Culture and what to believe. (Book burnings, beheadings and bigotry.)

Culture, monoculture, multiculture. What does it all mean and why are these things bandied around as though our lives are dependent upon them being deemed to be correct, whatever ‘correct’ means.

Probably a good starting point is to define what culture really means in the context of, in this case, Australia, but also more broadly, culture in a national setting.

To ‘debate’ what Australian really culture is.

Culture as a word has various meanings and applications, but the essential one in the current considerations is of societal culture, what it means to be Australian in today’s Australia, or more broadly what it means to live an acceptable life, where ever we may be.

The Cambridge Dictionary defines Societal Culture as:

‘… the broad way of life for a nation or ethnic group. It defines collective identity and is passed down from generation to generation. 

It includes: 

Tangible elements: Food, clothing, architecture and art.

Intangible elements: Beliefs, morals, language and traditions.’

And yes, I can to a point accept the definitions, but need to question that ‘passed down from generation to generation’ bit. Societal Culture has always been unfixed, ever changing. Problems have arisen when some form of power structure defines what Societal Culture should look like and the repressions which occur when change challenges the orthodoxy.

The tangible elements are most visible ones, the food we eat – whether it is a meal out, or even home cooked – has changed over time. Friday’s take out meal used to be fish and chips but now with so many fast foods varieties, that meal can be just about anything, and it is no longer a queue at the local fish and chips store, but a phoned order with home delivery. There’s not even a cheery greeting on placing the order or accepting delivery, human contact needs not even happen.

Clothing, architecture and art change constantly. Look at some of the old family photos, compare the dress code of what is acceptable as beach wear, or street wear. Walk into an old cathedral with stained glass windows, ornate statues and elaborate pipe organs or a new church designed more as an arena that a traditional church. 

Walk down a ‘high street’ shopping strip or the latest manifestation of a shopping mall, or scroll through the latest online offers from retailers who did not exist ten minutes ago.

Consider changes in art as each generation experiments with new technologies, changes brought about by photography in portrait and landscape art, the ever changing definitions of contemporary art. 

Those changes, the tangible changes occur and are accepted mostly, perhaps a bit of a debate here and there, whether a canvas painted in one colour is art or not, considered an irrelevance, or the time when bikinis first became a ‘thing’ and beach inspectors carried a tape measure to ensure ‘decency codes’ were not challenged, or the fashionable ubiquity of tattoos.

The real challenges have been in the intangible elements of culture, the unseen, unprovable elements of beliefs, morals, language and traditions.

Beliefs is an interesting starting point here. 

Who determines what to believe, what faith to hold onto, what the correct interpretation of scripture is?

One of the most beneficial and yet most contentious (at the time) inventions was of the move-able type press in 1440. Access to the printed word, including sacred texts such as the Bible became available beyond the cloistered elite. Suddenly the power of the Catholic Church was challenged, the dogmas of the church thrown open to scrutiny and the authority, along with the immense wealth of the church was questioned. In Germany as Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, challenging the validity of a number of issues including ‘indulgences’ where a person could pay for the forgiveness of sins, effectively buying their way to heaven as it were.

That was the beginning of the Reformation, a realigning of how the Christian God was to be worshipped. The ensuing power struggle set off a hundred year war which saw almost half the population of Europe killed. 

It was more than the Catholic Church versus the Reformers, there were little side issues where each different interpretation of a biblical text caused conflicts and severe punishments, over unprovable beliefs. 

An interesting question included whether God had predestined some people to be ‘his chosen’ that some people were born to be of God’s people, or that it required a person to acknowledge the need for confession and the recognition, acceptance of Christ as their redeemer, saviour, as the key to enter eternal life in the New Jerusalem. The semantics of interpretation proved to be life threatening. 

Whole communities were threatened, leaving Europe for newly ‘discovered’ lands. The Huguenots, a group of French Protestants, followers of John Calvin, fled France because of persecution, many settling in Southern Africa where a similar group of Dutch Protestants had settled. The belief that they were predestined to be God’s chosen laid the foundation for what later became Apartheid in South Africa.

