Contempt of familiarity
I long made the mistake of equating the massive availability of information and the inexorable eradication of ignorance – despite being ever flummoxed by perceptions of other cultures still falling into the realm of caricature, and by so many falling prey to primitive jingoism.
I made Candide look like William Burroughs.
The prime flaw in my logic lay in the premise that people with the urge to explore what goes on outside their door were generally seeking to deepen their understanding of the world, of human existence.
It’s a platitude worth reiterating that many seek only to confirm what they already believe, and will therefore ignore any information that challenges their stance. The world is so marvellously vast and complex that absolutely any viewpoint, no matter how extreme, can be supported by carefully chosen “facts.” (The evidence that many cannot live without opposition, a simple reminder of our once prominent brows. Descent indeed.)
The mere availability of information implies neither that it will be consumed nor that, if consumed, it will be digested, analyzed and/or assimilated. Most likely, it will just sit in the mind like a Big Mac in the belly, like a rock, until it is passed — until something more appetizing comes to relieve it.
The ever-growing influx of data is an onslaught and, for many, the only thing increasing proportionately is the energy expended on filtering, distilling it down to that which confirms their existing viewpoint.
Having so much information at our disposal endows us only with a very vague knowledge of an astonishing range of subjects and issues.
Very vague knowledge is a dangerous thing.
We mistake quantity for quality and are passing ill-reflected summary judgements on so many matters that, in truth, we know nothing about.
We’ve been fooled into thinking that because we know what the tribesmen of Namibia have for breakfast, that Japanese businessmen trade in schoolgirls’ underpants, that Le Pen has a following, that they drink this much beer, that it’s cold up there and hot down there, GDP, major export, the face of their leaders… we are somehow equipped to judge societies as a whole.
We can travel from one side of the globe to the other so quickly that we have lost all notion of distance, of the many things – tangible and in – that separate its peoples, and which over time have created the multifarious approaches to a common state of existence.
We have lost the notion of time, hence history.
We fly across mountains and oceans at such breakneck speed that we haven’t got time to gain a sense of the expanse we are travelling, to realize we are rapidly becoming foreigners, entering someone else’s homeland as visitors, we haven’t got time to lose our bearings.
Loss of bearings is the first step in seeing others clearly.
Until we have lived as a citizen of another culture, we cannot begin to know what it means to be part of that culture. And once we begin to know, we are quick to grasp the absolute relativity, and ultimate absurdity, of all value judgements on other lifestyles. The concept of a global village is an insidious whitewash.
Even more than the ability to travel, mass electronic media, by its very framework, goes one step further in diluting knowledge – in creating a false sense of proximity. Presenting other cultures within the framework of our own (cf. Western) models of communication invariably distorts our perception of them. How can we possibly well reveal a culture based on oral tradition through the TV set, for instance?
Taken out of context, it loses all significance, all impact, all flavour. There is no nuance, no smell, little sound, no taste; we can’t hear the music of their tongues because we’re too busy reading the subtitles; we can only imagine the heat on their skin because we’ve been through so many summers.
Viewing all things foreign as we do all things familiar forces us into misleading comparisons, and dulls our ability to assimilate what we are seeing. It creates false points of reference, makes us look for equations between other cultures and ours, fill in the blanks, which is as much of a trap as asking ‘but why do you say it like that?’ when learning a foreign language.
We don’t really listen and don’t enjoy being jarred, and I get the impression that a lot of people would be more willing to accept foreign cultures, to pay attention, if only they were a little bit more like their own. When I hear the gorgeous music of Africa or the Balkans dulled to a roar for commercial purposes, I want to weep.
This false proximity being fed to the machine is adulterating our most beauteous cultural differences.
In a two-week trip or two-hour documentary (let alone two minutes on the news or fifty lines in the morning paper), we can gain no more than shreds of knowledge, so tentative they’re worthy of caricature.
Naturally, I don’t think we should ever stop trying, ever stifle our curiosity, only that we should be very careful, and very humble, about the meagre knowledge we are gaining.
