Cultural Eclecticism & Irish Music

In his recent post on Caritas in Veritate, Aaron noted Pope Benedict’s call for the integral development of culture as a protection against the dangers of relativism and cultural eclecticism. An integral culture is one that forms a true unity; all the parts of such a culture fit together in a coherent way. The way these individual parts fit together is usually determined by a culture’s ethos, its ordering principles. However, if a culture doubts its own ordering principles, or if outside forces upset a culture’s ordering principles, the culture’s individual parts will be distorted in some way. They either appear too large or too small, anything but their right size, and out of all proportion to the surrounding parts of the culture.

The usual result of the breakdown of an integral culture is eclecticism. Eclecticism essentially dispenses with all ordering principles besides individual preference—which is why throughout history eclecticism has usually been closely linked to relativism in metaphysics, and commercialism in economics. Eclecticism, though, is an unfortunate name for what I mean to discuss. The word “eclecticism,” at least in my mind, usually conjures up images of agnostic elites desperately searching for meaning in the universe by scouring every culture they know for fragments of intelligibility. I think of demoralized Roman senators worshiping the latest fashionable oriental divinity, or 19th-century decadents dabbling in the occult. In the modern world, though, cultural eclecticism has assumed a new, more democratic form. Thanks to the spread of videos, sound recordings, and mere factual knowledge (on the encyclopedia model), a lonely individual can appreciate one aspect of a culture, in abstraction from the rest of the culture. Then, if the enough of the masses share this individual’s taste, the newspapers (or today, the Internet feuilleton) will announce that this particular foreign element has “entered the culture.” But, what the newspapers usually ignore, or do not even know enough to investigate, is how this new development relates to the ordering principles of the culture. All they ever really notice is that someone has become rich and famous in the process. However, the crucial question to ask is: Is this an integral development of culture?

That was all rather abstract, so what is needed is a concrete example. The example I have chosen is traditional Irish music, since it is a hobby of mine (well, more of an obsession). About fifteen years ago, traditional Irish music received a lot of popular attention due to Riverdance, the dance extravaganza starring Michael Flatley. Soon there was a craze for Irish music and dance across America, and parents with Irish surnames—and even those without Irish surnames—were signing up their little girls for dancing lessons (and buying those horrible sequined dresses). This was a major “cultural event.” Yet, after a couple years, the hype died down and Irish music and dancing in America returned to their pre-Riverdance status. At the end of the day, a lot of people had heard some Irish music, seen some amazing dancing, and Michael Flatley was a wealthy man—and people genuinely devoted to Irish music and dance returned to their prior obscurity and their small groups of like-minded individuals. Riverdance, with its incorporation of elements of tap, flamenco, and ballet, marked the victory of modern eclecticism over integral culture. Many people now realize that Riverdance was only based on traditional music and dance, but have no conception of the broader tradition. What was Irish music—and Irish culture—like before Riverdance?

To answer that question, we need to go back to the early 1800s, a time when Irish peasant culture was relatively intact. The Irish have never been a very urban people, and so most of what we think of as traditionally Irish developed in the context of the countryside. At this time, music and dancing were firmly embedded in village social life, which revolved around the farming year and the special events in a community—births, weddings, and funerals—as well as around the Church’s liturgical year. In addition to these grander events, there was the informal practice of visiting neighbors in the countryside, when it was common to tell stories, sing songs, and play a few tunes at home. Music and dance were certainly developed art forms, but they were not art in the way we educated city-dwellers usually think of art. Very few musicians earned a living by their music, though a few wandering musicians did travel from village to village and play for dances, often supplementing their meager income by other work, especially by repairing pots and pans. Moreover, while some musicians were certainly known throughout a region for their skill, they did not think of themselves as virtuosos, and did not define themselves as musicians. Instead, their art and their ego were subordinate to the needs of the community. They simply provided music so that people could dance and celebrate the most important occasions throughout the year. Their celebrations were (at least loosely) bound up with the larger cosmic perspectives of agriculture and salvation history, as well as their own life and death.

At the same time, however, Irish peasant culture was under tremendous pressure from outside. Their English lords had already been persecuting Catholic priests under the Penal Laws for many years. The English language was steadily displacing Irish. The death blow came, though, with the Potato Famine in 1845. From then on, Irish peasants left their homeland in droves, seeking new homes primarily in England and the United States. This mass exodus would last well into the 20th century. If the Irish could resist religious persecution and the loss of their native language, they could not withstand starvation and emigration.

Village life in late 19th-century Ireland was severely disrupted, and the people demoralized. With many children knowing that they were destined to leave their homes once they were old enough to find work on their own, there was understandably little call for celebration. Paradoxically, though, what kept music and dancing alive during this period was the “American wake.” American wakes were farewell parties held for members of the community the night before they left for America, and featured much music and dancing.

Constant emigration, however, eventually took its toll. Many towns and rural areas were so decimated that they did not have enough people for dances. It was at this point that many musicians simply stopped playing. If there were no dances, there was no point in playing. Music and dance were so closely connected that one without the other was barely imaginable. Modern technology in the early 20th century also undermined the foundations of the integral Irish culture. In those places that still had enough people for a dance, the record player brought new, usually American, music to the Irish countryside. People in larger towns usually rejected traditional music as uncouth and un-modern—and so did many peasants in the countryside. Interestingly enough, even recordings of Irish music in some ways had detrimental effects. Many older fiddlers abandoned their instruments when they first heard the likes of New York virtuoso Michael Coleman’s blazing reels and heavily ornamented jigs; they felt they just could not compete with Coleman.

By the first half of the 20th century, traditional Irish music was on life support. The traditional Irish village was no longer a place where most people lived, but simply a place where they were born before they decided to cross the ocean for America. Moreover, with the disappearance of the Irish language from wide parts of the island, a vast store of older sean-nos songs was lost. Finally, the spread of modern technology even to the more backward parts of Ireland discouraged people from playing traditional music.

To be continued tomorrow...

Caritas in veritate: On Cultural Eclecticism

In section 26 of Caritas in veritate, Benedict XVI describes two dangers facing the modern world, modes of thinking which "separat[e] culture from human nature." The second of these is fairly straightforward: "Cultural leveling, [the] indiscriminate acceptance of types of conduct and life-styles." We all see this, probably every day. In a world of cultural leveling, Benedict writes, "one loses sight of the profound significance of the culture of different nations, of the traditions of the various peoples, by which the individual defines himself in relation to life's fundamental questions."

But the second danger against which he warns is more subtle: "cultural eclecticism, [by which] cultures are simply placed alongside one another and viewed as substantially equivalent and interchangeable." I must confess, this is the danger by which I am more tempted. (As you may have noticed, my interests include pow-wowing with Afghans, praising obscure African peoples and observing esoteric regions of post-Soviet republics.)

Following Paul VI's Populorum progressio, one of Benedict's major themes throughout Caritas in veritate is the importance of integral human development: the economic, political, educational, social and spiritual must all go together. Likewise, I think cultures are unitary things as well. The philosophy or world-view of a people does not simply exist alongside their literature and political institutions, but infuses them; moreover, ideas may exist in their most pristine form in treatises and high culture, but they are usually transmitted through earthy rituals and low culture. Though Benedict does not elaborate to this degree, I think one of the potential pitfalls of cultural eclecticism is that cultures are often broken into pieces which are then viewed as interchangeable, when in fact they usually are not. This phenomenon can be seen in the cultured agnostic who attends a high liturgy and is overwhelmed by the ceremony of it all, but misses that which the believer considers most important. Likewise, the same phenomenon is at play when a certain economic model which works well in one culture is exported to another culture, often with disastrous results for families or traditional ways of life.

