Shape-Shifting Cultures
Icewine Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake
Last week, we talked about how the practice of seeing clearly seeds possibilities. This week, let’s reflect on how culture is the ground of those possibilities.
What is culture?
This is one of those words that conjures different meanings depending on context. There’s popular culture, religious culture, organizational culture, and artistic culture, to name a few. Often, there’s a dominant culture and other cultures, but the dominant culture is seen as the norm. Sometimes, culture is associated with the fine arts or aesthetic taste. That’s a particular form of culture.
More generally, culture is defined as “the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, institutional, or social group.” (Merriam-Webster)
While we each have our own individual uniqueness and ways of being, culture is not individual. It’s a shared set of attitudes, values, goals, and practices - ways of being and seeing in a community. It’s the way a group of people live, the features of their everyday existence. Culture is what brings us together as people, creating a sense of belonging and shared purpose. It’s the lifeblood of a society.
In a place, culture shows up in the food, festivals, stories from history, public spaces, arts, and rituals of a community. These ways of being are formed over time, as patterns of human knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors are transmitted to succeeding generations. Thus, culture is invented and always being reinvented.
My intent for this week is to get you to look at how your culture shaped and still shapes the way you see. Can you see your own culture clearly? How has it changed over your lifetime? In what ways would you like to see aspects of your culture changed or reinvented? And then, how can you step into that needed change?
Here’s my cultural story.
I was born in the small, Canadian city of St. Catharines, Ontario, to two parents of British/Irish and Protestant/Catholic ancestry. They were both born in this city, in a region known for fruit farming and a climate moderated by two Great Lakes, Ontario and Erie. My great-grandparents on my Mom’s side were farmers who grew grapes, and my Grandpa had a large vegetable garden. I remember big corn roasts and eating tomatoes and grapes right off the vine. We ate fruit in season and celebrated the grape harvest in September.
The area is near Niagara Falls, so I grew up with hydro-electric power. Employment in the area was driven by agriculture and industry, especially General Motors at the time. That’s where my Dad worked. My Mom was a nurse who always worked. We would have been considered middle class.
The population was not at all diverse. In school, I learned settler/colonial history, where explorers were revered. I knew nothing about Indian Residential Schools, which were in operation when I was a kid.
Almost all kids learned to ice skate and then play hockey or go into figure skating. I did the latter. We watched hockey games and were proud Toronto Maple Leafs fans. There were no cell phones, computers or Internet; no recording of shows or Netflix. We were feral kids, who played outside most of the time. In music, the Rat Pack and Beatlemania were all the rage.
My parents divorced when I was a teenager, which was a rarity at the tIme. I didn’t know of anyone who was gay until I was in University. Second-wave feminism was coming into its own as I grew into adulthood and my parents led me to believe I could do anything. I went on to study Math at University, moved to the big city of Toronto, got a job, married, and had three kids.
So, my culture was very Western, White, Anglo-Saxon. Over the course of my life, and through moving to different cities and even a country, I’ve experienced different cultures and I’ve seen the culture change dramatically, especially in terms of civil rights and the use of technology, for better and worse. Moving forward, I would like to see not just acceptance but celebration and learning from less dominant cultures. I’d also like to see the end of fossil fuels and a renewable energy economy.
For this week, I ask you to examine your own cultural story, recognize the cultures that are different from yours, and identify at least one part of your culture that you’d like to see changed.
Reflect and Consider
“Each of us has a framework of assumptions that we carry with us. Transformation happens less by arguing cogently for something new than by generating active, ongoing practices that shift a culture’ s experience of the basis for reality.” ~ The Art of Possibility
What is your cultural story and how has it shaped the person you are today? How was the culture reflected in speech, habits, demographics, and festivals? How were earlier peoples remembered? How did the landscape affect the culture?
How has your culture changed over your lifetime, for better or worse?
Is there a culture you’d like to know more about or to learn from? How can you make that happen?
In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands, Resmaa Menakem argues that “culture is retained and re-enacted in the body. That’s why it’s hard to change. You can’t do it with the mind alone.” That’s why we often see a culture lag, whether it’s reinventing the concept of marriage or adapting to iPhones. There is a need for change, followed by strong, bodily resistance to the change by some, followed by the normalization of the change. What is one cultural change you would like to see happen? How can you take a step in that direction? What changes are you resisting and why?
Resources
Ontario, The Importance of Culture
Book: Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche by Bill Plotkin