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Comment
- I think those of us who read voraciously – sinking our figurative teeth into nearly everything we can – are at a huge advantage to those who simply unfold the WST every day and expect to find all their news there.
— maddy Mar 17, 3:00pm # - Indeed.
— Jason Wall Mar 17, 10:30pm # - A great, thought-provoking post. Brings to mind the reasons I was a latecomer to the Web, having resisted right up to ‘98. There are perils in this vast, evergrowing, open book, not least of which are intellectual ones. Some prescient lines from Farenheit 451: “Chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving.”
— Carlos Arribas Mar 17, 10:53pm # - ``I think those of us who read voraciously…are at a huge advantage…’‘
Depends on what you read. I know a lot of people who read “everything they can get their hands on”, but the only thing they set their sights on are things that affirm their world-view. The key is actively seeking to read things that challenge one’s world-view; the only philosophyt that can escape this must be a well-supported one.
— Chris Tessone Mar 17, 10:56pm # - Until we have lived as a citizen of another culture, we cannot begin to know what it means to be part of that culture. And once we begin to know, we are quick to grasp the absolute relativity, and ultimate absurdity, of all value judgements on other lifestyles. The concept of a global village is an insidious whitewash.
I am on my third culture at the moment (having started in Eastern Europe back in the pre-fall-of-the-Berlin-wall days) and all I can say is that having pulled up all sorts of roots—deep and shallow—along the way, I find myself trying to drop anchor in the abyss of time—of what gains territory as history.
You could say that my citizenship, my home, is my awareness of time, not so much of place. I am displaced from a native soil, but moored in time because of what happened to my family in a previous generation at the hands of nationalism practiced by Hitler’s implementation of it.
I would love to claim my plot, my Voltairean garden, in that global village, in order to put down roots—but, as you point out so well, that global village is a whitewash. It’s one that camouflages the deep rifts and moats that keep us apart, not only in place but also in time.
When you have to travel the world, not because you thrist for knowledge and adventure, but because you have been displaced, you learn a few facts about culture (both the one you left behind and your new one) in a visceral way [and unlike Candide or Pangloss!]....
On the deluge of facts getting in the way of knowledge … I agree with you completely!
— maria Mar 19, 12:10am # - oops … I am sorry about all the bold text in my comment. In the first paragraph I was trying to quote from your post, but I messed up on the closing tags, obviously…. (It looked okay in preview, though). Apologies for what must seem like shouting…. It wasn’t intentional.
— maria Mar 19, 12:14am # - No problem, Maria, and many thanks for your eloquence.
My entire body of html knowledge comes from Glengarry Glenn Ross: Always be closing.
I was trying to imagine how the first tribes began to interact. Was it because tribe A found out that tribe B had a really nifty pointed rock, so went to trade some excellent berries to get it, or someone from tribe A was chased away, and went to settle in tribe B, or one day tribe A was in the bushes to the right of the wooly mammoth waiting to attack, while tribe B was in the bushes to the left, and they both charged at the same moment; the mammoth ran away, and they were left standing on the plain, staring at each other. Or maybe it was the first Romeo and Juliet story at play.
It’s fascinating to just look around what you have in your home, and to realize how many things you have that originated in some culture you’ve only ever seen on TV.
Oh, and, great quote, Carlos. I haven’t read that book since high school. So Bradbury managed to say in two lines what it took me two paragraphs to express. Grr.
— gail Mar 19, 5:27am # - I thought I read somewhere you hooked up with your man because you liked his writing. Shoulda been the other way ‘round!
— nardo Mar 19, 8:58am # - Brilliant. My two cents:
> The world is so marvellously vast and complex that absolutely any viewpoint, no matter how extreme, can be supported by carefully chosen “facts.”
This is why I abhor statistical arguments, and why they end up being inanely circular.
>The ever-growing influx of data is an onslaught
>many seek only to confirm what they already believe
My clumsy mixed metaphor for this is that the information society is a Tower Of Bable with headphones. We listen to what we want to hear as others gibber around us. We are forced to digest specifics and poop them out as sound bites.
