Looking Past the Primitive Hut

Fundamentals

For the last couple of centuries, a great deal of theoretical architectural discourse has revolved around the concept of the Primitive Hut.  Although this concept has existed since the time of Vitruvius, it entered into serious academic discussion after Laugier used it as the frontispiece of his Essai sur l'Architecture.  It is a fundamental mythologization of architecture.

Although there is absolutely no archeological record of a hut of the type that Laugier described, nor any evidence that anyone prior to the Imperial Romans even theorized the elements of the hut in the manner theorists think about them, it is still an essential key to understanding architectural form.  The ideas that the column is emblematic of the tree and the pediment shed water like the leafy branches above.

However, this is not the only way to mythologize fundamental architectural forms.  Ching, for example, discusses patterns of organization and mathematical proportions.  According to Simon Unwin, there are four fundamental architectural elements; The Bower, the Hearth, The Altar and the Performance Space.  These are then housed in enclosures to create the basic architectural forms of the House, the Temple and the Theatre. 

But it is Unwin's fundamental elements that I am particularly interested in here.  Unwin looks at these from a purely pragmatic, formal analysis in much the same way the architects who have followed Laugier used the Primitive Hut as a formal derivation to explain the Orders, and ultimately even Le Corbusier's Five Points.  But looking at these fundamental elements as formal only completely ignores the cultural context, and what these elements tell us about ourselves.

Before I begin exploring this, I want to discard one of Unwin's elements, the performance space.  If we wish to go back to the most ancient roots, the hearth in it's broader context was the prototypical performance space, where tales were told around the fire.  In their most primitive forms, the Bower, the Hearth and the Altar were the three fundamentals, the performance space followed behind these three as social structure evolved.

I also want to point out, in the beginning, these fundamental elements would not have been "architecture" in the way we currently describe it.  However, if you want to state that architecture is any alteration of the natural environment for human use, then these elements, even in their most primitive state would be architecture. 

I should note here, that I don't personally restrict architecture to purely human actions on the environment.  I consider beaver dams, termite mounds and birds nests to be architecture.  In fact, any modification of the environment by deliberate action for the purpose of habitation could be considered architecture.  Similarly, any alteration of the environment for non-functional purposes could be considered art.  And yes, animals do make art, from Bower Birds lavishly decorating their nests to dogs that deliberately place their toys in specific geometric patterns.

To return to the point, we would probably not see the most primitive of these elements as architecture; a pile of branches for sleeping, a ring of stones to protect a fire, a specific mark on a tree or in a cave, these are what would have been the original forms of these elements.

However, it is not the physical that interests me, it is the significance of them that begins to tell us about the societies.  As I have stated before, architecture is a pure cultural container.  How it is arranged, what it is made out of, even the relationships between uses in proximity tell us volumes about what a society valued, how they viewed the world, what sort of social structure existed.  In terms of pre and proto literate societies, or for ones for which we cannot decipher the written language, it is the only key to understanding them.

But these fundamental elements are also the fundamental elements of mythologization of built form.   Myth the ties of man to man, man to God and man to himself.   Then, in a more meta-analysis, when you examine the role of all the myths aggregated, you discover the overarching understanding of the relationship man to nature, which can be expanded to describe man's place in the cosmos.  For example, a broad reading of Greek Mythology indicates a view that Man is at the mercy of a very capricious an unpredictable universe, whereas Egyptian Mythology shows a very hierarchical, ordered worldview.

Each one of these roles of myth can be tied into the fundamental architectural forms.  

First, we will look at the hearth.  The hearth is the gathering place for the band. (And the period we are talking about would have been band level societies which are the most primitive.)  This form facilities the role of the relationship of man to man.  Around the hearth, the rules of conduct for the band are laid down.  Whether or not they are explicitly stated, children in the fire circle learn from their elders appropriate behavior in relationship to each other.  Adults who violate the behavioral norms are sanctioned.  Problems are addressed and plans are made.  Social hierarchies are established, maintained and sometimes even overthrown.  Around the hearth, all aspects of how one member of society relates to any other are established.

Moving on, we have the Altar.  In primitive societies, this would have been a sacred tree, pool or cave, or some other object in the environment that would have housed the spirit of the supernatural.  In other words, the altar would have been the band's fetish object.  (Remember, a fetish has no relationship to how we use the word today, but described an object that literally houses a God.)  This fundamental element describes the relationship of man to God.  The forms and ceremonies related to worship, even the very nature of that relationship is addressed at the altar.  For example, does the shaman hold dominion over the God, commanding and summoning it, or is the shaman the supplicant begging for intercession?  Is the ritual highly formal or is it more casual?  These are the relationships laid out by the altar and form the second purpose of myth.

The final relationship that is described by myth is the most esoteric, man to himself, and it is given form by the Bower.  It can be said that dreams are how we understand ourselves and how we process the experiences of our lives, and the Bower is the space given over to dreams.  Whereas the first two elements look outwards and upwards, this final element looks inwards.  Sleep is an absolute universal, but how we sleep tells us about our relationships to ourselves, i.e. how we care for our bodies when we cannot consciously protect ourselves.   As such, the location of the Bower begins to tell us where the danger is, on the ground, in the sky, in the earth. 

And this then begins the pivot to the final role of myth in architecture, which is found in the aggregate of understanding all three elements taken together, how man relates to nature or in broader terms, how man is placed in the cosmos.  Does the society view itself as secure or in peril?  Do they dominate or are they dominated?  Are they a part of a greater nature, or are the separate from it?  When we examine Hearth, Altar and Bower we can build a larger image of how the society views their place. 