Benedict warns that cultural eclecticism "easily yields to a relativism that does not serve true intercultural dialogue; on the social plane, cultural relativism has the effect that cultural groups coexist side by side, but remain separate, with no authentic dialogue and therefore no true integration." Superficial cultural dialogue says, "I eat X for breakfast; you eat Y? How interesting..." But more profound cultural dialogue considers the way in which various elements of a culture interact with one another and the functions they fulfill in society. True cultural dialogue must consider cultures as a whole and ask about their end. Put another way, authentic cultural dialogue must look beyond the mere elements of a culture and even beyond culture itself, to that outside culture, the philosophic and theological truths it supports.

But relativism says that there is no truth, or at least that all claims to the truth are equal. Thus, relativism stymies authentic cultural dialogue by preventing any consideration of what cultures really mean or the ends which they truly serve. Coupled with cultural eclecticism, the result of such relativism can be that the bits and bobs of different cultures are generously intermixed, but to no meaningful end.


Many of the pictures used on this blog are uncopyrighted or just too plain boring to credit. But oceanic's Flickr account deserves a shout-out for this great find.

Cultural Eclecticism & Irish Music (Part 2)

Continued from yesterday...

One of the few factors in national life working in favor of traditional music in the late 19th century was the rise of the Irish nationalist movement. In order to foster traditional culture, many nationalist organizations organized musical competitions. One effect of these competitions, though, was to encourage an interest in virtuoso performances of traditional music that could be recognized at a country-wide level—an idea almost completely foreign to the humble village life, where all that was required was someone who could play enough tunes to keep the dance going into the night. If he could play well, that was simply an added bonus. While the nationalist organizations undoubtedly did much to keep traditional music alive, they were not able to keep it alive in the context of village life, from which the music derived most of its vitality. Ultimately, the nationalist interest in music must be seen as a sign of the decline of traditional culture.

By the 1950’s traditional music was nearly dead in Ireland. It took the success of the Clancy Brothers in America to revive some interest in ballad-singing in Ireland. To a large extent, their success was due to the nostalgia of Irish-Americans for a culture they had never really experienced. Their choice of less traditional material sung in English, along with their use of guitars—and their touring with Pete Seeger—also meshed nicely with the folk revival in America, and made them into a commercial success. This spurred a new generation in Ireland to find ways to modernize their own traditional music.

Perhaps the first “modern-traditional” Irish band to arise was Planxty, which released its debut album in 1972. Planxty also featured many of the same ballads that the Clancy Brothers had popularized before them, but with the addition of piper Liam O’Flynn, they also exposed a wider audience to the older dance tunes that were being lost. Then, in 1975, the Bothy Band released its first album. Though they only stayed together for four years, this sextet occupies a special place in the history of Irish music because of their unabashed embrace of the older dance tunes and the Irish language. Their front-line combination of flute, fiddle, and pipes could play both at ferocious speeds and with great delicacy. At the same time, the sibling duo of Micheal O’Domhnaill and Triona Ni Dhomhnaill were unafraid to sing in Irish. What made the band truly modern, though, was their rock ’n’ roll style of accompaniment, combining a strong rhythm guitar, an aggressive bouzouki, and booming bass lines on an electric clavichord. They introduced traditional music to a whole new audience. Thanks to them, it was no longer something for Irish-speaking peasants in the countryside; it was for an urban, non-dancing youth generation. Indeed, with all the musicians’ long hair and hard drinking, traditional music had now become a legitimate form of rebellion for the younger generation.


But what connection did all this have to traditional music as played in the early 1800s? It was still the same music, but the ethos was more eclectic, commercial, and youth-oriented. It often was played at such great speed that it was nearly impossible to dance to. It is an interesting comment on modern Irish culture that when the Bothy Band’s star fiddler, Kevin Burke (born and raised in London by parents from Sligo, incidentally), in the liner notes of his first solo album in 1978, tried to explain his music to Irish youth, he did so by comparing the spirit of his playing to that of “old Negro bluesmen”: Enjoyment and an appreciation of life—whether in the form of joy or sorrow—were his primary goals, not profit. While these are certainly worthy sentiments, what is telling is that his cultural references—and those of the young audience he was attempting to reach—were informed more by a heavily romanticized view of American blues and rock ‘n’ roll than by a deep knowledge of Irish life before the Potato Famine. The Romanticism of Burke’s comments signals that there has been a clear break in cultural continuity. Ireland had entered the modern world.

The history of Irish music over the last two centuries is a good illustration of the growth of an eclectic culture out of the elements of a once integral culture. The economic pressures of the Famine and the self-doubt that came with modernization mostly did away with village life and the old peasant culture. Music lost the connections to the rest of the culture which had given it meaning originally. As a consequence, most Irish gave up interest in their traditional music. Ultimately, though, the music did survive into the 21st century—and even survived Riverdance—but to do so it had to move to the city and assume a modern, rebellious tone. At this point in time, most yearning for the return of the integral culture is bound to appear as just more Romantic nostalgia. The old Ireland is dead. But, perhaps the traditional music can become part of a new integral Irish culture. Time will tell.

Creating Culture

The other day I stumbled upon three interesting things all at once: a book, a blog and a reading list. Actually, the reading list came first, in the form of this bibliography. "Bibliography of what?" you ask. An excellent question. And that's where the book comes in, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling, by Andy Crouch. I've never read Culture Making, but its raison d'être is thus:

For too long, Christians have had an insufficient view of culture and have waged misguided “culture wars.” But we must reclaim the cultural mandate to be the creative cultivators that God designed us to be. Culture is what we make of the world, both in creating cultural artifacts as well as in making sense of the world around us. By making chairs and omelets, languages and laws, we participate in the good work of culture making.

That sounds an awful lot like what we at the Guild Review are interested in. So if you're interested in this sort of thing too, you might give the book or the bibliography a read. And if you've read any of these titles, let us know in the comments section what you thought.

Finally, Andy Crouch and Company have a blog, which we've now added to the links on the right side of our page, so you can check back here from time to time for interesting posts on their end of things, or simply add it to your reader.

Must Culture Have Momentum?

Peter Aspden of the Financial Times recently wrote an article titled "Of Classicists and Carbuncles", about the Prince of Wales' ongoing crusade against modern architecture. I see little need to write about the topic; others have done so. But what interested me was a particular passage in Aspden's article. He writes:

Can we really not move forward? This is the element of modernism that the prince most misunderstands. Culture must have momentum. It has to look ahead. That is its point. By definition, culture acts as a commentary on its own time, but occasionally it has to look beyond it, to anticipate what is to come.

Thus, Aspden is making the argument that culture should be progressive. Not because there is some teleological goal of goodness toward which it must strive, but simply because it needs to be going somewhere.

So I ask of our readers: First, must culture really always be going somewhere? And second, if that is the case, is going "backward" an acceptable option, or is antiquarianism antithetical to the future-oriented movement of culture?

