Program 3: Lesson 2 - The Nature of Culture

Faces of Culture - "The Nature of Culture"

Narr: For most of that vast span of time we humans have roamed earth, no one of us ever saw more than a handful of people in a lifetime, and those people were the same as we were. They thought the same, they acted the same, and they lived in the same way. Like us, they gathered food directly from nature, and they hunted. They were friends.

Even those who lived nearby who we usually regarded as less than human, lived, spoke, and believed almost exactly as we did. Only every now and then would we cross paths with strangers. People who spoke differently, looked different, and lived in a manner different from ourselves.

Now we live in a world grown suddenly, startlingly small. We encounter strangers with strange words and strange ways every day.

(People speaking in different languages, women buying bracelets.)

"Ask the chief if...because they're awfully nice these two bracelets."

"And this one..."

"No, no, that's not so well done."

"Look at the difference between mine and his. You see, this is too well cut, this one has got a pattern on top of the eye, you see."

(Men speaking.)

"These are new."

"That's the old, that's the old one."

"Well, that's got much more value."

"It's a museum object. The new one is not."

"And the new one is coarse."

Narr: Among the peoples of the world, we find not uniformity, but amazing diversity and variety. Each society adapts in its own distinctive way. Each finds its own solutions to the problems of survival.

What makes people flourish in such phenomenal variety? It is culture! It is culture that allows us to adapt! A set of values, beliefs and practices that enables us together, to reap the benefits from each unique locality in which we wander, in which we put down roots and survive. Yet, culture goes far beyond aiding our mere physical survival.

For over and above our basic needs of eating and staying warm, we use culture as a scaffold of rules and meanings, a blueprint for our ideas, customs and patterns of living together. Through our culture each group populates the world with beings and forces, both visible and invisible. Each paints a portrait of righteousness and evil, devises means to control fortune and fate, and creates order out of seeming chaos.

"Beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty below me, beauty above me, beauty all around me, in beauty, it is finished."

Culture tells us not just to survive, but how to survive! What to hunt or grow. Not just to bear children, but when and with whom. Each tells us what we may or may not presume, down to what we may or may not eat.

Culture circumscribes, filters and gives value to our reality. Because of culture, even in the same environment, people pursue different ways to die, sport different attire, and subscribe to diverse habits and religions. Each of us tends to believe in the righteousness of our own ways, in our truths as brought forth by our gods and ancestors and passed down to our children.

Every people believe their way of life best, see the world through their own perspective, judge others according to their ideas of virtue.

This tendency to regard one's own culture as ordained, preeminent, and other cultures as inferior, is called "ethnocentrism."

The ethnocentrism of the Spanish was evident when they first came to the New World.

"Friday, first of May, 1500, this same day at the hour of vespers we sighted land. We all cast anchor opposite a river mouth. From there we caught sight of men walking on the beaches. They were dark brown and naked and had no covering for their private parts. The innocence of Adam, himself, was not greater than these peoples as concerns the shame of the body. I deduce from these facts that they are savage, ignorant people. I believe that if Your Majesty could send someone who could stay a while here with them, they would all be persuaded and converted as Your Majesty desires. I kiss Your Majesty's hands. Signed: Fedrovas DeComenier."

(Singing.)

To anthropologists, each culture is as valuable as any other, yet these same Indians of the Xingu River area of Brazil, the Txukarrame, possess a culture as valuable and as viable, as meaningful, sustaining and beautiful to them, as ours is to us!

This perspective of "cultural relativism" is the chief philosophical foundation of anthropology!

Every culture represents a distinct solution to the problems of being human!

For while each culture displays incredible variation, each still, must answer certain imperatives: The need for food, the need for shelter, for solace, self-expression, for sex, law and order, for explaining illness and curing it, and the need to resolve conflict.

Among other Indians of the Xingu River area this ceremony, the Hukuhuka, has emerged as an alternative to deadly intertribal warfare.

(Fighters grunting.)

Such adaptations, such patterns of culture do not have to be discovered or invented with each new generation. They are learned at the knee of parents and elders, gleaned from the generation above, passed on to the generation below. They are absorbed from the very sights and sounds around us. They are transmitted.

Manioc, one of the primary staples in the diet of these Indians, deathly poisonous unless cautiously, arduously processed, yet these people do not die every generation to prove the plant is dangerous. Nor does each child need to rediscover the steps to drain the toxic juices and make the plant into deliciously edible bread and pancakes. Every maiden and wife-to-be acquires the knowledge as she grows from cradle to girlhood.

How do we come to reflect our culture? How do we transmit ideas and learn conventions? The answer is as simple as it is complex!

Culture comes packaged and gets delivered by symbols! These designs represent plants and animals. Red symbolizes virility, white, purity; and black, mourning.