As societies evolve, these fundamental forms also evolve.  The Hearth becomes the Hall, developing into the Court, the Capitol, the Forum, and through separation from the fire and union with the Altar, the it transforms into the Theatre.  (This is because ancient theatre was a scared rite)  The Altar becomes the Temple, the Church the Cathedral.  The Bower becomes the House, the Castle, the Palace.   But even when this happens, the fundamental forms are maintained, even if abstracted beyond recognition. 

And these fundamental elements dictate the architectural forms of even modern buildings.  How man relates to man dictates whether the administrative spaces place all people on the same level, or if it reinforces a strict hierarchy.   How man relates to God determines the ritual space that surrounds the altar, if it is centered on ritual and procession, or if it is a gathering of a congregation.  The Bower defines the house, as the purpose of the home is for rest and refreshment.

By looking at the basics, and their mythological purpose, we can begin to analyze all societies, even modern ones, through their built form.

The Inconvenience of Reality

Others

The truth does not set us free, it typically just makes us uncomfortable.  A prime example of this is the rampant racism in this country.  Despite, or more likely because of, electing a black President, bigotry has not declined.  Tangential to this is the strong uptick in sexism that runs parallel to racism.  This is the uncomfortable truth that we face.  However, rather than just complain about the phenomenon, I would like to try to examine some root causes of the behavior: shame, fear, and identity.

The first driver of prejudice is shame.  For generations we literally enslaved blacks and we oppressed women.  Both were treated appallingly by the power structure and denied recourse to protest that repression.  Black men were not counted as people until after the civil war, and then it was a further 100 years before they truly earned the right to participate in the democratic process.  Women didn't get a universal right to vote until 1920, although some states adopted suffrage before that.

This is shameful, and any rational person in 2013 should recognize how appalling that truth is.  However, people don't always react the same way to shame.  Some people, and I would hope the majority, although recent events make me question that assertion, use the shame as a driver to guarantee that those mistakes are never repeated.  Shame has been used throughout history as a powerful method of discipline in a social structure, and therefore is often corrective.

Unfortunately, some people cannot correctly process shame.  Instead they refuse to see their behavior as inappropriate, and actually transfer the shameful behavior onto the actual victims.  You see this in a number of events recently.  President Obama being constantly criticized as un-American, arrogant, uppity, and a host of other epithets that condemn him for the audacity of becoming President.  You also see this in the Trayvon Martin case, where the black teen is de facto guilty, and judged to be in the wrong automatically, even though, if he did fight back, he was acting under the same principle that allowed George Zimmerman to legally murder him.  And even further, you see this is the repeated refusal to acknowledge rape as an actual crime, and the pushing of the idea that women contribute to their own rapes through their bad behavior.

In all of these cases, shame is being transferred off of the person who cannot accept it, and it is being placed on a person or group who in way have any guilt in the matter.  This is unfortunately a common behavior pattern among people who lack the maturity to face a horrible reality.  Part of the problem here is that since they did not personally engage in those behaviors, they feel that they bear no responsibility.  Further they feel that assigning them responsibility for the actions of people in the past, or other people in the present, is utterly wrong.

This is correct as far as the individual goes, but there is another layer at play here and that is societal guilt.  Societal guilt is not personalized, but belongs to a large group of people and is the method of mitigating bad behavior by a culture.  A prime example would be the Holocaust; only a relatively small percentage of the German population actively participated in the atrocities, but a wide swath stood by and watched it happen.  In this, they became complicit, is not directly guilty; and that is what societal guilt is meant to address.

Even though the Civil War ended almost 150 years ago, and the Equal Rights movement ostensibly came to an end 30 years ago, much of the bad behavior is still being perpetrated.  But rather than acknowledge it, the guilt is off-shored and placed on the people who do not deserve the blame.  The racist attitudes justify the ill treatment of minorities and women, by essentially blaming them for their own condition.  In doing this, the racist and sexist attitudes become fully justified in the mind of the person who holds them, and removes the burden of shame.

And to address another elephant in the room, there is a genuine phenomenon of reverse racism and counter sexism, where minorities and women turn the tables against white men.  However, it should be noted that this phenomenon is distinctly different from traditional racism and sexism.  These are response behaviors, basically stemming from the idea, "You hate us, so we will hate you back just as much."  Although it drastically increases the problem, it is a natural response.  However, since is it such a different imperative from traditional racism, I am going to leave it out of this discussion.

The second driver is fear.  As I have discussed in previous blog posts, the fear-anger-hate chain is powerful and ubiquitous.  But the root imperative is fear.  With racism and sexism, the fear is both extremely simple and highly convoluted.  The root cause of the fear is the idea of loss of privilege, white men have essentially run the show in most of the industrialized world for centuries.  Losing that basic power structure is deeply troubling. 

White men have been on top for so long that we literally do not know how to function in a world where we are not the ultimate power.  You see this in the repeated meltdowns over President Obama.  He is going out there and acting just like a white man, asking for motorcades, for marines to hold an umbrella over him, traveling the globe and talking to world leaders as an equal.  How arrogant of him.  To many who fear the loss of their influence, he is the ultimate harbringer of their doom.

The convoluted part comes in the realization that ye shall reap as ye have sown.  The comedian Patton Oswalt talks about using a time machine, and how it would be great to use it to visit the past, because there never has been a time when being a white man hasn't been awesome.  However, he cautions against using it to go to the future, because what we have done is going to catch up to us, and the future is "gonna suck."  We are going to eventually have to pay for our millennia of bad leadership decisions.

This fear drives both racism and sexism.  They are the dying gasps of trying to stave off an inevitable future where the white male has, at best, limited ability to control events, and at worst will become the oppressed minority.  The fear of what might happen to us makes it imperative that we keep everyone else down, by whatever means are necessary, and bigotry serves that very well.  In fact, through careful application of it, we can even get some of the oppressed people to buy into the story.  Allen West and Phyllis Schaffley are perfect examples of this.