The Enthymemic Nature of Discourse

There are many current events in the Church and State that merit our consideration and discussion: the Pope's meeting with the President, Caritas in Veritate, and the Palin resignation come immediately to mind. It seems to me that as important as considering and discussing these events are, some treatment of how we consider and discuss them is of fundamental importance. I think that a helpful way to consider our interpretation of and discussion about current events is found in the Aristotelian concept of the enthymeme and Richard Weaver's application of it to discourse.

Many readers of this blog may have run across Aristotle's enthymeme in courses on logic or rhetoric; the enthymeme is usually described as a syllogism that lacks a middle term; compare:

Syllogism:

All men are mortal;
Socrates is a man;
Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Enthymeme:

All men are mortal;
Therefore Socrates is mortal.
(The middle term is left unstated; presumably understood by the audience.)

This description does not do great justice to the enthymeme, though Aristotle himself is not terribly helpful ("kalo d' enthymema men rhetorikon sylloyismon"--"Accordingly I call an enthymeme a rhetorical syllogism"; Rhetoric, 1.2.8; 1356 b). What is important to note about the enthymeme in discourse is that it relies on the audience to make the connection between statements; the audience cooperates in the creation of meaning. As such, in the hands of a skillful rhetor, the enthymeme can be more persuasive than the syllogism, insofar as the minds of the audience are engaged in a cooperative process of reasoning.

How does the enthymeme apply to discourse? Though he doesn't use the term, Richard Weaver recognizes it as the underlying mode of discourse within a given culture, explained through the problems of academic speech:

"In the speech of a culture maintained by a traditional society, there will occur many elisions and ellipses of meaning. It is not necessary to state them, because anyone can supply the omissions; it is rather the awkwardness of pedantry to put them into words. But the man who is outside the tradition, or who is self-consciously halfway between the tradition and something else, goes about it in a different way: its beliefs, values, and institutions are 'objects' to him, and he refers to them with something of the objective completeness of the technical description. This is why professors 'sound so funny' when they talk of something that is an everyday subject to the ordinary man. This ordinary man wonders why the professor, instead of using lumbering phrases to designate the obvious, cannot assume more. It may also explain why professors as a class are suspected of dissidence. Their speech does not sound like the speech of a person who is perfectly solid with his tradition, which is oftentimes the case." (Richard Weaver. Visions of Order. Wilmington, DE: ISI Press, 1995 [1962]. Page 8, footnote 2)

In other words, the average person's language is enthymemic; the interlocutor's agreement regarding key omissions is taken for granted. Most significantly, we tend to assume and demand this kind of enthymemic agreement when making statements.

Recognizing this fact, we see why political and religions discussions in our culture (particularly in the online culture, as I've come to discover) are often doomed to discord: we do not, as 21st-century Americans, have a robust set of traditional cultural assumptions, and thus our enthymemes often assume agreement on premises that does not exist. Consider the following two (actual) examples:

Person on observing the American flag at half-staff earlier this year: "I guess it's mourning the death of American democracy."

Person commenting on the 2004 election in 2004: "This is the end of democracy in America."

If one were to fill in the elisions of these two statements, one would get something like this:

"President Obama won the election; liberal policies are not democratic; these policies are contrary to real democracy; American democracy is dead."

"President Bush won the election; conservative policies are not democratic; Bush will continue conservative policies; America is no longer a democracy."

Notice how in each case, the person speaking to me expected assent, expected that I shared their assumptions that need not be stated. The flaw in both statements, of course, is that policies that one dislikes are, de facto, policies contrary to democracy. In fact, in the previous two examples, both candidates won solid victories in democratically conducted electoral processes, making their victories examples of democracy in action.

An oddly heartening aspect of this example, however, is that the unstated premise common to both is that democracy is an unquestionably good thing, and that its end is somehow tragic. The two contradictory edifices of assumptions share the common foundation of faith in democracy. Thus we get something like a common cultural assumption shared by both people.

Thus there are two points I wish to make here, displayed in this example:

1. Recognizing that it is natural for us to talk this way, and that without a unified cultural tradition enthymemic discourse may be problematic, let's consider our audience in discussions of current events, and how they might fill in our elisions. Such a consideration may save much wasted time and energy, and get to more productive dialogue.

2. Even in a culture as fragmented as our own, there may be shared assumptions that can provide a foundation on which to build; getting down to these common foundational principles of our worldview may be the best way to begin learning from one another (and learn much about ourselves).

Christopher Lasch on Advertising and Narcissism

Advertising pervades our lives. Almost from the moment we wake up, we are confronted with it. Whether we get our news from an old-fashioned newspaper or from the Internet, the news is paid for by the advertisements on the page. Our daily commute--whether by car, bus, or train--bombards us with advertisements. If we turn on the radio or TV, there it is: more advertisement. If we go to the movies, we are subjected to ads before the movie and product placements in the movie. We seek out diversion, but while we are trying to relax we have to listen to someone tell us, subtly yet insistently, that we need to go out and buy more stuff. Indeed, it could be said, without exaggeration, that the news and entertainment media are nothing more than vehicles for advertising.

This ad-saturation is usually condemned, when it is condemned at all, because it leads to materialism and consumerism. This criticism is certainly true, as far as it goes, but a more accurate explanation of the danger of advertising is that it leads to narcissism:

Society reinforces these [narcissistic] patterns [of behavior in the family] not only through “indulgent education” and general permissiveness but through advertising, demand creation, and the mass culture of hedonism. At first glance, a society based on mass consumption appears to encourage self-indulgence in its most blatant forms. Strictly considered, however, modern advertising seeks to promote not so much self-indulgence as self-doubt. It seeks to create needs, not to fulfill them; to generate new anxieties instead of allaying old ones. . .Yet the propaganda of commodities simultaneously makes [contemporary man] acutely unhappy with his lot. By fostering grandiose aspirations, it also fosters self-denigration and self-contempt.

--Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1978), pp. 180-181

Narcissism, as Lasch uses the term, is more than simply a tendency to daydream about oneself or to look at oneself in the mirror for too long. True narcissism is a way of compensating for “a sense of inner emptiness”; it is characterized by “dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by others combined with a fear of dependence.” The narcissist may often come across to others as “full of himself,” but he actually turns out to be profoundly insecure. The narcissist’s self-deprecating sense of humor is not a sign of modesty, but rather a cover for his general unease. He may seem full of energy and ambition, but what motivates him is not confidence but fear of his inner emptiness. And in contemporary society advertising is the engine that drives many of our decisions, by making us think that we are lacking as individuals and that the only effective way to fill this lack is to buy a certain product. In short, advertising, by encouraging us to fantasize in order to overcome the gnawing emptiness it manipulates us into feeling, brings out any latent narcissism lurking within us.

The specter of a society fueled by narcissism--perhaps not narcissism in the strict clinical sense, but certainly narcissism in a broader sense--is what makes The Culture of Narcissism one of the most frightening books written in America in the past half-century. It is up to every reader to decide whether Lasch succeeded in his attempt to psychoanalyze an entire culture. But, even if only half of Lasch’s diagnosis is correct, it still means that America is emotionally dominated by, and is economically dependent on, narcissism. What hope can there be for such a country?

American Catholics & Politics

What stance should American Catholics assume toward politics in light of President Obama's contraception mandate? Is that stance reactionary?