>The concept of a global village is an insidious whitewash.
I blame marketing. Everything is a product, and every product is tailored to every demographic. The world has to be modified to pander to the consumers to whom it is sold; the result is utter bullshit.
>I think those of us who read voraciously
Words can be a deceptive as images, but at least the act of reading forces the mind to be engaged. Unfortunately, the internet has given voice to more twaddle than any preceding medium. (With the exception perhaps, of TeeVee.)
Sorry to go on; you have struck a chord.
Good work, and Peace.
— Beerzie Boy Mar 19, 7:11pm # - Thank you for this, by the way. It has a lot to say about the current situation, and I’ve mentioned it in my own journal. (rus.)
— Chris Tessone Mar 20, 4:15am # - Bolshoy spaseebo, Kreestof. And thanks for reminding me how rusty my rooski is. (And, uh, izvyenitye mnye the truly nasty fonetics.)
— Galya Mar 20, 3:17pm # - Why is it that so often “foreign” is mistaken for “exotic”? You seem to reinforce that idea, with the bit about “the music of their tongues” and “the heat on their skin”. Sounds like a scene out of a Merchant-Ivory movie. This view of the world as us and “them” as randomly represented by tribesmen, wacky Japanese businessmen and Le Pen’s followers… seems to share the very biased anglo-centric view of the world that it sets out to criticise.
Why does ‘foreign’ always have to be only about things that are so ‘alien’. Nineteenth-century British explorers collecting samples for museums, David Attenborough in khakis among African tribesmen, ads that say “see the world through their eyes”, it’s always this damn indistinct “they”, and just the fact of “discovering” something “foreign” becomes somehow a mark of self-importance. That can be so much more condescending than the ordinary ignorance of other countries in the average population anywhere.
There is an issue of preferring similarity over extreme differences that has to do with ignorance or bias, pretences of superiority and old colonialist attitudes, that is true. But there is also that issue of presenting differences in that kind of ‘benign antropologist’ light, as if the mere fact of there being a difference was enough of a taboo against any debate, confrontation, exchange. As if different cultures were like precious insects to be preserved in a fossil and exposed in a museum, not living and evolving creations to be challenged, discussed and stimulated reciprocally. That is what keeps cultures alive and thriving: when they’re not so ‘different’ they become self-enclosed and impermeable to external contributions, and that closedness is justified in the name of difference, so the circle closes.
The meaning of the word “culture” shouldn’t be too strict, or too wide either. Culture has to be distinguished from the social-political order of a country or area, insofar as basic common values like human rights and individual freedoms are concerned. When a whole model of society puts those second to other all-encompassing values like religious dictates and other so-called “cultural” values, in fact, more like excuses for imposing repression, isn’t more ‘similarity’, more sharing of basic individual and social values, to be encouraged? In other words, isn’t there a risk in equating relativity with relativism? That’s the real risk of talks of a “global village”, the absolute relativism where both patronising and whitewashing touch.
— Ali Mar 21, 4:30am # - Ali,
I think we actually agree, but are coming at the issue from different angles. My point when speaking of other cultures was in fact that what we feel distinguishes them from our own is a caricature.
There is no indication that anyone should be bottled up, defined with a few traits and taken as something stagnant. Quite the contrary.
Recognizing a shared humanity is essential, of course; I suppose I took that as a foregone conclusion. I do however feel that a great deal of misunderstanding comes not from recognizing what is common, but what is different, and in respecting that. I see no condescension inherent in that. It would be like calling someone a sexist for saying there are differences between men and women. Leaping to the conclusion that that statement implies a difference in worth, is on the part of the listener, not the speaker.
I think talk of shared values must be equal to recognizing that others may see things differently from you; a drive to homogenize all cultures, I do find unfortunate, yes.
If you presume that all Westerners when travelling merely look around, take a few snaps and say, ‘oh, how quaint,’ well… that’s your right, but perhaps a stereotype as well. You seem to be working on a presumption of established imperial arrogance.