Add to that the second layer of fear, the fear that we are not superior.  Much of racism and sexism is supported by the indisputability of the superiority of the white male.  We view ourselves as smarter, more talented, better leaders, and generally better people than either minorities or women.  And every time one of the other groups does an excellent job in a "white role" it undercuts that certainty.

This is also why President Obama gets described as lazy, ineffectual, and incompetent.  And unfortunately, to be honest, it comes from both sides of the white political spectrum.  The issues of complaint about the President may be different, but underlying both sides is this hidden message that a white man could do it better.  The lionization of Bill Clinton by both side proves this idea.  I should note here, there has been significant criticism of the President from the African-American community, but it is fundamentally different in tone, and often echoes the idea that he isn't doing enough for their community.  However, given the issues surrounding his Presidency, he would only make it worse and heighten the racism, if he actually did more.  Notice the furor over his  relatively mild statement regarding Trayvon Martin,

The last piece of the racism puzzle is identity.  For much of human history, the world has revolved around ideas of us and them.  We define ourselves by certain identifiers, race, religion, and culture.  The ideas of what make us, "us" are very powerful and form the basis of a racial identity.

The vampire mythic sequence illustrates this very well, we are both drawn to and repelled by the other.  In the older vampire stories, the monster wanted to seduce our women and steal them away, which meant that he had to be destroyed with a stake through the heart.  This symbolized the need to strike at the core of the dangerous other.

In today's world of "sparkly vampires" we want to mate with the vampire, not to embrace the other, but to subsume the other.  The ultimate message of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight is that we need to make the vampire more like us.

This returns to the issue of bigotry.  We can accept a black man if he is more white than the average white man.  In fact, most of my white friends who have the one black friend typically describe them as "the whitest black guy in the world."  By taking on a "white" identity, the otherness becomes neutralized and they are save.  Even if they are a different skin color, they do not challenge the predominant white identity of our culture.  They become "neutralized."

The same goes for women.  If a woman acts girlish in the work world, she is basically a threat to the cultural identity of what an employee should be.  If she cries, or talks about "female problems" or in any way breaks the mold, she becomes a danger.  Basically, to function effectively in the work world, a woman must be indistinguishable from a man.

However, there is a double standard for women that does not exist for racial issues.  It is OK, and even expected, that a woman fill a traditional role in the non-work realm.  That is also part of the identity issue, a woman has a specific role to play in our cultural structure.  She can step outside of that at work, but not outside of work, and that is part of what is expected.  However, a minority can never step outside of the "white" role, or they instantly become a threat.

The problem with this arises from the fact that we are not allowed to talk about these issues, and that acerbates all of them.

If we were allowed to address the issues of shame, we could talk openly about the atrocities of slavery and Jim Crow and try to make some sort of peace with the past.  We cannot fix what has gone before, but we certainly can acknowledge that we have done horrible things and commit to never repeating them.  Germany engaged in this purging of their societal soul after World War 2.  They did not eliminate the Nazi movement, but they served to marginalize it to the point that only the most extreme racists would embrace it.  In this context, shame becomes a powerful tool to cleanse out the festering rot of bigotry.

Second if we could openly discuss our fears and our insecurities, we could meet them head on.  Most of the time, fear is unfounded, and in this case, it is particularly so.  If we were allowed to have open discussions that made people realize that another group's success does not in any way diminish our own, we might come to terms with our fears.  Just because white male influence is waning does not mean that we have become reviled.  However, if we do not address this issue, our fears will become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, we need to stop defining our identity by race, sex or creed.  Even defining identity by nationality can lead to problems, but that is a more natural division.  At lease, if kept in check so that it doesn't devolve into extreme nationalism, it can become a tool to unify people.

At the end of the day, we need to realize we are all Americans, whether we are male or female, white black or brown.  Only then can we begin to move past this mess we have made for ourselves.

Culture Wars

Lifestyles

In the past few decades there has been a conflation of the terms culture and lifestyle.  More specifically, we have frequently been replacing culture with lifestyle.  This shift has both positive and negative consequences; and we are also conflicted about both.

First, I want to define the differences between culture and lifestyle.  Culture is imposed, or perhaps inherited.  Typically, we get our culture from our families, our community, or our heritage.  Sometimes, in the case of "going native," (technically called acculturation) we adopt another culture as our own, but for the most part, we do not choose our culture, it is something we are given.  This process of giving is called enculturation, and it typically enframes our worldview.  No matter how hard you try, you cannot completely escape the snowglobe.

Lifestyle is how we conduct our lives.  It may be a product of our culture, but most of the time, it is something we choose for ourselves.  Most people, at some point in their lives, decide to be liberal or conservative, devout or secular, engages or passive.  The list goes on and on.  Our worldview typically evolves over our lives, but it is always the product of our experiences and decisions. 

Ad agencies claim that they are not selling a product, they are selling a lifestyle, and this is to a large extent true.  Purchasing a Lexus is not typically done in a vacuum, it is part of a larger lifestyle, that often includes a McMansion, a media room, granite counters in the kitchen, and frequently, voting a straight Republican ticket.  I'm not knocking this, I'm just pointing out typical associations.  Purchasing a Prius, often goes hand in hand with a Democratic voting record, environmentalism, and a backyard compost heap.

We assemble our lifestyle from a kit of parts, and more and more, that kit is mad up of the things we buy.  The ad agencies have done an excellent job of making sure your lifestyle is properly branded.  Being a Mac User tells someone vast amounts of information about who you are.  So does the brand of clothing you wear, where you shop, what you drive.  We build our identity from our possessions.