Here on the Guild Review I have never really had an explicit agenda. The topics on which I write are sometimes quite random. What, for example, connects Goethe with Irish music? Nevertheless, there are certain concerns that color much of what I write here. Many of my posts over the last three or so years have been about how different individuals have come to terms with politics and the state. Hence my fascination with exile and persecution, the two situations when the individual is under the most pressure to figure out what sort of relation he can establish with the world of politics. For reasons I hope to make clear below, perhaps the best stance toward politics at the present time is that of the reactionary.

Recent events have given all American Catholics reason to reconsider their relation to the US political system. The HSS's new rule requiring Catholic employers to provide medical insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients enraged this country's bishops, and President Obama's accommodation could not placate them either. The contraception mandate, then, would seem to mark the beginning of a Kulturkampf against Catholics in the US. Now any Catholic who takes the bishops' pronouncements seriously must ask himself: What stance am I to take toward a political system that has essentially declared war on my Church?

One option, of course, is simply to refuse to engage the culture at all and instead retreat into to political "quietism" or aestheticism. Just as the French quietists of the 17th century saw spiritual perfection in complete passivity, the political quietist seeks a complete Nirvana-like cessation of all desires to participate in political life. Moreover, just as the French quietists were condemned as heretics, political quietism is not a viable option for Catholics. The Church has always recognized that man is a social creature and that participation in the common good is essential for his fulfillment. Even contemplatives in monasteries do not withdraw from all worldly concerns; they must participate in the life of their community, which both shapes and is shaped by the world outside the cloister. A truly hermetic life is exceptional even among contemplatives.

On the other hand, there are many types of engagement with politics and culture, ranging from living in a Catholic ghetto or working within the system to civil disobedience and military resistance.

When Catholics first immigrated to the US in significant numbers, they were discriminated against by the Protestant establishment. Fortunately, though, they were generally allowed to live within their own ethnic communities as long as they did not become too ambitious. This gradually changed throughout the 20th century, as Catholics became more accepted by Americans but also became themselves more accepting of American culture.

Ever since John F. Kennedy's presidency, American Catholics have not generally perceived any serious conflict between the two parts of their identity. Working within the system has come to seem perfectly normal to most American Catholics. Indeed, most would agree with Mary Ann Glendon's interview "Politics as a Vocation" (h/t First Things). According to Glendon, Catholics in America are blessed to live in a country where we can actually influence politics through our vote, or other ways of "making our voices heard." Glendon, of course, is not oblivious to the need for politicians to make courageous decisions, but she generally thinks that participation in elections and the regular political process can still bear fruit.

There are times, though, when one group fails to achieve its goals through the normal political process. That is when the group will turn to civil disobedience. In our imagination, civil disobedience is a drastic step to be taken only when a group is suffering under intolerable tyranny. Yet civil disobedience also presupposes that the "tyrant" in question is reasonable enough not to slaughter civilians en masse. Not that violence is never a possibility, of course; but, it is vital that the state not kill too many protesters. Gandhi, for example, when he undertook his campaign of civil disobedience against the British Empire, knew that the British were too civilized to kill all of his followers.

Only when civil disobedience fails do most people even begin to consider military resistance. And yet, just like civil disobedience, military resistance is generally optimistic in its own way. One engages in military resistance only if one believes that violence can solve the immediate problem and restore a proper political order.

Each of these stances toward politics assumes that politics is a struggle; there is no way to avoid conflict. That is obvious. But, what is the smartest way to fight? What if none of these stances is effective in stopping or repealing Obama's birth control mandate? What if engaging with the political system as it currently is actually creates more problems in the long run than it solves? For instance, civil disobedience may not work, because it will be hard for protesters to goad the federal government into using just enough violence to gain the support of the masses, but not too much violence so as not to suffer considerable loss of human life. Moreover, mustering mass support for her position may entangle the Church in dubious alliances that she may later come to regret. And, to go one step further, even considering armed resistance against the US military is just ludicrous.

Does that mean that American Catholics should abandon the fight? No! There remains open to them another option: the reactionary stance toward politics. For the reactionary, neither civil disobedience nor military resistance is capable of restoring a sane political order. Early on, some reactionaries, most notably the French reactionaries in the Vendée, took up arms against the revolution. But, by now there is no hope of restoring the old order. Indeed, it is not clear what the best one could hope for in the current situation is. The name of "reactionary" is an unfortunate relic of an earlier age, but at least it does connect the modern reactionary to his spiritual forbears.

The modern reactionary can best be compared to an exile who knows he cannot undo his banishment, no matter how passionately he still cares for and loves the homeland that has rejected him. The reactionary may appear to have withdrawn from the contemporary world, but in reality, he has taken up an even fiercer battle on a higher plane: the reactionary's paramount concern is intellectual resistance. He looks on contemporary politics with nothing but disdain, but not out of apathy--though cynicism is certainly a temptation--but out of a concern to keep his soul unpolluted, so that he can devote himself to intellectual resistance.

Intellectual resistance is more demanding than military resistance. As the Colombian aphorist Nicolás Gómez Dávila said, "To think against is more difficult than to act against" (source). Armed resistance certainly requires courage, but the soldier has an immediate enemy who could destroy him at any moment, which helps him remain vigilant. Intellectual resistance, on the other hand, consists of transforming a culture, without the fear of death to spur us onward. Moreover, the reactionary does not wage an empty war of words in newspapers, on TV, or on blogs. It is a battle for souls. It is a war in which we must convert, ourselves first and then others.

For the reactionary, therefore, the fight against evil is itself a grace from God. (See Donoso Cortes for a classic expression of this attitude.) Connected to the reactionary's view of combat as grace is the realization that he is not guaranteed victory in history. The reactionary does not require the worldly triumph of the Church as a condition of his hope in Christ. Instead, he views history (in Tolkien's words) as a "long defeat". His calling is to be a witness to the eternal values present in history, even if being a witness requires becoming a martyr. For this the reactionary is often derided as a pessimist, but if he is a pessimist, he is a peculiarly hopeful type of pessimist.

A reactionary, then, does not consider all participation in politics futile, but understands its limits and admits how difficult it will be to restore first principles in society and politics. But, how does one live as an "internal exile" in one's country, hoping to save it yet knowing that's not really possible? And yet, one lives for the future. The reactionary sows seed that will sprout in the future, perhaps only in eternity.

Besides having to keep his hope alive, the greatest difficulty for a reactionary is that he is an exile, a lonely figure, cut off from politics. How can he reconcile his isolated existence--which he has freely chosen--with man's social and political nature? Life as a reactionary is not an ideal, just as life as an exile is not an ideal. But, no matter how much inward reserve he maintains, the reactionary must act within a community, even if it is only a few loved ones.

But, what does all this talk of the reactionary mean for Catholics in America right now? Soon after the official announcement of the mandate, Bill Donohue predicted there would be fighting in the streets. But, that won't happen. President Obama and his supporters are too smart to provoke an open uprising, and they do not want to give the pro-life movement anything comparable to Roe v. Wade to serve as a focus of discontent. They see that final victory is in sight, and so they are willing to let the pro-life movement linger for a while, because it is a more sure death. They know that if they keep up enough pressure, but do not get too heavy-handed, most people will knuckle under. In the original Kulturkampf, Bismarck threw Catholic bishops in jail and banned Jesuits from the country; Obama will not repeat those mistakes. He will not allow Archbishop Chaput or Archbishop Dolan to be compared to Bishop Matthias Eberhard, much less to Cardinal von Galen. No nuns will be carted off to the guillotine, like the martyrs of Compiègne.

