BEGINNING
I told my Israeli friend to take off his coat of culture instead of buttoning it up as apparently he was doing to insulate him from worlds he had known--six years of international travel and residence abroad before returning to the Promised Land to settle down. He was silent after my advice, and to this day he becomes more and more enmeshed in "his culture," a mixture of national-ethnicism and religion.
As for me and my own experiences living outside my own nation-culture for more than 20 years now, in four different (Western) countries, I think my realizing my own advice an unreachable objective. In fact, because it is so subjective, this national-cultural thing (I call it culture, a particular constellation of ways of living), analysis and stepping outside to an objective(?) posture is impossible. However, there are those who seem to demonstrate such wide-ranging comfort and competence in different places and situations that the product of uncovering or shedding the protective and parochial layers can be glimpsed if not found. What to call this evolved human?
Labels for those who live outside their own geographic borders or ethnic constraints are less than helpful. Refugee, transnational, expatriate, stateless . . . they are all so specific as to ignore the category I admire and am trying to describe. I am talking about the person who chooses to live abroad, who has a command of two or more languages not including the mother tongue, who is comfortable in homogenous and mixed company, who has moved beyond comparing every place and person and peculiarity to where s/he must anchor all perspectives and therefore perceptions--where s/he grew up, or the country called home.
Having lived and traveled as I have, my own prejudices have developed as to what it should mean to transcend one's own. One's own, I refer not to the psychological, vocational, or socio-historical development or profile. If one is an egoist or social justice advocate, teacher or aid worker, business person or pauper, these are not in themselves definitive of transcending that which may be said about a group or class of people when we use the shorthand terms or descriptions that are stereotypes. The transcending-culture individual does not refer to new acquaintances or situations as having the flavors often associated with these people and not those, or some specified others. S/he ignores it or just observes, letting the people and events be themselves for what they uniquely are. Of course, it might be easy in some cases to make a case for their fit with what one already knows or has experienced, but that is not what the object of interaction or observation entails. It is the discovery of the uniquely who-what and having that inform what is going on now and, if tentatively, future encounters.
This is all quite abstract. A concrete example from both the what is and what it is not camps should suffice to clarify.
X, a US citizen, lived and worked in Germany for most of his adult life. He is now retired in Spain, because of the more favorable climate and cost of living. He is "European" in that he speaks German and English, collects social security from his "adopted" country, Germany, and retirement from work in Germany and long ago in the US. He has health coverage in Germany and the US. He must travel to either country to make good these benefits. He has a home address in the US and legal residence in Germany. His status in Spain is, well, snowbird on a year-round basis, except when he visits his property in the US to check on it, yearly. He watches US TV channels via satellite, follows baseball and American football, reads the US and international (not strictly European) news in English from US publications, and occasionally surveys the German headlines for what might be happening that would affect him and his status and benefits as a German resident and retiree. He reads English books from the local libraries, mostly US history and foreign policy, and socializes with English speakers, most often US or UK expats. His speech, when talking with Europeans of any stripe, is peppered with baseball idioms and those typical of American English--"It ain't rocket science." His references to culture and history and politics are American, in large part stemming from when he was younger and first came to the continent. Thus dated. He does not go to "foreign" films dubbed in English or with English subtitles (somewhat rare in European cinemas), and he takes in the local music scene represented at the bar known to be a foreigner's hangout. His education stopped with his formal studies many years ago, and does not read or study more current views and knowledge in some of his interest areas, which I am afraid I don't know beyond sports and the latest faux pas's of the US government and some of its less attractive and admirable citizens.
I could go on, but this gives enough of a snapshot to imagine the converse of this profile. Do that, that is imagine someone who does not look and feel like X.
Next consider the following partial list of quirks and qualities.
- adaptable
- at home in the world
- civilized
- comfortable
- confident
- conversant
- cosmopolitan
- flexible
- multi-linguistic
- non-judgmental
- polished, a cosmopolite
- sophisticated (not elitist)
- stateless (not displaced)
- tellurian
- uniquely individuated
- world citizen
- worldly
- . . . free from local, provincial, or national ideas, prejudices, or attachments
Perhaps I misspoke. There are not many quirks here. Qualities, yes. And you can imagine some descriptors yourself for the kind of person I am referring to. Quirks are reserved for those of a more limited view and capacity.