We are a profoundly material culture, dependant on positional goods.  These are the items that indicate your status in society. At the upper end of this spectrum are Veblen Goods, which are things you want more, just because they are more expensive.  Prada shoes and Viking Stoves are classic examples of Veblen Goods.

Further, in less materialistic societies, positional goods are not branded, they just are.  For example in India, social rank can be determined by whether you have indoor plumbing, electricity, and many other things that we in America take for granted, and consequently no longer consider status symbols.

As a result of this, less materialistic societies and communities tend not to have lifestyles, they retain culture as their main guide to life.  This is not to be construed as the same as countries.  In most countries, there are still segments of the population that still function from a Cultural Worldview, for example, the Amish, the Navajos, the Gypsies.   These people live in every country, just as, in most countries, there is at least a small segment of the population that operates from the Lifestyle Worldview.

Now to the conflicts that are arising from all of this.

We want culture to continue, but only if it meets certain specifications.  In America, we want W.A.S.P. culture to persist, and at least on Saint Patrick's day, we all want to assume a (bastardized) Irish culture.  On the other hand, we have no desire to see Mexican immigrants to live their culture, and we actively are attempting to stamp out Muslim cultures.  (Although on this score, the Europeans are going much further than we are, by banning the veil and other outward cultural tokens.)

But at the same time, we condemn lifestyles, again, especially if we disagree with them.  A perfect example of this is the "Gay Lifestyle."  (There are some who call it the "Gay Culture," but given that it is a part of the larger American Culture, at best it could be considered a sub-culture.  Give it a few decades, and there may be a distinct Gay Culture.)

Both sides of the political spectrum condemn the lifestyles of the opposite end.  Most atheists look down on a lifestyle that includes church two times a week, homeschooling, and large numbers of children.  The right is equally condemnatory of people whose lifestyle includes no church, open attitudes towards sex, or having children outside of marriage.

But at the end of the day, most Americans have abandoned culture for lifestyle.  Very few of us maintain all aspects of our cultural heritage.  This is probably an outgrowth of the melting pot that is the United States.  It is very hard for people to maintain their culture, unless they are insulated from others.  It starts slowly, losing fluency in the native tongue, eating foods outside of the ethnicity, abandoning the native dress.  It progresses into moving out of the ethnic neighborhood, going to a new church that is not the faith of your forbearers, and ultimately, building a patchwork of customs and beliefs that bear little, if any, resemblance to your original culture.

This is a slow process, and occurs over generations, typically at least three.  But by the end of the process, culture is subsumed by lifestyle, and you no longer identify by a cultural definition.  You identify by lifestyle markers, like profession, social status, colleges attended, and other things that are part of the common American experience.

On the whole, this is probably a good thing, because if we were still tied to our cultural heritage, our polycultural nation probably couldn't function.  Imagine, for example, if people during World War Two, rather than identifying themselves as American, still thought of themselves as French or German.  There would have likely been open war between neighborhoods.  (Since, in that scenario, people would have continued to live in ethnic enclaves.)

But still, many, especially on the right, decry this move.  Part of this, I'm sure, is because young people often adopt lifestyles that go against the older peoples value structures.  And without the cultural container, they feel freer to abandon the beliefs of their parents.  They don't understand, and therefore are unwilling to accept, things like arranged marriages, attitudes towards homosexuality, or strict orthodox faith.

These lifestyle choices then further undermine culture, and the process becomes a vicious cycle that pulls people even further away from their cultural roots.  And that, in turn inspires the retaliation to try to force people back into their cultural container.

An example of this is the feminist movement.  For most of Western history, we have been profoundly Patriarchal, up to the point of even asking if women were even human.  For the most part, throughout most of American history, women were property.  (You can see this from the fact that, technically, Statutory Rape is a property crime, not a sexual offense.)  This view of women was embedded deeply into most European cultures, and later into American meta-culture. (The overarching national identity, made up of all the subsidiary cultures.)

Then came suffrage, women's lib, double income households, and women dominating the professions in colleges, which will lead to women dominating the professional workforce.  This obliterated the cultural enframement of the role of women, as women chose lifestyles that put them in direct competition with the roles of men.  At this point, gender based roles have more or less ceased to exist, with women being primary bread winners and men being home-makers.  There are still a few gender barriers, for example, women in direct combat, but for the most part, both sexes can do anything they want with their lives.  The cultural containers that proscribed roles evaporated. 

This has upended traditional culture, and the men, at least the conservative ones, didn't like it.

So suddenly, this year, you have a de facto war against women, to try to stuff them back into their culturally defined roles.  You can't do that with a direct assault; you will never get any legislature to pass laws banning women in the workplace, or revoking the rights to vote and go to college.  Pandora's box cannot be closed.

So what do the culture warriors do to circumscribe the roles of women; attempt to ban contraception.  Without reliable and safe birth control, women will have no control over their reproduction, except with abstention.  It will force women to chose between having a career, or having a man in their lives.  (And as I said before, an unintended consequence of this will likely be a dramatic rise in lesbianism, but that's another story.)

With this action, they re-confine women to a classic cultural role of mother, without directly confronting the issue.  Women's careers become collateral damage, at least on the surface.  Suddenly, lifestyle is subsumed by culture.

This is not the only example of this.  You see it in the drive to keep people from attending college, which is a lifestyle factory.  You see it in the push to make this a Christian nation.  You see it in regressive taxation, that profoundly limits economic opportunities for the poor, while expanding them for the rich.  In fact, you see it in most of the far right doctrines.

They are attempting to return us to a culturally based society.  Through the straight-jacket of rigid, conservative culture, they are attempting to circumscribe lifestyle choices.

But the irony of it all is, being a Culture Warrior, is another Lifestyle Choice. 