American Catholics should by all means work within the ordinary political process and use civil disobedience to oppose President Obama's contraception mandate. But, there is no guarantee that American Catholics will enjoy any success. Indeed, after Catholics are forced to pay for contraception, it is nearly certain that the federal government will impose a requirement to pay for abortions; this will play out in the same way that Catholic adoption agencies have been forced to close down after they refuse to place children in homosexual households. We Catholics will be exiles in our own country. The task of a reactionary Catholic, then, will be to figure out how to hand on the faith in an age of persecution, how to prepare an underground spiritual and intellectual resistance, to convert hearts and minds. We will need to wait and be patient. Above all, we will need to take Cardinal von Galen's words to heart: "Become hard! Remain firm!"

Music from the Empire

The other evening, after a lecture by the Chief of the Defense Staff of the Canadian Forces, I was working on a book review about Ireland for the Canadian Journal of History, reading up on British history for my comprehensive exams and outlining a course covering British counterinsurgency in South Africa, Ireland, Malaya and elsewhere. In keeping with the mood, I put on a variety of music from around the Empire, some of which I thought I would share here. (Be warned: some typically cheesy slideshows - the price of finding music on YouTube - follow. However, the Bok van Blerk video is pretty cool.)

Bok van Blerk - De La Rey

This song is a tribute to Koos de la Rey, a Boer general during the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). The song has been a source of some controversy, not so much because of what it says about the past, but because of what it may (or may not) say about the present. If you'd like a translation of the Afrikaner lyrics, there are some subtitles here.

Scotland the Brave

This pipe tune was written around 1900. It is the regimental quick march of the Royal Regiment of Scotland and has spread sufficiently far that it is the pipe march of the British Columbia Dragoons and is played at the Citadel in South Carolina. (Notice that this rendition is performed by the Royal Tank Regiment's band.) In the course of its history, lyrics were written for the tune, first by Cliff Hanley and most famously by John McDermott (whose version sometimes goes by the title of Scotland Forever). The McDermott version has a particular place in my heart because of a little episode which took place in Germany in the summer of 2004. I was out hiking with a few Germans, some other Americans and a fellow from Singapore. At one point in the hike I began whistling Scotland the Brave and the Singaporean chimed in; soon we were singing our way through several verses together. The Germans inquired as to what we were singing, and when we told them it was a Scottish song they were rather baffled: neither of us were from Scotland, nor were we even from the same country (or the same side of the globe!). How was it that we both knew this song? The broad spread of Anglophonic culture was a marvel they could not quite understand...

Stan Rogers - Barrett's Privateers

Though the characters and ship involved in this song are fictional, the circumstances were quite real: during the American Revolution, a large number of privateers sailed on each side, with Halifax serving as a major center for British vessels. Roger's effort to breath new life into Canadian folk culture by means of traditional musical styles and themes from Canadian history is quite interesting, probably worthy of a blog post itself, though I'm afraid I'm not the one to write it.


Show of Hands - Roots

This song saw some controversy when the dubious British National Party picked up the music of Show of Hands and other British folk groups (including Fairport Convention), unbeknown to the artists. When the musicians found out, they were not happy, the Telegraph reports. However, a careful listen reveals that the lyrics, though proud of England and her traditional culture, are hardly the stuff of white supremacy. Indeed, they look admiringly to other cultures which have more effectively preserved their folkways.

Windmills & Aesthetics

While wasting time on the internet recently, I came upon two photographs of windmills on the German island of Fehmarn. (Now that I think about it, Caitlin and I might have passed by this island on our trip from Copenhagen to Lübeck a few years ago.)

The first shows a traditional windmill, the type which we Americans usually associate with the Dutch, but which, with variations, can be found across Europe--Don Quixote, after all, needed something to tilt at in Spain.


The second shows a modern windmill which is part of a windfarm on the island.


My question, to which I have no definite answer, is: When I compare these windmills for aesthetic purposes, why do I prefer the first windmill to the second? Am I just so obsessed with German culture that I prefer anything that looks German to me? That's possible. Am I just out of touch with the modern world and hankering for a tradition I've never been a part of? There's probably some truth to that accusation, too. Just maybe, though, I really am considering more purely aesthetic factors, such as the form of the structures, the materials, etc.

Nevertheless, whatever my own reasons for preferring the traditional windmill, I actually don't think that my aesthetic preference is all that uncommon; I suspect that many people share my instinctive aesthetic preference for the traditional windmill, and that many people still generally prefer traditional aesthetics to modern aesthetics. Why would that be, even though our culture generally looks down on tradition? It's a curious fact about our culture.

Finally, if a reader wants to defend the aesthetic superiority of the modern windmill, please go ahead and do so. I would love to hear that argument.

Source: The two pictures come from this slide show of the island. (The captions are in German, but if all you want is pretty pictures, who cares?)

A Letter to a Former Altar Boy

Dear former altar boy,

You've made it abundantly clear to me that you don't believe what the Catholic Church teaches. In fact, you've stated that you don't even believe in God.

I don't agree with you, but since you obviously want to discuss religion, I'm willing to listen to you. I hope you're willing to listen to me.

But please--please--do not begin our discussion with "I used to be an altar boy." If you start out that way, I will stop listening.

Why?

Because it shows me that what you're really trying to do is to forestall any criticism of your opinions. You're trying to impress me with your credentials, rather than engaging in an honest dialog. You're setting youself up as some kind of an authority, when you never got past a child's understanding of the Church.

Do you realize, by the way, just how ridiculous you sound when you claim to speak authoritatively about the Church just because you were an altar boy twenty years ago? That's like claiming you're an expert on the theory of relativity because you won first prize in a science fair in grade school.

I see that falling away from the Church must have been traumatic for you; otherwise, you wouldn't insist on talking to me about the Church. But, I want you to realize that having been an altar boy doesn't make your word the last word on the Church.

Perhaps when you were growing up you were disappointed in the character of an authority figure, such as a priest or your parents. Indeed, you probably had every reason to be disappointed. It's never easy finding out that a role model has serious flaws. But please don't pretend that you're the only person who has ever suffered in this way, because you're not. Others have suffered through the same thing; some have lost their faith too, but others have not. There's more to the Church than what you encountered as an altar boy.

Another possibility is that you never really believed, but were simply brought up in a Catholic family and expected to believe. Once you realized that you really didn't believe, though, you felt bitter that your parents had imposed this religion on you. This is the problem of "cultural Catholicism." What it means is that young people grow up in a residually Catholic culture without ever learning much about the Catholic part of their culture. Many young people who grew up this way leave the Church once they reach adulthood because she never really meant anything to them; they view outgrowing the Church as part of growing up. For most of these people, being an altar boy is just another childhood experience that they all have to go through, and one more reason they dislike their parents.

Whatever the reason you fell away from the Church, though, simply having been an altar boy doesn't make you an expert on religion.

Once you get that into your head, we can begin our discussion. Who knows, we might even come to some kind of better understanding.

Sincerely,

Stephen

P.S. Former altar boy, I know that what I just wrote sounds harsh, and I don't mean to insult you, but please try to understand my position. Lots of journalists, it seems, have been interviewing random guys on the street about the current scandal, and announcing that these guys used to be altar boys but no longer practice their faith, as if that was incontrovertible evidence that the Church is evil. The next time that happens, I'm going to throw my shoe through the screen--but I'd rather not wreck a good TV.