Matthew Arnold in his essay "Culture and Anarchy" said that culture is curiosity and a striving for perfection. The idea of his culture is cultured: the cultured person who knows and aspires to do and be good per God's will. Culture for Arnold is not a way of life as I have represented the term, or Culture per se, that being those artifacts of the arts and humanities that have stood the test of time and that those who know or know a little about them can enrich their speech and awareness by direct reference or allusion. For Arnold, Culture would be those things that gifted members of society contribute to those of us who would be cultured.
Arnold's treatise is less about the cosmopolite I have tried to sketch above than about a slightly out-of-fashion hero or heroine, today's Renaissance person or perhaps broadly educated and talented academic cum sportsperson/celebrity--a kind of renaissance person?
But Arnold's analysis of becoming cultured, or more widely and deeply adept, has insights which I find useful and insightful even today. Here he is on the subject of what might prevent moderns from becoming more than they would be without further development along the lines of the cosmopolite, a term I now utilize, if provisionally, as shorthand for the person worldly competent.
Indeed nearly all the characters of perfection, as culture teaches us to fix them, meet in this country with some powerful tendency which thwarts them and sets them at defiance. The idea of perfection as an inward condition of the mind and spirit is at variance with the mechanical and material civilisation in esteem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, so much in esteem as with us. The idea of perfection as a general expansion of the human family is at variance with our strong individualism, our hatred of all limits to the unrestrained swing of the individual's personality, our maxim of "every man for himself." The idea of perfection as an harmonious expansion of human nature is at variance with our want of flexibility, with our inaptitude for seeing more than one side of a thing, with our intense [16] energetic absorption in the particular pursuit we happen to be following. So culture has a rough task to achieve in this country, and its preachers have, and are likely long to have, a hard time of it. . . . ("Culture and Anarchy" by Matthew Arnold in EPUB format available from http://www.gutenberg.org)I guess, although I am not an example of the cultured man or cosmopolite as I would conceive of him or her, I have a hard time of it. A life in teaching and consulting and mentoring and guiding . . . what was all that for? Whom did I touch? and did I have the curiosity and achieve the perfection needed to become that ideal I now see so little of among the expats and nationals I meet in different countries? Is the cosmopolite the product of a process or just of situation and circumstance mixed with a being who can get along and contribute in any encounter anywhere?
One of the characteristics of the cosmopolite as I have encountered and observed is that s/he is well read. And becoming cultured, if that is what may be required would include reading. But: ". . . The Great American Novel—-always capitalized, like the United States of America itself—-has to be a book that contains and explains the whole country, that makes sense of a place that remains, after 230-odd years, a mystery to itself." (This from a recent article by Adam Kirsch in the //Harvard Review// on the American novel and lit crit.) This is a sentence that confounds me. I am interested in the part about "a mystery to itself."
Is it the novel that is a mystery to itself or the country? I take it syntactically that it is the country. But a novel about a country that is a mystery to itself is a novel that is a mystery to itself? Okay, that doesn't necessarily follow, but still at least this novel is incomplete in some sense. If your subject (individual, group, country) has no complete awareness/understanding, then other than stating that view, the writing, the novel, reflects that partial //selfie// view. It has to point that out or describe it in some limited way to draw that conclusion. (Oh that word. You know which one. Grates. The first and last time I will use it.) And stating that fact, that the country hasn't completed its homework on knowing itself, would seem to imply that the writer understands more than the country or the great book does; therefore, s/he is more omniscient (is that possible?) than the GAN or its author? Thus we have little use for the cultural icon we have revered?
I am confounded, although I have read novels that I could not get a complete handle on yet still found great, at least better/more challenging--i.e. richer--than the pulp variety. If all this comes down to this, that a novel is a mystery to itself, then perhaps it is not worth bothering with? I don't know.
However, I have addressed this matter elsewhere, and I take the liberty to repeat the salient stuff here. Unpublished paper "'Better' Stereotypes: A Model for Getting Beyond (Useless) Surfaces."