The main point in all this was the alarming disparity between the amount of information available, and the general lack of knowledge, or at the very least an over-estimation of the knowledge we have, due in part to what our technology affords us, and the way in which the information is presented.
— Gail Mar 21, 6:02am # - Gail, thank you for the clarifying response. I think I expressed myself badly, if I gave the impression of supporting the homogenization of cultures and imperial arrogance – my intention was quite the contrary, and rather, to point out that that kind of imperialist or colonialist arrogance takes many forms. I didn’t really mean to aim at your own observations, as I understand your point better now, and yes, we agree there – but at the way they call up other attitudes that to me also represent what you criticise.
Perhaps it’s best if I make some examples of what I’m thinking of, or I’d be too vague.
For instance, the Catholic Church condescending towards peoples and cultures it has “evangelised”, now what irritates me most is the way they talk about “other” (non-western) cultures, the patronising way they show off their penetration into every corner of the earth and the way they use that instrumentally to show their magnanimity, generosity, benign sponsoring and championing the rights of the oppressed, the poor, and so on. The way they represent the “foreign” world is by picking those elements that suit their ideology, and in doing so, they always represent the “foreign” world (outside of western bounds) as needy, poor, victimised, because it fits the paradigm of a church controlling its helpless masses. They do not highlight the real differences, the inherent liveliness and richness of other cultures – they do so only when those things are vindicated as the result of their own interference. In some ways, that’s similar to what past colonialism did. Patronising and condescending as well as arrogant.
I’m not actually a westerner, in origins, so it never really occurs to me to have the “oh how quaint” reaction of the museum collector when I go anywhere, because I wasn’t born in a country that has the knowledge of sitting proudly within a centre of the main power on earth – which is, since we’re on a translation site, always inevitably (in my view and experience, at least) associated with being born speaking a mothertongue, English, that is also the main language on earth, well, at least, in the west, and the default language of all international communication.
When you’re born in “other” countries speaking “other” languages (the other being relative to a centre that is the English-speaking world, because to me, it’s you guys English mothertongue that are speaking a language that is “other” – so I’m instinctively aware of that relativity!), and only learn English afterwards, it’s you being in a position of “inferiority” – in a neutral sense, just by the fact you need to learn that language, you don’t possess or command it instinctively from childhood. When you go live in an English-speaking country, like I did, it’s you feeling quaint, it’s you who are the outsider element, you are the “other”, and so you are aware of the relativity of all such concepts of center and outer, insider and outsider. Even when people accept you and you settle down easily in the new country and love it and feel at home, you still know you come from outside. You still know English is not your mothertongue, and that you’re not English or American – and that is not really an issue, in fact, it just adds to your knowledge of differences. It is a plus, to experience living in different countries, like you and other said. Anyone is a foreigner, anywhere they go outside of their known homeland. That’s the absolute relativity that is only obvious, and yes, it should definitely be more respected. People who travel (or move abroad) only to end up making comparisons and score points for their homeland shouldn’t really be travelling at all, because that’s not the spirit of seeing and enjoying different places.
So I’m definitely not justifying or excusing or endorsing any sense of arrogance. However, I do think there’s a confusion between culture, society and politics, especially today. To me there’s no question that anglo-american societies, English-speaking countries, have a more advanced social and political system. Modern democracy (and individualism) being an historical product of anglosaxon societies, it works at its best in anglosaxon countries. I do not see that acknowledgement as either kneeling down to some imperialist superpower due to some sense of inferiority, which I really don’t have even while being aware of being a foreigner in respect to those english-speaking countries, or arrogant and offensive to the obvious acknowledgement that differences need be respected. There are things, like human rights, basic principles of rights of any individual in any social order, that are independent of cultural differences, and should be granted to every individual. Because before being societies, we’re individuals – that’s the primary level of identity. Otherwise, if the individual is not firmly at the root of any debate on cultural differences, excessive identification with culture and society can become a tyranny.