A Few Interesting Passages

Three (completely unrelated) passages from things I have been reading lately:


In an interview with Psychology Today, Whit Stillman spoke of the effect on him of having spent his junior year abroad in Mexico: "It turned out to do the opposite of what it was suppose to do. It didn't make me a mushroom-dropping pothead; seeing another culture and the ways the less affluent in that culture coped with life actually made me much more conventional. It made me more respectful of conventional people in the United States." (Doomed Bourgeois in Love, 46)




I called myself a Marxist from the time I became a socialist. But, reading more history at Oxford, I began to feel that Marxism did not work. Consider the famous sentence in the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto recorded society is the history of class struggles." Very impressive but not true. Perhaps all history ought to have been the history of class struggles, but things did not work out that way. There have been long periods of class collaboration and many struggles that were not about class at all. I suppose my mind is too anarchic to be fitted into any system of thought. Like Johnson's friend Edwards, I, too, have tried to be a Marxist but common sense kept breaking in. (Accident Prone, or What Happened Next, republished in From Napoleon to the Second International, 5)


Calcutta is still my favorite city.... There was something... which if it did not transform the second city of Empire, lifted it at least a little from the depths. Everybody smiled. That may be at the root of Britain's three-century love affair with India. Nowadays it is taught (usually be people who never saw the Raj) that our passion for the sub-continent was mere pride of possession, arrogant satisfaction of conquest, and lust of exploitation, leavened only by a missionary zeal to improve. No doubt those feelings existed, among some, but they don't account for the undying affection that so many of the island race felt for that wonderful country and its people. Nor do all its great marvels: the beauty of the land and its buildings, the endless variety of its customs and cultures, the wonder of its art and philosophy and ancient civilizations, the glory of its matchless regiments. They may inspire awe, even reverence, but they don't quite explain why thousands of soldiers and merchants and administrators and traders left their hearts there, to say nothing of their mortal remains. One can babble about the magic of India, and convey nothing: I can only say that when I look back at it my lasting memory is of smiling faces, laughter in the bazaar, tiny naked children grinning as they clamoured for buckshee - and it wasn't an act, for they still laughed and joked and play-acted if they didn't get it. There was a life, a spirit about India that was irrepressible, and it outweighed all the faults and miseries and cruelties and corruptions. That, I think, is why the British loved it, and some of us will never get it out of our systems, even in an age when Indian and Pakistani immigration is about as welcome in Britain as the British were in India. (Quartered Safe Out Here, 179-80)

Texts That Will Save Civilization

During World War II, Karol Wojtyła helped found the underground Rhapsodic Theater, believing that, so long as Polish culture existed, the Polish state could eventually stage a comeback against the Nazis (and subsequently Soviets). But without a culture, there would be no soul left to animate the body politic.

That got me thinking about the defining characteristics of cultures, ours in particular. One of the curious wrinkles is that the most important texts in one sense may not be the most valuable. A work with which people can engage - and I realize that engagement is culturally conditioned; different people interact with texts and one another in different ways, including dramatic performances, poetry readings, morning newspapers, sacred proclamations - may be more important than the intellectual insights of a particularly erudite, but inaccessible, text.

We come then to a thought experiment: If our own country were overrun by tyrants, which works would you preserve for the sake of preserving our particular form of civilization? And why?

A bit Fahrenheit 451, I'll admit. The one parameter I'd place is this: we might as well assume that the tyrants of this little scenario are either foolish enough to permit the Bible and the Declaration of Independence, or so thorough in their thuggery as to prove them untenable for salvaging. There's no point filling our list with obvious choices; I think unusual ones provide far more food for thought.

One problem I have in approaching this question is how to define civilization, our civilization. American civilization? Western civilization? Christendom? Which of these is the most serviceable category? To which do I feel the most connection? Which is most worth saving? After all, I have multiple identities. My Catholic faith does not fit neatly into my American nationality; indeed, for much of American history, many people would have said the two were at odds. My status as an Anglophone (and, yes, Anglophile) links me to a variety of countries around the globe, though America initially defined itself in opposition its Anglophonic cousins.

I have no easy answers to these conundrums, at least not today, though I do have a few texts to offer for discussion:

Homer, The Iliad. This work is foundational to Western literature for a good reason. It does not simply come before later works; it engages with a variety fundamental questions about pride, friendship, free will, heroism, and loss. Little surprise, then, that G. K. Chesterton commented that, "if the world becomes pagan and perishes, the last man left alive would do well to quote the Iliad and die." Or, as my friend Wondrous Pilgrim explained, "Hundreds of generations have read this and wept. Who am I to argue with them. (And I've wept as well!)."

Shakespeare. When considering the Bard's work, I must confess the inability to choose a single work, or even a single class of works. The histories exert a strong pull on me, not only because I love all things historical, but also because so many deal with questions of public life. But the comedies may prove just as insightful on this account - who would argue that The Tempest is not, among other things, about politics? - while also offering a lightheartedness that may be especially valuable in difficult times. Moreover, I think that drama offers two virtues worth mentioning. First, it is something one does. Whether one actually acts it out or simply reads it in a group, it invites a form of social participation beyond mere reading. Second, and related, drama invites discussion. The conversation over food and drink which follows a performance of Richard III or Julius Caesar may be some of the best civic discourse one can find.

Russell Kirk, Roots of American Order. In some ways, including this work is a cheat. Kirk surveys the origins of the American way of life, reaching from ancient Israel and Greece, through Rome, medieval Christendom, and the English liberal tradition, and on to the American Founding, all the way to Abraham Lincoln. Thus, in one vast sweep, this work encompasses the ideas and cultures of many other works which might appear on this list. At times I suspect Kirk indulges in a bit of wishful thinking, romantically claiming connections which are not quite so clear. But there is much to value in the history here surveyed, and even if America was not founded with all this in mind, modern Americans would do well to consider it.

G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. Doubtless, this work benefited from the fact that I recently re-read it. But Chesterton's survey of human civilization, from its earliest origins to the Christian age, a survey which greatly influenced C. S. Lewis, makes a number of important arguments regarding the place of religion in society. Moreover, Chesterton reminds us that civilizations can progress but also regress, a worthwhile caution. Most importantly, Chesterton points to the supernatural power of God, which can reanimate humanity in ways even the best of merely natural civilizations cannot. And he writes with a very enjoyable flourish.

Martin Luther King, Letter from Birmingham Jail. I have written about this letter before. I think it is worth including here for three reasons: (1) it gives a glimpse of America in the latter half of the 20th century, (2) it draws extensively on the Western intellectual tradition, demonstrating how it can be applied to contemporary issues, and (3) it encourages reflection on how the tools of faith and reason should be applied to political injustice, certainly a worthwhile topic in difficult times.

Walter Miller, Canticle for Leibowitz. This is another work I have praised elsewhere. Although a very different genre, like Letter from Birmingham Jail it invites consideration of how people of faith many carry on in difficult times. This novel of monks in post-apocalyptic America also raises important questions about how the remnants of civilization are preserved, suggesting that the work of preservation should be carried on even in the absence of tangible benefits, though preservation should never be assumed to be complete nor should it become an end in itself.



Suggestions for other inclusions?

Tradition & Historical Consciousness: A Few Random Observations: Part One

Dear reader: I apologize in advance for the disjointed, rambling nature of my next two posts, but my vanity tells me that they are interesting enough and just barely coherent enough to merit publication here.