To see and understand a culture one must move below the surface of things from one's own perspective to the inside as seen and understood from the position of the other. Experience of and in a culture can aid this movement to the inside. Cultural informants, broadly defined, can help interpret things observed, and not observed except by the him or her, such that useful insights are confirmed or uncovered for the observer. Penetration into the culture is a function of the depth of information and insights the observer has access to. What may sometimes be tacit and difficult to articulate can be loosened from its embeddedness by more careful observation and persistent inquiry. Some of the most useful but most difficult roots of behavior lie at the core, in strata of bedrock as it were, not readily available even to the most astute observers and insiders. What is needed is more information and knowledge, or perhaps dramatic events, to shake loose the unconscious and inarticulate ground. With these, and perhaps in crisis times, what a person or a people characteristically does can be more easily seen, and why they do it may be more easily understood.So there may always be stuff that is a mystery to us. Not being able to make all transparent need not be an indictment against the GAN or anything or anyone else. To shed the coat of culture may not be entirely possible. My apologies to my Israeli friend. But unbuttoning it and tying it round one's waist may be indeed possible as evidenced by the cosmopolite I have been trying to characterize and have met from time to time.
The room fills with an elephant. Religion.
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What was it about this novel, Fowles' //The Magus//, on the BBC's list of the 100 books of the twentieth century to be read, that brought me back and back again to it for a number of years? I am reading it again after a twenty-year hiatus, and I realize now but do not recall ever re-reading it for this reason: that it is a portrait of myself, give or take some details, at the same age as it was written. The Greek references and allusions were familiar. I had a classical education from secondary right through college and graduate school. I taught English. I worked in a private school abroad in a culture I could hardly penetrate. The passages in French I could read, having had many years of school French based on reading and translation. I had a young man's dark night of the soul and began coming out of it after my few short years abroad. I had an affair with a woman I thought I loved but left because I had to. I contracted a sexual disease for which I had to be treated. I deceived myself and others about who I was. I contemplated suicide but backed down because I chose to live a shallow life. I flirted with existentialism as a field of study and way of life. I felt profoundly alone and sought to free myself from obligations. I wrote poetry and aspired to become an artist. And there is more but assured the point has been made. I identify with Urfe unreservedly.
My memory serves me thus: I read and re-read the book because of the mysteries. They were, I thought, masterful and sensual and beyond my experience but would that that could have happened to me, including meeting a man and women so much more interesting and complex and advanced than I. Then the revised edition came out, and I just completed reading that; I am left wondering what it was I read before, what I experienced, what drew me back and back again to the first edition. The revised version will draw me back in to cycles of re-reading?
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New year's resolutions--this time round. For the last several years I have been able to accomplish what I set out to do beginning on the first of the year. Memorable among these has been not so much the elimination of the F-word from my audible repertoire but the most judicious and appropriate use of it. No longer does it just pop out unawares. I am aware of when and how I choose to use it. Much better, especially for the company I sometimes find myself in. Then last year was to reduce or eliminate reading the daily news. I have weaned myself of this time-wasting habit. Much going on in the world is still the same, I am told. The ills of the world are not solved by knowing about what the media wants me to focus on. So there.
This year there are two resolutions. Write everyday from morn till at least 2 PM, and administer what I must after that.
Let me address the latter. I live in a country not my own, but still this applies to wherever I have ever lived. Demands on your time to just keep things going and legal and taken care of require huge amounts, gobs of Time. And now that I am older and more mature, it takes huge amounts of energy better spent on more important stuff. If I go out shopping and to the post office to pay a bill, I get home and don't want to do much else than have lunch and a nap. Then the day and impeti have gone. Got to light the late afternoon fire, walk the dog, do the dishes, answer an email or two . . . you see, day gone, all because I was administering and not being the person who enjoys some special things I know that I do supremely. Best to put all that first and if and as necessary, take care of the administrivia. Think of it. Administering your life. Endless trivia. Get a blood test. Take it to the doctor to see if you need your medications adjusted. Fill the prescriptions. Go to the tax office to see if I owe taxes on the house. I don't. Not yet. The tax office doesn't know. Come back four days before the deadline in two weeks. We might be able to tell you then. (I live in Italy. Enough said.) Whew. What a waste. And who cares if I have all my official papers in order? Has someone ever come round and asked me to show the various obscure bits before I get tossed out of Europe? No.