The question of predestination led to the execution of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, in May 1619. He had been one of the leaders of the revolt against the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, one of the founders of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) and a supporter of the Arminians during the religious-political controversy which divided the new Dutch Republic. For arguing that salvation required a commitment to accepting Christ as one’s saviour, rather than that God had predestined his people even before they were born for their place in the heavenly kingdom, van Oldenbarneveldt was arrested, faced a trial and was beheaded for his belief.

What to believe, what is considered to be ‘fact’ was severely challenged and continues to be severely challenged today.  To take mythology as gospel, to accept that whatever leaders determine is right becomes the rule of law. Interpretation is controlled by those with power.

A good example is the interpretation of the creation story from the Biblical account in Genesis 1. The NIV text reads:

‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said “Let there be light” God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day” and the darkness He called “night”. And there was evening and there was morning – the first day.’ (Genesis 1, v 1-5)   

Somehow, the official interpretation of those verses was that the earth was the centre of the universe, that the sun rotated around the earth was challenged by Nicolaus Copernicus and was published in 1543, the findings confirmed independently by the mathematician Gemma Fricus. Books making the claims were initially tolerated so long as they were considered theoretical, not factual, but were later listed in the Catholic Chrurch’s Index of Forbidden Books between 1616 and 1853. 

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and polymath determined that the sun was the centre of our universe, that the planets, including the earth, rotated around the sun. In 1615 was tried and convicted to house arrest for the rest of his life for publishing opinions which contradicted accepted Biblical interpretations.

The Catholic Church updated its Index of Forbidden Books regularly, the last published in 1948 which included about 4,000 titles which had been in the Index since the 16th centuries. Nearly 300 titles were added in the 20th century.

Science and pseudo science can be dangerous endeavours, especially when science is scoffed or challenged or when pseudo science is used as a political tool. 

The foundation of fascism is the concept that nationalism is an important driving force, but fascism as determined in Germany with the rise of the National Socialist party, NAZI, the blending of Eugenics and Nietzsche’s philosophic notion of ‘Ubermensch’ which has the evolution of man becoming a ‘superman’, was embraced to determine that Germans were the most advanced in the evolutionary journey, justifying both the need for ‘lebesraum’, more living space for the superior German race and the basis for eliminating those races deemed inferior, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and others who did not fit the ideals of being ‘ubermenschen’. The tools used to reinforce Germans as the most evolutionary developed race includes the glorification of myths and legends, story telling to underscore that superiority including Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle.

The intertwining of morals and beliefs, determine what moral behaviour looks like. 

During the German occupation of The Netherlands there was an active resistance movement which included Dutch military personnel going ‘underground’, supported by women who provided food and ferried small arms and ammunition to the soldiers. Inevitably, some people became quite attracted to each others and when a young lady happened to find herself ‘with child’, and agreed to marry her lover, there was a ritual to be followed.

Sex outside marriage was considered a sin and needed to be publicly confessed; in the church on a Sunday morning at the commencement of the Sunday service. For the marriage to be conducted in the church, gaining God’s blessing, the bride needed a further humiliation. She could not wear white, the wedding dress had to be black, signifying the fallen nature, the sin of not being a virgin bride. This at a time of war where normal life, the certainties we expect, that we can live peacefully on our lands were disputed. Even the survival to the next day, the next week, planning for a future was so uncertain, the mere discovery of the clandestine activities or membership of the resistance movement meant instant death by firing squad. And the holier than thou church people insisted on the humiliation of the bride and groom before a wedding could be conducted.

That though is really the thin edge of the moralistic wedge.

North American colonisation included people fleeing religious persecution in Europe. In Empires of Violence, the writers (Philip Dwyer and others) remind us of the violence used to enforce moral codes and conduct in both the newly settled colonies and in Europe in the name of religious adherence.