So, when any specific culture – which in the widest sense includes local traditions, history, arts, culture in the humanistic term, and on the other hand also local social principles and rules – imposes a social order that denies those basic individual rights by making them secondary to cultural (social) identity, then a “homogenization” (or better in this case, a promotion of commonly shared basic, very basic rights that should be compatible with any specific culture) at least in that specific respect and that only, can only be positive. Repression cannot be justified by “cultural differences”. In that sense, it’s very dangerous to overlook the distinction between what is genuinely a cultural specificity and what is a form of social oppression of individuals justified through the pretext of cultural specificity. That’s the sense in which I meant “bottled up” and “preserved in a museum”. All social order, especially when it doesn’t share the premise of individual rights being above social impositions, aims at controlling people, and to do so it needs fixed points of reference – religion, ideology, etc, everything that keeps a “social identity” fixed and easy to control. Those, to me, are not really cultural differences, but impositions, obstacles to the real enriching benefits of difference.
That may sound unrelated to your main point, on which I totally agree, but was actually stimulated by it. I see a risk of dilution of differences precisely in that deluge of information and commentary on ‘civilizations’ or ‘empires’ or ‘cultures’ that ends up reinforcing the confusion, grouping together culture with the social order imposed by rulers or leaders in that particular culture. So that to criticise a social order equated with criticising other cultures and is seen as arrogant. Culture and society are not easily separated, true, but when we take the individual as term of reference, then it makes it easier to see how respect of differences goes hand in hand with the need to denounce what is not really respect or “difference” but just hiding under that cloak.
That’s why I find that kind of absolute relativism misleading, when it promotes a confusion that leads to upholding repressions in the name of “cultural specificity”. Since I work in human rights, that’s a big issue to me, as I see that kind of justification all the time, when people try to hold on too rigidly to some traditions imposed on them even when those are contrary to their own rights and interests; and when that rigidity is justified from “outside”, ie. from the “centre”, as “respect for differences”.
I may have made this sound more confusing than I meant, sorry for the longwindedness. In short, I do agree with your point on information and ignorance; but it goes many devious ways…
— Ali Mar 21, 10:34am # - Well, Ali, if English is not your native tongue, I take my hat off to you, sir, for your command of it. Wow.
Even though I’m usually taken for a native here in France, and I feel very much at home, I do receive acute reminders that I’m a foreigner on a fairly regular basis. But I recognize that having English as my native language has afforded me certain advantages (as did being born in a wealthy nation).
I feel very fortunate in that respect, realize I did nothing to deserve it, and hope never to take my dumb luck for granted.
Oh, don’t get me started about missionaries; suffice it to say I find it’s one of the most intolerable forms of “ideological imperalism.”
I suppose I chose the word ‘culture’ instead of ‘society’ to avoid politics, and to push the concept back further than two or three hundred years, when national boundaries were being drawn, but I agree that like mixing Church and State in what you aim to be an ever evolving society, it’s a slippery slope.
I agree with the dangers of clinging to any element, be it cultural or political or linguistic or whatever, that leads to isolation or stagnation of a society, or worse, repression, creating fatal rifts amongst citizens or with neighbours. And we’ve had no end of examples through history on how easy it is to use these differences to pit one side against the other. It’s terrifying how quickly it can be achieved.
I’m certain you’re much better versed in all this than I am.
The example of the European Union is an interesting one, so many opposed to it not for economic reasons, but fearing their national culture will be lost. And it’s something to see all the initiatives that the European Commission is funding, focused on ‘unity in diversity.’ I’m hoping they’ll become particularly relevant when the less wealthy countries to the East come to join.
And thanks for your comments; it’s a bane and a blessing that this human existence business is endlessly complex and rife with dualities. Most of the time, I’m just stumbling through, blinking up at the sun.
— Gail Mar 21, 11:42am # - Gail & Ali,
I just wanted to let you know that—as I was sitting here … with the TV relentlessly blearing adrenaline-addled blurbs from the frontlines and the homeliness—your dialogue across this medium that may well be littered with the barrage of facts and the noise of unreasoned arguments made me appreciate the fact that were it not for this medium, I would not have had this privilege to be part of this kind of conversation.
— maria Mar 21, 8:55pm #
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