The Case For Soft Polytheism

Truth.

When there is only one truth, there can be no peace.  When there are many truths, peace is possible.

Many social scientists state monotheism is more culturally advanced than polytheism, and is the natural progression of human society.  On the surface, this seems to be a plausible extrapolation – after all, polytheism in the western world was obliterated (or retreated into the shadows) a millennia ago, with the absorption of the Celts.  It would seem, at least from a western point of view that monotheism is a hallmark of an advanced society.

But is it really?  Hinduism and Shintoism are overtly polytheistic, Buddhism, with its Hindu roots, has polytheistic overtones.  I dare say that no one would question Japan as an advanced society, and India is fast becoming a world player.  Although China is technically atheistic, the Buddhist traditions run deep.  None of these countries have become monotheistic as they have advanced technologically. 

Furthermore, the Greeks and Romans were more advanced than any societies that existed until at least the 1700’s.  If monotheism cemented societal advances, the Roman Empire should have reached its zenith, or at least underwent a renaissance, after Constantine.  Instead, the Empire fragmented, the barbarians sacked Rome, and Europe was plunged into the dark ages.  It could just as easily be argued that monotheism destroys societies.

However, since most anthropologists are from the west, enculturation probably plays a role in this statement of societal evolution.  There has been a long tradition in cultural anthropology to practice a rather paternalistic and superior attitude toward the societies being studied.  This is reinforced by the fact that the modern empires have all been Western, even if the cultures subjugated are millennia older than the European countries. 

The reality is that social evolution does not tend toward monotheism as it advances nor does it, in and of itself, advance society.  The two are completely disconnected; we just fall back to the natural belief of the superiority of our own culture, and consequently conflate the two.

The reality is that in order for society to advance as we move forward, we must fall back to what I term a “soft polytheism.”  What I mean by this is, an individual culture may be monotheistic, but they also recognize the validity of other religions and other deities.  This is not saying, “I accept that they worship another God, even though I know that their God is false, but I’ll allow them their own beliefs, even though I know that they are wrong.”  It is actually saying, “I worship my God, and through that God I have found my own personal salvation, but I know there are other Gods that can lead other people to their own Salvation.  No God is better than any other, except on a personal basis, and what is right for me is not right for everyone.”

This is a radical statement, as it goes even beyond what liberal theologians like John Spong espouse.  Their view is that everyone worships the same God by different names.  That may or may not be actually true, but it is better for society to take the issue entirely off the table by accepting soft polytheism.  Saying that there is only one God that we all worship in different ways is actually still pretty paternalistic toward people who profoundly believe that they are multitudes of deities.

In the ancient world, there were no wars fought over the Gods, war was for more concrete issues such as territory, money, trade and resources.  In fact, it was typical for a conqueror to adopt the pantheon of the subjugated land.  An example of this the Ptolomies converting to the worship of the Egyptian deities and building temples in their honor, such as the complex at Dendara, dedicated to Hathor.  Gods were tied to the land, and if someone went to another land where other Gods were worshiped, they typically adopted the new deities.

The Bible, written by monotheists, documents the first incidents of religious warfare.  Except for the Bible, there are few, if any, documented cases of people fighting over the validity of a God.  There are contentions between people, such as the strife between Sparta and Athens that had a religious component, but neither side was trying to convert the other to the worship of their patron deity, they were just trying to prove their God was better, kind of like modern sports rivalries. 

I would also like to note, the Old Testament does not deny other deities, it just commands the Jews to have no other God than YHVH.  The fact that they name their deity, unlike Christians who just call Him God, indicates that they needed to differentiate Him from other Gods.  It is the strict monotheism of the later Abrahamic traditions that dispense with the need for God to have a name.  And by the way, Allah just means God in Arabic.  Arab Christians (yes, they do exist) call God Allah as well.

And it is this latter Abrahamic tradition that has caused so much grief in the world.  When there is only one God, all other Gods must, by definition be false, or worse, the other Gods are actually Lucifer in masquerade.  This then leads the faithful to have to convert the Heathen to give them salvation or literally pull them from the clutches of Satan.  When you view other religions as games or satanic, you cannot hold respect for them, and by extension, for the people who follow them.  It also makes the infidel or heretic among the most depraved of individuals, as they are embracing fakery or evil.

In the end, this belief that all other religions are false will make it impossible to deal with its followers honorably.  In a way, the overt hatred of people of other faiths is better than the subtle paternalistic distain that many “enlightened” people demonstrate.  I saw this same kind of behavior in the South (and also in Boulder) among many “liberals.”  They treated other races with the same sort of kindness I show my dog.  I love him, but I know he is still a dog, and no matter how much I would like him to, he will never be able to understand Quantum Physics.  The pseudo-liberals do the same thing to people of other races and religions; they treat them well, but you can tell that they know in their hearts they are better.  I’d rather deal with overt hatred than this patronizing attitude; at least I can fight against the people who hate openly.

But to return to my point: if we all accept our deity as one among many, we can accept those other deities as good and loving, and most importantly, valid.  This does not mean that we have to celebrate those other Gods, just that we have to respect that they are as worthy of worship as our own.  Many members of polytheistic religions have a single God that they feel the strongest kinship with. 

If each one of us accepted this Truth, we will have bridged one of the greatest chasms that divide us.  If we accept that all religions are good, all of them strive to help their adherents become better people, and their followers are as profoundly devout as we are, we will see true peace on the horizon.

And trust me; this will actually bring us closer to our own individual Gods.

Corrosion of Conformity

Conformity

For a place that prides itself in it's history of rebellion, I have never been anywhere that demands more conformity.  In the South, rebellion is not permitted, at least not within the social construct.