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You don't fool me with that innocent outfit and expression, although you would behold me. You cannot relieve by me the burning desire which consumes you now from inside. Besides, you are too young, too different, too vapid, too . . . too. . . . It has nothing to do with me.
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Thought experiment: If we allowed everyone from 5 years of age up to own a gun, what would happen?
- A small, mostly passive proportion of the populace would object vocally and then retreat to mumbling and solitary protests in private and out of sight.
- A large proportion of the populace would embrace the freedom and call it a right not a privilege.
- A large proportion of these would acquire guns.
- The guns and munitions industries would institute a holiday where everyone was encouraged to shoot their guns off to the air above in unison at noon and gather later for a barbeque and gun games. Among these there would be 21-gun salutes, wild random shooting with cries of yippee, and some tears at wounds and casualties perpetrated by the careless and untrained.
- Annually we would witness more mass shootings but eventually accept them as the cost of freedom. No more tears need be shed. Shit happens.
- A small proportion of crazies would do crazy things like hold people hostage, snipe at passersby, kill someone because of a verbal disagreement or unjust job termination, etc.
- A very small proportion of experienced gun owners would see religion and give up their arms and campaign for the repeal of the freedom, without success.
- Criminals would continue to use guns to get what they wanted, but increase their arsenals to newer technologies to accomplish the same end. To stay competitive, you know.
- Non-gun owners would be marginalized and deemed impolitically correct or worse. They would become a new discriminated-against group with appropriate epithets to describe them.
- Foreign visitors to the country would decrease.
- TV shows and documentaries and infodocu re-enactments would increase showing us more and more violent scenes to savor before bedtime.
- Since 5 year olds would be entitled to a gun, they would find new products to badger their parents about--pink or blue pint-sized rifles and pistols made of plastic that shoot real bullets, one at a time, just for safety.
- Laws would be enacted to prevent carrying firearms into designated places such as the men's room at the local movie theater, the garage of a friend, the desert . . . places where the likelihood of accident or perpetration would be less or more . . .
This writing is not for you, being the flippant that you say you are. Just a moment. A flippant, that's a noun? as in I am a flippant? I think you are coining a new usage, although. . . . There is an alleged use of flippant as a noun on the fan and lyrics interpretation pages for the alternative L. A. metal band, Tool. We have this snippet of their song lyrics for 10,000 Days (Wings pt. 2): "Ignorant flippants in the congregation/ Gather around spewing sympathy,/ Spare me." The question is not settled, I allege, for the various sites that transcribe or copy lyrics, the word in question may be siblings or fibbers, or?
So back to the point. You are a flippant, one who makes flip comments. Does that mean you are also a flipper? Perhaps one of these usages will become the word of the year!
Aw, let's not pursue this fluff further. So, back to the point.
The Bible as fiction. This is an amusing story at least from the point of view of a pastor's recent claim, or should I more politely say limited world (Google news story about this; not worth referencing here.) Turns out that the Bible can be read in different ways--as history, for example--thereby creating all manner of fools and adepts. As "lead pastor at the nondenominational Discovery Church in Simi Valley," I assume he is credentialed somehow and qualified/enlightened enough to be amazed and forgiving, as he admits. He will still shop at Costco. I like that. Spending money as one's good deed. As if shopping or shopping wherever mattered. Now that's amusing.
See, we are such fluff as dreams are made of--from our foundations to our everyday civic, artistic and intellectual assets. Now this is tragedy or comedy, depending upon how your day is going, which I hope is well.
As for the store's apologizing for "misclassifying" the holy book, we are a people ever vigilant to root out honest errors and poor judgement in the use of "our" language, while at the same time committing misdeeds and sins against those not like us who we think threaten us in some as-yet-to-be-proved ways.
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I have packed the poem (the one from an earlier post about Dave and a chair) with what we both (Dave and I) like. Humor (amusement) and ideas.
The poem pits performance against reclining. The reader is left with a choice, if not amusement. That choice is the great idea. Which is to be preferred? Alternatively, one can wonder the significance of the Dave of the chair fame. Who would this be who prefers not to act or do? A nihilist, lazy person, someone tired of life's demands? And does any of it matter?
Sometimes the question is more important than an answer, for without questions, where would we be? . . . in the recliner smiling or snoozing.
TO BE CONTINUED