 Here at the Guild Review one of our abiding interests is the place of tradition in the modern world and in what way we can shape that tradition. The very idea of shaping tradition, however, may seem problematic to some. Most of us reading this blog, I assume, are Catholics, for whom the most important tradition is the deposit of faith, which was complete upon the death of St. John, from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added; it can only be more perfectly understood and expressed by the Church. One is rightfully hesitant to shape that tradition; much safer simply to assist in handing on that deposit of faith to future generations unchanged. As graduates or friends of the University of Dallas, we went to college to learn from the tradition, not necessarily to “shape” it. It is arrogant in the extreme for a youth to think that he will revolutionize any particular field of learning; much better to listen in respect to our elders before setting on a lifelong journey of learning. Finally, the phrase “shaping tradition” also smacks of poorly-disguised novelty, usually imposed upon an indifferent group of people to encourage more “enthusiasm.” How often have we heard school administrators trying to win support for an unpopular program by proclaiming that “the tradition begins now”?

But, hopefully, all of us here would recognize that there is a legitimate place for all of us to “shape” our tradition, to one degree or another. Unfortunately, however, we tend to think of tradition as a culture’s or religion’s roots in history and not as the flower and fruit of the plant which spread the seed and preserve that plant for the future. To understand tradition and how we should shape we need to understand its relation to historical consciousness.

More precisely, we need to develop a historical consciousness that is in harmony, not in conflict, with tradition. Christianity can supply us with that proper understanding of historical consciousness and tradition. In more primitive cultures, tradition is opposed to historical consciousness in the form of myth. According to Mircea Eliade, in a pre-historical culture everything relates back to illud tempus, “that time” when the gods walked the earth. (Eliade uses the phrase “in illo tempore,” which he takes from the customary beginning of the Gospel in the Latin Mass: “At that time [Jesus]…”) Myths are concerned with origins. Any deviation from the example of the gods set forth in the myth is a sin.

Christianity clearly shares some of these qualities of myth. However, there are two crucial distinctions between Christianity and other ancient myths. The first is the distinction that Tolkien explained to C.S. Lewis in 1931: Christianity is a myth, but it is a true myth. And by “true” we of course mean “historically true.” Our God actually did create the world and then entered into that world and performed the actions that form the basis of our Christian myth. For Christians the origin with which we are concerned is not just the creation of the world, but also the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in history. But, as Catholics, each time we attend Mass, we also enter into what Eliade calls “mythical time”: we are present at the un-bloody renewal of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. What happens at Mass is essentially the same event as happened on the cross nearly 2,000 years ago.

The second crucial distinction is that Jesus preached that he would come again at the end of time. He ends the history of this world by judging the living and the dead. Our actions on earth matter—we are not condemned to endless cycles of reincarnation. The time between our origin, redemption, and eschaton has a direction in which we are free to move closer to or further from God. Through the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Second Coming Christianity gives history a movement from beginning to end; eschatology transformed myth into history. Christianity gives history a shape; it is up to us—with God’s grace—to shape our Christian tradition within history.

But, how should a Christian shape a tradition? One way Christians have always shaped their tradition is by reclaiming their principles—their origins—in the creation, redemption, and continuing sanctification of the world. Every time a Christian meditates on the life of Jesus and ponders how to apply that true myth to his life he is shaping the tradition in his own life and those around him. But, Christianity also allows its followers to subject the principles of other cultures and religions to itself; everything that is good can be referred back to Jesus Christ in some way.

An example should make this second way of shaping tradition a bit clearer. In Scholasticism: Problems and Personalities of Medieval Philosophy, Josef Pieper depicts scholasticism as a twofold endeavor: to recover the learning of the ancient world and to synthesize it with Christianity. The barbarian invasions had devastated scholarship in the late Roman Empire and many authors have been lost in part, if not in whole. All this is well known. But, then, in a somewhat surprising move, Pieper compares the project of medieval theologians with the Great Books programs of mid-20th-century America. In both instances, there was sufficient source material, but this source material needed to be catalogued, understood, and finally synthesized. The cultures undertaking these projects were arguably intellectually underdeveloped and in need of spiritual roots to prepare them for them for the role they were to play on the world stage. Both projects sought to rescue the ancient wisdom from the barbarism of the present age.

However, there is one important difference between the intellectual atmospheres of these two periods that needs to be emphasized: in modern America, historical consciousness is far more developed than it was in medieval Europe. Until relatively recently in history, it was possible to be considered learned while having only a very general idea of the past; that is impossible now.

One key effect of this increased historical consciousness is to turn anachronisms into glaring errors. While increased historical consciousness is generally good, it can also overshadow the main point in a novel, a piece of art, or in philosophy. For instance, when he employs examples from etymology, St. Thomas Aquinas loves to explain the origin of the Latin word lapis (“stone”) as a compound of laedere (“injure”) and pes (“foot”). This etymology is, of course, incorrect. But, how many readers will lose trust in Aquinas once they find out inadequate his knowledge of historical linguistics was, even though it really has no bearing on his philosophy? Likewise, it can be more difficult to appreciate past works of art when we recognize their anachronisms. For instance, any visitor to Charlemagne’s cathedral in Aachen with even a minimal knowledge of the history of architecture will notice the incongruity between the original octagonal Romanesque chapel (and its distinct Byzantine influence), the high Gothic apse, and the Baroque side chapel (the Ungarnkapelle). Finally, certain ideas about art become laughable when viewed in their historical context. Opera, for example, began as a pet project of wealthy and learned Florentine noblemen who thought they were reviving ancient Greek music and drama, especially in the form of a singing chorus. This anachronism does nothing to affect the aesthetic value of any particular opera, but it may color moderns’ views of their forebears.

Imagining Communities

Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities is a very popular text in academia these days. The quick and dirty of his argument is this: nationalism does not exist in nature, but is something we create.

There are problems with this argument, of course, not least of which is language. Language carries culture - hence the reason I grew up reading stories of King Arthur instead of Roland or Siegfried, in spite of being of German ancestry and living nowhere near England. Nevertheless, Anderson's argument has certain strengths. We can, in fact, observe the historical process of certain people and institutions deciding that these stories or that composer or this social custom belongs to a "nation", whereas a decade before people might not have believed that. The Brothers Grimm are an excellent example of this process of collecting, selecting and disseminating cultural norms. (Yes, the same even happens with language, where certain constructions or terms take on a connotation of being more "American" or "German" or what have you.)

Historically, nationalism has a bad name. These imagined communities have often committed horrible crimes in the name of their superior "race" or "civilization". While the Nazis are perhaps the most glaring example of this phenomenon, they are by no means the only one. Thus, it comes as little surprise that there is a kind of condescension in the use of Anderson's term, "imagined communities" as if to say, "You invented this category of 'nation' and now you ascribe messianic qualities to it, committing great crimes in its name. How idolatrous!"

But why, I wonder, must it be that way? Could imagining a community be a good thing? There would have to be a certain honesty about it, of course. The imaginer must admit that this is indeed a creation and not something natural. Nevertheless, it might be done in such a way as to conform to Nature, as best we understand it. And just because we have imagined it need not mean it is evil, or ought not be made actual.

Imagining a community was, I suppose, what I was trying to do when attempting to flesh out a canon. Add to such a canon of literature some major composers, a few holidays, and you've got yourself a community (if not necessarily a nation). As with the literature, such traditions need not be invented; there are plenty of existing traditions to coopt.