Rebellion outside of the culture is acceptable; the Tea Party is praised for it's "rebellion" against the Federal Government.  But within the bounds of Southern society, even mild non-conformity is treated far more harshly than elsewhere.

This seeming inconsistency has bothered me for a long time; why is the South so caught up in obedience and bowing to the internal power structure, while building an entire identity around refusal to bow to an external power structure?

Then I realized, the South is nothing but a group of Goth teenagers.

Not literally of course, but there is an incredible parallel between the two groups.  Both pride themselves on their rejection of cultural normatives on the larger scale, while strictly enforcing an internal set of normatives.  (Normatives are social constructs that define "normal" behavior - they set the limits of what is acceptable and create boundaries that define deviance.)

Goth kids reject the "acceptable" behavior of the larger society, and create a new set of appropriate behaviors within their group.  They consider themselves to be complete non-conformists, but they all dress alike, act alike, listen to the same music, etc.  How can you be a non-conformist when you look like everyone else?  (As reference to how powerful these internal sanctions can be, I once knew a Goth girl who dyed her hair back to it's original mousy brown, she was shunned and pressured by her peers until she dyed it black again.)

It all comes back to an identity of shared persecution.  Both Southerners and Goths feel like no one understands them, that they are being persecuted by the tyrannical "other," whether it is the Federal Government or parents and school systems.  And this very persecution gives them their sense of identity, and it strengthens the social bonds within the group.

Things like the Confederate Flag and black eyeliner become the rallying points of a culture under attack.  I have written two blog posts on how Southern Culture feels like it is under attack, so I won't cover old ground here, but the naturalized culture of the South is under what is perceived to be an attack.

And like a group of Goths, Southerners cling to identity markers and a tight knit social structure.  The adversity of persecution reinforces the social compact, and makes that compact even more essential.  It should be noted that neither the South nor the Goth are actually mistreated for the most part, it is a perception that is actually part of the identity of the "outsider."  It is a part of the construct.

And that construct is a powerful thing; it is what gives that group their strength. 

It should be noted that actual persecution is different from illusionary persecution.  Even though both typically reinforce cultural markers, actual persecution can also degrade culture if it is perceived as to dangerous to maintain that culture.  The persecution of Southern culture is illusionary in that no one is actually in physical danger from their culture; the threat to their culture is rooted in epistimology.

To return to the main point, when people feel like everyone is against them, their internal bonds get much stronger, because they feel like they have no one else.  It creates a sense of "you and me against the world," which leads to an extremely tight society.  Just like "Southern Nice," it becomes a bulwark against an existential threat.

But it goes further than that.  It becomes a method of internal control.  When a group is under threat, there can be no internal dissention.  Look at how a fractured America came together after Pearl Harbor or after September 11th.  No matter what your political persuasion was, after those events, all other sub-categories disappeared, and the only identity of any importance was that of being an American.

People, at their root, are herd animals.  (We don't like to think of it that way, but all social animals revert back to group-think in times of stress or crisis.)  As herd animals, our identity submerges into the collective identity at these times.  This leads to the ability of the "alpha" to control the behavior of the rest of the group.

You see it in the Goth sub-culture, and you see it in the South, with dynamic preachers or politicians.  The leaders take this strong need to belong and use it to manipulate behavior, through the use of the Third Dimension of Power.   They make people do what they want them to do, because people, especially people belonging to a persecuted group, cannot afford to lose the ties to their band.

In essence, the leaders perpetuate the sense of persecution by the outside world to reinforce their internal control mechanism.

And it is not just Southerners and Goths that this happens to.  You see it in the Republican Party and in the Christian Churches.  You see it in every ethic group with a strong cultural identity.  Democrats wonder why the Republicans see themselves as an oppressed minority even when they run the entire show.  Non-Christians don't understand the brouhaha over the "War on Christmas," when Christmas is the biggest holiday in America.  People wonder why immigrants don't abandon their languages and their traditions now that they live in America.

It has to do with this control, and this sense of identity through persecution.  By setting themselves us as the oppressed, some Republicans and some Christians reinforce the internal bonds of their sub-cultures.  It pulls them together, and supports their identities.  It creates boundaries on the group's behavior and causes them to revert back to a herd mentality.  It creates a cultural dynamism that creates an opportunity for the group to move as a cohesive whole.

The basic core of this is, "I have no one else to turn to, so I must obey the rules to avoid being cast out of the one group that accepts me." 

Cultural identity is an important thing, and I am not trying to demean it here.  This dynamic gives people a sense of safety and of belonging.  What I am talking about is the deliberate set up of persecution to create identity within a group.

In the end, setting yourself up as part of an outcast group becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. 

Congratulations, You Have a New Behavior Pattern

Reconciliation

There are two ways for a person to reconcile and come to terms with fear: contemplative sublimation or the fear - anger - hate chain. 

The first method requires a strong epistemology, which at it's core is the ability to know what we know.   This method of catharsis (purging yourself of fear) forces you to examine your fear, asses it's validity, come to terms with it, and ultimately purge it from your system.  In short, you move on from your fear - you get over it and get on with life. 

Although this sounds easy, it is actually one of the hardest things for a person to do.  Most people lack the self awareness to sublimate fear.  Understand, that by saying this, I am not being derogatory, I am saying that we typically do not teach people the tools to do this.

Lacking these skills, most people revert to the other method: the fear - anger - hate chain.   This is a root structural behavior, just a step above being instinctual.  For proof of this, look at animals.  A dog may be afraid of the vacuum when it's running, then he gets angry at it and attempts to attack it.  Eventually, he comes to hate it and attacks it the moment he sees it.

I discussed this chain in my post about "Southern Nice" which is a phenomenon observed by my friend Patrick where in the South, hate gets cloaked by this false veneer of "nice."  In the South ingrained ideas are under challenge, which leads to fear, then anger and culminates in hate.