‘It does not hurt to recall what European executions involved. In the North American colonies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, people were drawn and quartered, pressed to death, disembowelled, broken on the wheel, mutilated, dismembered, as well as hung from a slip-knotted cord for a lingering, uncertain death.  In Europe, counterfeiters, sodomites, heretics and witches were still being burnt at the stake, while torture was practiced even if it was falling into disuse.’ (Page 74)

To be different, to be considered criminal, to transgress the interpretation of ‘God’s will’ was a dangerous path to follow. 

The movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise, depicts the travels of Christopher Columbus to ‘the new world’ and the impact on indigenous people. Loosely based on history, a scene depicts Columbus teaching a local leader Spanish, so they can communicate. That account reflects what was written in Columbus notes, that he could ‘Christianise’ that man and take him back to Spain, to give him to Queen Isabella as a slave. The closing scenes of the film have the indigenous people rise up against Columbus and his people. Columbus was a bit non-plussed by the revolt, he did not see it coming, and asked his ‘friend’ why? The answer was something like “you did not learn our language”, pointing out that the plotting of the rebellion was done within ear-shot of the Spanish crew.

Language has power and the idea of a common language for all is a means of control. Fear of having groups within a country speaking a different language creates distrust, but the way that is transmitted is by holding the preferred language up as being superior, that people who do not speak the official language are some how inferior. 

Referring again to the NAZI ‘Ubermensch’ attitude, that German speakers deserved ‘lebesraum’ because they were after all, the pinnacle of the evolution of mankind. And language was one of the markers of their superiority.

Traditions are an interesting marker of culture, based on historical events, ANZAC Day comes to mind, and each nation has its own days to celebrate or remember, whether it is victory over an invader, such as VE Day, March 8, marking the end of WWII in Europe in 1945. 

Religious celebrations such as Christmas and Easter for Christians, the same celebration but  different days for Orthodox Christians, or the various celebrations or remembering on the Jewish religious calendar, all eighteen of them, or Islamic celebrations and remembrances. Other religions, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, and other faiths have their traditions, each is celebrated in their own ways. 

Visit China Town on Chinese New Year and witness, join the celebration as the Year of the somethingorother is welcomed on the second new moon of the year with the traditional fiery dragon leading the joyful procession.

Currently we have a Royal Commission looking into the prevalence of antisemitism and other forms of hate speech. Hate speech is more than antisemitism, it is speech which denigrates people who are somehow not quite fitting into the culture we want, that we are somehow fearful of that difference, be it in sexual or gender self definition, ethnicity, religion, skin colour, speech accent, or any other marker of difference.

History has shown that the intangible elements of societal culture are the most contentious elements. Each of them based on a feeling, a mythology, an unprovable, yet each significant as a means of celebrating parts of our identities. I jokingly commented on the week or so delay for the celebration of Orthodox Christmas and Easter, that the delay was to take advantage of the Post Christmas sales and to get the left over Easter eggs at discount prices. 

That may or may not be the case, but what we have threatening those dates, to tie all people into a single cultures monoculture, requires taking one set of myths, one interpretation of religious teachings, one language, and over time even dress codes, and making that law.

Truth is that all those elements are special to those who celebrate them. Many are also based on a faith system, a belief system. And are unprovable. 

Throughout history myths have been turned into dogma, and when a myth becomes dogma, it divides communities, it cuts deeply into the freedoms we demand, the freedom to believe what we believe. 

Who can prove that God has predestined some to be his people and others to be condemned to the pits of hell? 

Who can prove that the world was created in six days and that the earth is the centre of the universe? 

Who decides how a person defines themselves in terms of their sexuality?

Who decides which religion is the true religion?

Who decides what books to read?

Who decides what physical markers determine who is the better human? Is it blue eyes or brown eyes, is it the accident of birth that colours my skin differently than others?

So many questions which cannot have a definitive answer, but when some in power had decided they have the answer, many have died for not agreeing with that answer.

As we struggle with the notion of a multicultural or a monocultural Australia, we struggle with the innate fear of differences we see around us, do we stop to consider that those we are seeing carry those same fears, see the same differences?