The Indians of the Xingu River paint these patterns only once a year during a ceremony called kuarupe. Kuarupe honors all members of the tribe who have died in the past year and liberates their spirits. The ceremony is, in part, an exorcism. The spirits of the dead are driven from the village. Not surprisingly, wood plays an important part in kuarupe, because according to their myth, God created human beings from trees. The dancers cut wooden posts, take them into the village and paint them with the correct symbols. Then the spirits of the dead rise to inhabit them.

(Chanting.)

Men pound the dirt in the center of the village where the dead have been buried to assert their connection with their spirits and to arouse them.

(Chanting, music playing.)

Then they play flutes and horns to entice them out of the ground. They spend the entire night chanting and dancing. The spirits enjoy this!

They feel honored, but there is also an undercurrent of fear. There is always the possibility that the spirits in the posts may come back to life.

The next day, maidens of the tribe who have spent two or three years in seclusion, since the onset of puberty, are led out of their huts. Their skin is pale from the lack of sunlight. Fringes of hair cover their faces. But today, they will cut their hair and the bindings around their knees. They are now eligible for marriage. And, on this day of kuarupe, they take the place of the dead who leave the village forever.

The posts, no longer sacred, are removed from the village and rolled to the lagoon like ordinary logs. No one can weep anymore, or pronounce the names of the dead. They don't exist anymore. Their spirits go to the sky, to the east.

The kuarupe ceremony of the Txukarrame represents some of the most basic and salient aspects of culture. It is learned and handed down from generation to generation. It is shared by all members of the tribe. It is expressed symbolically in language, music and dance, ritual and art, and it provides order and meaning to the universe.

Culture, itself, is intangible. It exists only in our knowledge, our actions, our concepts. We, ourselves, are the expression of our culture!

(Chanting.)

Culture is pervasive.

Though we are often unaware of culture, it surrounds and envelops us as water surrounds and envelops fish. The items and ideas within a culture melt together to make sense and produce an inner working harmony.

Culture is amazingly integrated!

(Chanting.)

For the Boran people of Africa's Kenya, cattle are the centerpiece of an integrated cultural web.

The Boran believe that god created man and cattle at the same time.

"You have given birth to them, what shall I live on," man asked.

And God replied, "I have given you cattle, milk them and nourish yourself. Slaughter them and eat their meat."

The Boran name their cattle individually and can trace their pedigrees with ease, and because water is scarce in this semi-arid environment Boran say that the well, not the hut, is home.

Their's is a fragile environment, subject to drought and starvation, so the Borans severely limit their population. Men are barred from marrying until past their 32nd year.

Yet, since they move, since they search perpetually for water and pasture, individuals readily share food with neighbors and strangers alike. No Boran would withhold information concerning what part of the country has had recent rain, which wells are productive, and which have dried up.

Openness is an essential part of the Boran's socio-ecological system.

The Boran culture, like all cultures, is consistent, persists over time, and alters only slowly. Yet the Boran culture, like any culture, does change. The central government of Kenya wants to modernize the country and exert its authority over the Boran. But while the tribe readily accepts some innovations, like the introduction of machinery, it resists innovations which are perceived as upsetting the traditional way of life.

The Boran resist passing their wealth and cattle and corn to government strangers. So, new ways come rushing in, putting pressure on the old, altering them.

"Go and take a bath, go and take a bath just now."

Boran boys, fresh out of the village, must learn British ways inherited from a colonial past.

Like the culture of the Boran, the cultures of other societies are also changing, and some at a staggering rate! These cultures are moving, not only into the industrial age, but beyond, into the information and electronics age: something truly revolutionary!

Today, new technology is having a critical impact on our cultures- accelerating the process of invention, discovery, and borrowing, reshaping the nature of the communities we live in.

As machines develop the capacity to choose, learn and even think the way we do, basic questions are raised about what it means to be human.

Will we be robbed of the humanity our present cultures make possible? Will we be ruled by a technocratic elite who use sophisticated machines to deprive us of our freedom? Will the machines, themselves, become masters and will we mold our culture around them? That is the grim future portrayed in many science fiction scenarios, and science fiction often has a way of becoming science fact.

Yet, when a culture changes, it is rarely destroyed. For the ability to change and adapt is an important quality of culture, itself. Culture is integrated!

Under the right circumstances, cultures borrow only selectively what they need from the new. Only what will help them, rather than harm them.

Handled properly, technology may provide a new and positive basis for the definition of our cultures, and contribute a new and deeper understanding of our universe.

Cultures not only change, some may die out completely, disappear. This is the fate which seems to be in store for many of the Indians of Brazil. They are rapidly being decimated in the name of progress by those greedy for their land and its wealth!

Because of ethnocentrism they have often been hunted and killed like animals! Many of their villages lie empty, turning to rot. The death of one culture is a death for us all!

It takes from us forever one segment, one hue from the vast range of human possibilities.

If it happens, it will be a profound, incalculable loss!

(Plane flying overhead.)

Never have we so needed to understand the way in which other people live, to learn of the broad range of human culture. Never has it loomed so essential to comprehend other minds, other values, other cultures.

(Chanting.)