I'd like to explore this process in a bit more detail, because there are aspects of this cultural artifact that I did not address in the previous post.

As I said before, the South was a insulated cultural ecosystem basically until the invention of air conditioning, at which point the sphere of isolation was ruptured.  This brought new ideas into the South, ideas that challenged fundamental belief systems.

Because of the effects of enculturation, these different attitudes sparked fear.  These attitudes raised questions about the validity of the way things were done in the South, which challenged the naturalized culture.  One of the things about naturalized culture is that it is not examined, it is accepted as Truth.  When you question Truth, you knock the foundation out of a society, which is what happened in the South during the Civil Rights era.  You had new attitudes about race, about class mobility, about religion, and ultimately about peoples' role in society. 

This digging away at the bedrock of Southern Society undermined the entire cultural edifice in a way that had not happened since the Civil War.  And in fact, it was worse in a way, because after the Carpet Baggers left, Southern Society for the most part reverted back to an Antebellum mindset.  Jim Crow laws, poll taxes, sharecropping and segregation replaced slavery, but in general allowed the South to continue in much the same way that they always had.

In the Civil Rights Era, the influx of cultural challenge did not come from Carpet Baggers, who were destined to leave in a short time, it came from sources that would never leave, internal immigrants and televised media.  This time, the questions and the fear were not going to go away.

There could have been two ways the South responded; sublimation or anger/hate.  The first was highly unlikely from the start, it is hard enough for an individual to achieve this, let alone an entire culture.  (Ireland still hates the English 400 years after Cromwell) This was also unlikely because of the basic nature of Southern Culture, rooted in the philosophy of the Southern Baptist chuch, which takes Truth as an unquestioned absolute.

And when you question that which your culture tells you cannot be questioned... you get the picture.

Hence, we are left with only one possibility for the resolution of fear anger and hate.  Anger is a good short term solution for fear; it gets people through a short burst of terror, but it is wholly unsuited for an unending dread caused by the systemic undermining of cultural foundations.  Hate becomes the perfect armor to protect from this type of fear.

"I hate them because they are wrong and they are evil.  I am good and I am righteous, and I am shielded from their evil by my hate."

Throughout history, this is the typical response to cultural threat.  It leads to war, to genocide and any number of other horrors, and this hate crystallized in the Southern Soul.

But there is something peculiar to Southern Culture, gentility.

The South held on to the aristocratic traditions of etiquette and courtesy  present in the Colonial era far longer than the North did.  It should be noted these traditions arose from the Dueling societies of Medieval Europe, where if you were discourteous, you would end up dead on the field of honor.  Because the South maintained the trappings of this culture, etiquette and courtesy became part of the naturalized culture. 

Now we hit the Catch 22. 

The fear - anger - hate progression was kicked off by cultural challenges, but courtesy is at the core of the culture in question.  Therefore, overt hate is not an option, because it leads to an irreconcilable internal paradox of abandoning your enculturation because your enculturation is being challenged.

This way lies madness.

Thus is born "Southern Nice."  Southern Nice allows people to maintain their cultural norms, while sending out an encoded message that lies beneath the surface.  It becomes a complex mechanism to respond to a significant threat, while still keeping a veneer of socially acceptable behavior.  This layered meaning allows them to mask their hate and disdain in a way that does not further undermine their cultural belief structure.

It is a natural response.

Really???

Amazed

I just found out, according to Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, that I am homosexual.  This was an amazing shock to me, as I have always considered myself to be straight. (but certainly not narrow)

Don’t laugh; if you are a male past approximately the age of 12, you are also gay.  We have achieved 100% homosexuality in the male population.   How has this happened?

Apparently, unbeknownst to any of us, masturbation is a homosexual act.  (And I thought it just led to blindness and hairy palms.)

Who knew?

As a side note, apparently, female masturbation does not equate with lesbianism, since, according to Driscoll, they don’t often engage in that activity.  So women are off the hook, it’s just us guys in this case.

Driscoll states that there is only one situation where solitary masturbation is not homosexual, and that is if you are a happily married man, away on business and leveling up your paladin to pictures of your wife.  (Thanks Urban Dictionary for the most obscure euphemism I could find.)  I know plenty of married men, and trust me, no matter how much they love their wives; they would still prefer a Sticky Mag for that.  Interestingly, he does allow you to masturbate with your wife in the room.  (Which is likely to ensure that that will be the only sex you get for a long time.)

We are defining deviancy downward to make people afraid of their own bodies and their natural sexuality.  It is a form of control, to make you ashamed of the actions that someone else does not approve of.  Shame is the most potent weapon to make people do what you want them to do.  It is so powerful that early societies used shunning to guarantee appropriate behavior - it is almost universally effective.

When you make people ashamed of their actions, you gain a foothold over them, one which can be exploited to get more holds.  You also get people to monitor the activities of those around them, to find out if they are sinning, and to denounce them if they are.  You turn people against each other, and you maintain power over the group.  They are classic control mechanisms.

In other news, Daniel Avila wrote in the county’s oldest Catholic newspaper, “The Pilot:”

Disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart. 

In other words, the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil...

...whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.

On the one hand, I guess I should be happy that an Assistant Director for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops accepts the possibility that homosexuality is nature not choice.  On the other hand, it scares me that he is actually stating that the Devil fiddles with genetics to make people gay.  (I have a picture of the Devil working in a genetics lab, laughing diabolically, (since that’s the only way he can laugh) as he creates a “gay virus” to infect unborn babies.)

These attitudes need to stop.