If this all sounds a little too grand, let me point out that this project is - or ought to be - something all people interested in culture are seeking to do, though the terms above are rarely used. Those working in cultural fields seek to form good Americans or good Catholics or nuanced thinkers or sensitive human beings or responsible citizens. Moreover, there is almost always a communal dimension to this work, bringing such people into dialogue with one another. That is, in a sense, the task of this blog.


PS: I realize that one important aspect of nationalism has been ignored here, the tendency to define "us" over and against "them". This tendency has been at the heart of many of nationalism's moral failures. If we are to rehabilitate the notion of imagined communities, this is definitely something we should work to avoid. However, while excluding certain people on the basis of race or place of birth or the like is absurd, I think we might rightly place ourselves in opposition to certain ideas: we are not wicked, we are not unjust, we are not self-serving, we are not short-sighted, etc. As the theologians know well, sometimes it is easier to define what a thing is not than to define what a thing is.

On Japanese Soccer Culture

The Financial Times recently had a very interesting article on soccer in Japan, which has one of the best teams in Asia, if not the best. Some of the article related the ups and downs of particular players and matches, but the part I found most interesting was about the fans:

The odd thing was that Philippe Troussier, their French coach, seemed oddly gloomy throughout the tournament. On a windswept terrace at their Beirut hotel, he gave the sort of despairing, dyspeptic interview that usually indicates a manager is coming to the end of his tether.

Japan had no football culture, he moaned. There was none of the ruthless desire to win he had experienced during his years coaching in Africa....

Football existed in Japan before 1993 but not in a meaningful way. Before the J League was inaugurated, Saburo Kawabuchi, the head of the Japanese football federation, sent researchers round the globe to report back on issues such as fan behaviour, tactics and marketing.

In the short term, it worked – the J League boomed and the national team was set on its way to Asian supremacy.

The problem, though, is that what began as mimicry has remained just that – it has not taken root and become organic. Kawabuchi has spoken of fans losing their inhibitions when they enter a stadium, taking on different national characteristics in the style of their support. “They are Japanese living in their own country,” he said, “who have abandoned a little of their Japaneseness.”

But that is the issue: fans put on great shows of colour and noise that are impressive until the game starts, at which it becomes apparent that their spectacle is divorced from what is happening on the pitch: a goal is scored against a team, and their fans carry on their song without missing a beat.

Shunsuke Nakamura (pictured), Celtic’s Japanese winger, made the point indirectly in speaking of his love for the fans in Glasgow. “They let the players raise their level,” he said. “They’re amazing. Their cheers change in response to the play.” Which, implicitly, is not the case in Japan.

It is fandom learnt by rote.

On Shared Experience

In ages past, most people enjoyed shared experiences with their neighbors. Many lived in small towns or villages. They often worked the same occupation (agriculture), or at least encountered one another's occupation on a regular basis (e.g. the farmer visiting the blacksmith). Many countries enjoyed a common religion, (and some still do). A great many people were of the same racial and linguistic background as those around them. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, men shared the experience of obligatory national military service.

As a result of shared experiences, people could implicitly understand one another; they shared common terminology, values, and ways of viewing the world. Except within small towns, most Americans no longer enjoy a shared set of experiences. Christianity occupies a shrinking share of America's religious pie, and that Christian chunk is less homogeneous than it once was, due to both the increased proportion of Catholics as well as the ongoing fractures within Protestantism. Men of various backgrounds are no longer drafted together. It is no longer a safe assumption that the folks next door speak English. And Americans are increasingly expected to interact with foreigners abroad.

None of these are bad things, but all of them chip away at our shared experiences. What do we all have in common? Reference to elements of popular culture such as Facebook might be your best bet for a common experience. ("It's like when you discover that someone has inexplicably unfriended you...") The problem here is that most such elements, although they put us in touch with our neighbor, leave us cut off from the past. Grandpa's diary, devoid of references to Facebook, will remain foreign, even if Facebook users in Japan no longer are.

What are the consequences of having lost our shared experiences? One of the most obvious are the ways in which different groups completely misunderstand each other with regard to politics (a problem further complicated by the enthymemic nature of discourse). Try placing a professor of performance studies from a major coastal university in a small town in the Deep South and see how well he or she can discuss politics with the locals...

How then are we to understand one another?

It seems to me there are two clear solutions: (1) Increase our shared experiences or (2) Increase our capacity for working across diverse experiences.

The latter is the option most often embraced. But while society has gone to great lengths to affirm that one who views the world different is not ipso facto in moral error, I worry that we have done far less to help people actually view the world in different ways. This is, essentially, an intellectual problem, one requiring intellectual dexterity. Can one employ multiple frameworks with regard to the same set of data? Can one recognize that different terms may have the same meaning, or that the same term may have multiple meanings? Some of this falls into the realm of contemporary "diversity" training (to use that very baggage-laden term). But much of this does not, since intellectual dexterity is not the same thing as tolerance. The intellectually dexterous may recognize that the person who uses the name Yahweh and the person who uses the name Allah may be referring to the same thing, God. This is the tolerant or integrative understanding of difference. But the intellectually dexterous might also recognize that when two people use the term God they may actually be referring to two very different things. This is the intolerant or divisive understanding of difference. Some differences are superficial, while others are profound; alas, so far as I can see society writ large simply tells itself that they are all acceptable, and in so doing does little to really help ourselves navigate a world of people with whom we have little in common.

Alternatively, we may increase those shared experiences. This can be done in a plethora of ways. Exchange programs of various sorts do just that. But I would like to consider another avenue, that of engaging with the great cultural icons of our various civilizations. Reading classic works of literature - or, for that matter, viewing famous art and architecture, listening to major works of music, or watching great films or performances of well-known drama - provides a set of reference points which one may share with people of distant lands, or distant ages.

The appeal I make here is not exactly for more Great Books curricula. In the first instance, schooling only occupies a small portion of most people's lives, so merely appealing to schools to teach from "the canon" (whatever that might be) is only a start. Going further, our everyday lives should be imbued with the culture of our fellow man, placing us in dialogue with a broader community. In a further departure from the typical arguments for the Great Books, I do not here contend that historically well-known works are inherently more true or virtue-forming than obscure or contemporary works. (Indeed, the Great Books, in their diversity, can give rise to relativism.) But if we are imperfect, finite thinkers, a degree of humility is required in our search for truth, and that humility demands that consider the insights of others, that we look for giants on whose shoulders we may stand. Participation in a wide-ranging cultural milieu is no guarantee one will find worthy guides to the truth, but I think it is a first step. Finally, while most apologists for the Great Books limit themselves to the writings of Western civilization, I would advocate the inclusion of the cultural highlights of all the world's major civilizations, with one caution. Cultural eclecticism, the phenomenon of taking bits and pieces of various cultures and stitching them together in a way which has no real integrity, poses a real danger to shared experience in that various cultural items, stripped from their larger context, lose their value as connectors. The films of Akira Kurosawa, for example, are best understood not by themselves, but in conjunction with the plays of Shakespeare, the history of Japan, the world of psychology, and that very American genre of film, the Western.

So go crack open that Bible, watch some Shakespeare - his plays are all over Netflix Instant - or simply light a bonfire. You wouldn't be the first person to take up such practices. And you just might find that, in so doing, you have a little more in common with your fellow man.