Culture

The current infatuation with multiple cultures in America seems enlightened on the surface. However, it is important to bear in mind that cultures often stand in the way of greater human progress. Idolizing a culture without a critical and analytical eye is childishly naive.

I was aghast yesterday as I listened to an NPR quiz show. The guest celebrity was a rap singer who was overtly and unabashedly bragging about his American subculture of violence, robbery and drug abuse. The audience seemed to find this quite humorous. I found it disturbing and symptomatic of a sick society.

Similarly, the recent fascination in America with Islamic cultures seems a natural reaction to being aggressively attacked on September 11th, 2001 by a wealthy Saudi madman and his minions. However, the equivocation of cultures which behead women for adultery and hang young men for being gay to American culture is just plain stupid. Many Americans seem unable to take the critical step to investigate a culture's full spectrum of positive and negative traits. I speculate that this is based in intellectual laziness or a delusion that smiling at everything about a culture will keep people from that culture from creating mayhem.

Human cultural development follows patterns which can be readily discerned by studying history critically and analytically. This implies the use of science, a foreign culture indeed for many contemporary Americans, it seems. Science isn't about being blissfully ignorant. It isn't about denying the unpleasant in hopes that it will go away.

Multiculturalism in America can serve a wonderful purpose to enrich the greater American culture. However, the present approach media and politicians are taking toward multiculturalism is shallow and inane, generally. Blanket acceptance of any culture as "great" or "cool" is counterproductive. Fostering the elements of any culture which advance universal human rights and world peace is common sense. Learning the difference takes time, study and openness to truth.