It has been my experience that most of the people that I have met who violently hate homosexuals do so out of concern that they might be gay themselves.  I am not saying that they are actually gay, just that they might be afraid that they are.  Maybe they had a stray erection in the shower in high school, perhaps they had gay dream, possibly, it was just a simple intrusive thought, but somehow, they became afraid that they were gay.  And rather than address the issue head on, and determine if they are or if it was just one of those things, they react brutally.

They are so afraid that they might be gay that they must stamp out all homosexuality.  That way, when there are no homosexuals left, they will not be tempted anymore. 

This brings up an odd point about human sexuality, when we are afraid of something, we often fetishize it, which then rewires the brain to make us embrace that which we fear.  We become a walking paradox, and the effort to stamp out homosexuality actually reinforces those drives.  Hence, the vast number of homophobic politicians and preachers caught in gay scandals.  They literally drive themselves to do it.

Imagine instead a world where sexual orientation was not even an issue; a world where all that mattered was that you found someone to love, and someone to love you; a world where a loving family with strong bonds was the most important thing, regardless of it’s composition.  We are all stronger with more love in the world.

And I think that’s what any loving, caring God would want.

Its All the Fault of Air Conditioning

Cool air

Recently my friend Patrick wrote a blog about what he terms “Southern Nice,” in which he defines a cultural artifact in the South where you wrap up your hatred of another in a cloak of false niceness.  He has gotten a lot of “Southern Nice” in response to the blog.

I cannot fully ascertain the validity of his concept, as I am not enculturated into the South, but I will say that it is the best working model of the behavior that I encounter on a day to day basis down here.  As with any scientific or cultural theory, I will therefore adhere to it until a better one comes along.  That said, I would like to deconstruct the possible origins of this phenomenon.

I blame air conditioning.

Let me explain the chain of reasoning.

First we will look at the evolution of emotional behavior, fear turns to anger, turns to hate.  Fear is the most primitive of emotions, followed by anger.  Hate is much more complex, but still speaks to our primal nature.  The chain, fear-anger-hate is a common one, so common that when Yoda tells Luke this, the entire audience can connect to what he is saying.  (If his thoughts had been abstract, and not part of the common collective knowledge, it would not have resonated.)

An example of this: let’s say you are a devout Fundamentalist Christian and you encounter a different interpretation of the Bible (perhaps one inspired by John Spong) which goes completely against what you believe to be True.  The natural reaction to this encounter is to fear: what if the other person is right?  What if I’m wrong?  The next step is to then become angry, angry that you have questions about something you feel you should have no questions about, then angry at the person who makes you question the unquestionable.  That anger then crystallizes into hate: you hate the person who made you ask a question that you feel should never be asked.  Hate becomes, in essence, the perfect armor against those who make you question your fundamental belief structure.

This pattern repeats over and over in human society.  The root of this chain is a lack of epistemology, which causes an inability to rationally asses a cultural challenge.  Lacking the solid epistemological groundwork to analyze the question and determine its validity, the person reverts to a root structural behavior.

Now onto “Southern Nice.”

The South is fully enculturated into a certain belief system, one of the most rigid belief systems I have ever encountered.  The reason for this is that for most of the existence of the United States, they have lived in a closed bubble – you were born in the South, lived in the South and died in the South.  You rarely left, and outsiders rarely came in.  (Unless they were burning cities to the ground)  This sort of isolation further reinforces cultural homogeneity and enculturation.

The South does things in ways that are completely different from, and holds beliefs that are utterly alien to, the rest of the country.  This was OK when they were an isolated, low population backwater.  It isn’t now, because of the huge influx of internal immigrants into the area.  (Which leads to the idea of transference, do the people in the south actually hate illegal aliens, or are they just transferring their hatred of internal immigrants into the one group they are culturally allowed to hate?)

The problem in the South arises when these new immigrants bring the non-Southern culture and value structure into the South.  They expect to have things like they are in the rest of the world.  (I certainly fall into this category, and it has caused me no end of difficulty here.)  The people not from the South have little tolerance for the racism, fundamentalism and general un-enlightenment of the people there.  They challenge the cultural belief system of the South.  The challenge increases cultural rigidity, because any system under threat reinforces the bulwarks.  Fear leads to anger then culminates in hate.

Thus “Southern Nice” is born.

So why do I blame air-conditioning for this?

Well until the invention of air-conditioning, no one not born to it could stand to live in the hot, humid and bug infested hell that is the Deep South.  People rarely even visited it.  The South was able to maintain it’s cultural isolation well into the 20^th century because of that fact.  They didn’t grow with the rest of the country.

This changed with air-conditioning.  Air-conditioning allowed people not born in the South to tolerate the climate here.  No longer were the mass populations confined to the Rust Belt, the area of the most tolerable year around climate in America.  Air-conditioning flipped the concept of a tolerable climate from a cool climate to a warm one.  There was a mass exodus from the North East to the South and Southwest.  In 1900 all of the largest cities in America were in the North-East Corridor, running from New York City to Chicago.  In 2011, only two of the largest cities are still in that corridor, the rest have moved to the Southern Tier.  It has been one of the largest internal migrations in history.

And with the migration came new ideas, new ways of doing things, new societal constructs.  The immigrants to the South brought a Northern Value Structure, which threw into question the entire culture of the South.  You had the Civil Rights movement, you had a new emphasis on critical thinking, you had new religions and traditions, you had new political values.  All of these brought new questions and new, challenging ideas.

And that launched the behavior chain.

If it had not been for air-conditioning, the South would have remained an isolated bubble on the fringes of the United States, but with it, the South became a major population center which caused cultural dislocation.  “Southern Nice,” is a cultural artifact that evolved as a response to that challenge of an entrenched belief system.

It’s amazing the spreading impact even from changing one technological variable.

"Hate your next door neighbor, but don't forget to say grace." Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction