way rather than practicing civic responsibility is a rampant behavior in urban society.

I ride public transport often. I see the deterioration in the American cultural ethic every time I am on the train. Garbage is thrown everywhere. People monopolize whole sections of a train to the exclusion of other passengers. Punks place their feet up and use three or four seats at their personal space with arrogant looks of challenge to anyone who might approach, regardless of that passenger's age or need of a seat.

These are symptoms of the dissolution of the fabric of civil society. By extolling the wonders of the cultures of our massive influx of immigrants, Americans have lowered the standard of their own country's etiquette to that of the Third World. Some immigrants have no needed role models, because nobody takes the time or risk of telling them their bahavior is simply inappropriate or disturbing to those around them. The poor who are native to America once looked to those who were better educated and mannered for standards of behavior. No more. They look to the deteriorated culture and simply behave as they would in their own educationally deprived homes. After all, nobody will take the time or energy to tell them otherwise. And, if some responsible, courageous citizen does speak up, that poor soul is often unsupported or even criticized by the lazy and undercultured around him/her in a public situation.

Practice involves constant self-appraisal, self-education, self-discipline. However, compassion cannot be practiced in isolation. Compassion sometimes entails correcting wrong behavior directly or by example. By correcting wrong, or uncivilized/dysfunctional social behaviors, the practitioner is being compassionate. The practitioner is trying to help the corrected person live a more functional and happy life in society.